And it's not just the international press that thinks it is ridiculous:
Chest-beating derails OZ deal
Barry FitzGerald, The Age - March 28, 2009
IT IS impossible to be anything but cynical about the Federal Government's gobsmacking decision to derail China's state-owned Minmetals' $2.6 billion takeover bid for OZ Minerals by forcing the excision of the Prominent Hill copper/gold mine from the deal.
The reason offered by a straight-faced Wayne Swan was that Prominent Hill sits in the Woomera rocket range, a 127,000 square kilometre chunk of South Australia's remote outback.
"It is not unusual for governments to restrict access to sensitive areas on national security grounds," the Federal Treasurer claimed. He wants us to believe that Chinese ownership of Prominent Hill will somehow lay bare national defence secrets.
As if the Chinese don't know what goes on at Woomera anyway. Prominent Hill is a good 160 kilometres from the rocket launch site, so if the Chinese really need to know what is going on there — which is not much — they would be better off spending their money on a couple of four-wheel-drives and binoculars to get closer to the action.
No, the real reason is all about political expediency. Had Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon not rocked the Government by having to come clean on two trips made to China as a guest of businesswoman Helen Liu, would we be talking about Woomera at all?
No, we wouldn't. Minmetals' bid would still be sitting with the Foreign Investment Review Board under its planned 90-day scrutiny of the offer, one which OZ dearly wants to consumate to keep banks owed $1.3 billion from placing it in administration. And when the FIRB got around to advising the Treasurer that there were no national interest concerns as it was expected it would, Mr Swan could have cleared the deal as being in everyone's best interests.
But that is not to be. The Government has preferred to use the OZ case as a chance for a bit of chest-beating about what the Chinese can and cannot have, all at a time when the man in charge of the Defence portfolio and Australia's rocket ranges has Chinese issues of his own making.
If the Government is to be believed on its reasons for insisting on the excision of Prominent Hill, then Rio Tinto and the state-owned Chinalco must be feeling relieved because Rio doesn't operate on any rocket ranges. But that's nonsense. Just like the Mr Swan's Prominent Hill decision.
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