swan blocks chinese takeover of oz mine, page-123

Simrose, read this article. It is a good explanation of what happened. Most of the press re this decision has treated it with the contempt it deserves.

An important summary ciontained in the article below:

"It cannot be a coincidence that Treasurer Wayne Swan leapt from the shadows on Friday to reject the Chinese company Chinmetals' bid for the failed mining company OZ Minerals on the grounds that the OZ Minerals lease was too close to the weapons-testing area at Woomera.

The proximity of the site was not raised during the negotiation; why now? It smacks of a bone being tossed to appease Australian fears even as the Chinese mining company Chinalco, is tacitly being given encouragement to keep moving on acquiring a significant chunk of iron-ore miner Rio Tinto."


Full article. Courier Mail:

Labor's Chinese whispering
March 29, 2009 12:00am

THERE are some 1338 million people in China, give or take a million or so. Businesswoman Helen Liu is but one of them.

Yet she is literally in the picture with a series of Chinese and Australian political leaders and there is little doubt that she is a person of considerable influence and knows a lot of secrets.

The millionairess, whose picture has been taken with the most senior members of the Chinese Government, is also one of the largest individual contributors to the Australian Labor Party's coffers and her ties with the ALP go back decades.

One might think that the influential businesswoman, pictured with Gough Whitlam toasting former Chinese premier Li Peng in one front-page photo on Friday, and with the then Chinese foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan, in another, was an unforgettable character whose gifts would be similarly memorable. Apparently not.

In Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon's world, business-class tickets to exotic destinations are easily overlooked, even when they entail a two-day trip to China which coincides with the wife's birthday.

Yet he could not recall Madame Liu stumping up for two business-class trips to China, in 2002 and 2005, when asked last week.

Madame Liu would not make such a stupid mistake. She may even know the Defence Minister's inner-leg measurement, having sent him a suit - which he returned a week later, apparently unworn.

The question of why Fitzgibbon returned the suit but could not recall visiting Beijing and Shanghai remains, however, and as he is now Defence Minister, it is legitimate to ask him to produce details of his itinerary.

Who did Madame Liu require him to meet, what was his role, or does he want Australians to believe that his business trip was in fact a sightseeing sortie, with a tour of the Forbidden City, and a photo-op on the Great Wall?

The ALP's China Syndrome has not re-emerged merely because of Fitzgibbon's Folly.

There is also the question of the visit of Li Changchun, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, and one of the five most senior officials in the Chinese Communist Party, to talk in secret with Prime Minister Kevin (Lu Kewen) Rudd in Canberra last Saturday.

For whatever reason, Rudd, who left for Washington on Monday, did not reveal that he was to meet Li, though it is normal practice for the Prime Minister's Department to inform the media when the PM meets foreign officials. Nor were any details of the meeting subsequently released through his office.

Why didn't Rudd tell the Canberra press gallery of Li's visit? Or did the gallery fail to make the ritual Friday call to the PM's department and ask for details of the PM's weekend itinerary?

Whatever the reason for the omission, it is now a matter of record that Rudd met China's chief of propaganda on Saturday and then pressed for China to be given a greater role in the IMF - an organisation Rudd had denounced in his laughable article for the flailing Melbourne magazine The Monthly.

Australians, the people who pay Rudd's salary, only learned of Li's visit when details appeared in the Chinese media, though Li had apparently flown to Australia in an aircraft the size of a 747 or larger, with a contingent of 60, including, four other ministers.

But why are details of theLi visit still being kept secret by thePM's department?

Why is Rudd, who has also been a beneficiary of sponsorship by a supposedly private Chinese citizen (with global trips financed by the man he jokingly calls his "Chinese controller'', Ian Tang), so anxious to prevent Australians from knowing who in the Chinese Government he speaks to?

The row between Fitzgibbon and his department is secondary to the larger questions currently surrounding Chinese engagement with Australia: the scope of Chinese investment in Australia.

It cannot be a coincidence that Treasurer Wayne Swan leapt from the shadows on Friday to reject the Chinese company Chinmetals' bid for the failed mining company OZ Minerals on the grounds that the OZ Minerals lease was too close to the weapons-testing area at Woomera.

The proximity of the site was not raised during the negotiation; why now? It smacks of a bone being tossed to appease Australian fears even as the Chinese mining company Chinalco, is tacitly being given encouragement to keep moving on acquiring a significant chunk of iron-ore miner Rio Tinto.

Having a major customer own the mine, doesn't bode well for the price of Australian iron ore.

This is not about conspiracy theories, it is about facts which the Rudd government wants to conceal.

Chinese citizens who give hundreds of thousands of dollars to an Australian political party are of interest to the Australian people.

Chinese companies closely tied to the Chinese Government and the Chinese national interest moving to control a significant Australian export industry are of interest to the Australian people.

Australian politicians who forget they have taken gifts from influential Chinese and fail to declare such gifts on the parliamentary register are naturally of interest to the Australian people.

That the Rudd government resorts to secrecy about such serious matters during a week in which it claimed to have moved towards greater transparency andopenness in its transactions is no more than further manipulation of a largely compliant media.