HOST:
Mr Bradbury, good afternoon to you.
BRADBURY:
Good afternoon Craig, good to be with you.
HOST:
Barnaby Joyce says the Cubbie sale to a foreign company is not in the national interest. What makes you think that it is?
BRADBURY:
Well we have a very strong foreign investment review process in Australia and part of that process if foreign investors want to take ownership of land holdings and businesses above certain thresholds have to go through a process of demonstrating that an acquisition is in the national interest. In this case, there are a number of very strong reasons as to why the proposed transaction – and it's important to underline this point, that the foreign investment review process is a process that occurs independently of the actual commercial sale and acquisition process, and approval can be given and that need not necessarily ensure that the actual transaction proceeds but that's something, in a commercial sense, we'll all see whether or not that occurs in due course. But in terms of the reasons why this is in the national interest, there's a lot of emotion around this issue and that's understandable but let's have a look at some of the facts. What we've seen since 2009 is Cubbie station has been in voluntary administration. Now there are in the order of 170 people employed at Cubbie station, not to mention the direct and indirect economic benefits that flow from its activities to the surrounding regions.
Now this is an operation that's been in voluntary administration since 2009. There have been numerous attempts to seek out and secure a buyer, a purchaser of Cubbie station, and that was not something that was forthcoming. We now have a consortium, and let's be clear about this: it's a consortium that has an 80/20 split – 80 per cent of the interests are held by foreign entities – let's be clear about this, none of those entities are foreign government-related entities, they are private entities – and then 20 per cent from an Australian business, Lempriere, which of course is a name that has been around in Australian agriculture for many years.
HOST:
Mr Bradbury, I'll just interrupt there because there are quite a few conditions that have been put on it, but what happens should the consortium not abide by the conditions? There was one there that Shandong RuYi would seek to sell down to 51 per cent control of the entity involved in the purchase of Cubbie, but should they not do that, what happens then?
BRADBURY:
Well there are a number of conditions that have been placed and obviously they are in the form of undertakings that have been given by the respective consortium partners. Now they are matters that will be monitored very closely by the Government and obviously they are undertakings that have been given and this is the usual way in which these matters are dealt with under foreign investment review processes. It's not unusual for matters to be dealt with in this way and we find that there is a very strong incentive for the companies to ensure that they meet those undertakings. Obviously it would reflect very badly on them; it would impact detrimentally not only on the public's view of the operations of that company but more generally on any future prospects they might have acquiring any further interests in any operations that occur here in Australia.
HOST:
Now Mr Bradbury, as you would have heard or be aware of, Barnaby Joyce has led quite an emotive debate today saying that it is in the national interest and at one stage he suggested there had been talk that Cubbie should be bought by the Federal Government, that it's of such national importance, particularly the property's large water licenses. Why not go down that path?
BRADBURY:
I think if someone's suggesting nationalisation of private business, they need to make the case as to why that should be the case. Let's be clear about this: Barnaby Joyce is full of a lot of hot air on this. That's not to say that there aren't other Australians out there that agree with the sentiment of what he's expressing, but let's be clear about the facts that underpin this argument. What Barnaby Joyce is calling for is something that not even Tony Abbott or other members of the Coalition support – that is, nationalisation of business.
We saw Mr Abbott go to China and tell the Chinese he was against foreign government ownership, but then he had to qualify his comments by saying, well it wasn't foreign government ownership, he doesn't believe any government should own anything. And Mr Hockey made it very clear that the Coalition do not believe in the nationalisation of any private sector industry.
The point here is that if this business was capable of attracting private capital in Australia that would have already happened. It hasn't happened. If we want to grow this particular asset to generate more jobs and create more economic activity and ultimately penetrate export markets, some of the biggest export markets that the global economy has ever seen, in particular by penetrating the Chinese market, if we want to turn our back on those opportunities then let's be clear about the economic cost that will flow from that.
The simple question that I would ask Barnaby Joyce – the Coalition has a discussion paper out there on foreign investment, point to one sentence in that discussion paper that would lead to a different outcome in relation to this acquisition.