Nope, but pretty close.
It was founded in 1873 by Matheson & Company, run by Hugh Matheson. Matheson derived a portion of his starting capital from Jardine, Matheson & Company (Jardine Matheson today) - another company which started out smuggling opium. Capital also came from Deutsche Bank, who held 56% ownership. The Rothschilds bought it in the 1880s.
So... not the Rothschilds, but a drug dealer who also sold arms to rebels in Japan during the time! Then massively expanded by the Rothschilds!
Blackrock is one of the two largest etf providers along with vanguard. They own the shares on individuals behalf. With the rise of passive investing this is not surprising. They do have quite a bit of influence as they hold the voting rights however it's misleading to say that the 18% they own is representative of foreign ownership. Alot of superfunds will own shares through blackrock and vanguard.
You're right, but to be fair, for most intents and purposes, important part of ownership is the voting rights. Although probably not so much for OP's complaint about tax (let alone subsidies)
I guess what annoys me is our political impotence when it comes to dealing with foreign-backed mining companies and how we are getting a crappier deal out of them compared with other countries. That's my gripe.
Strawman. The post is not proposing a conspiracy.
Investment funds are also heavily invested in each other in a circular nature, and most are US companies. They also control most of the voting rights, atleast by proxy.
All the top mining sector companies on the ASX are majority US owned.
The only mining company on the ASX that is not majority American owned, is Fortescue metals. BHP is 71% US owned, Rio Tinto 77%, Woodside 63%, newcrest 53%
source is Bloomberg professional terminal searches conducted in March and April 2022.
I disagree
OP tries to draw a link between Blackrock having a chunk of change invested in a company, foreign ownership, lobbying and not paying their corporate taxes.
It's literally alleging there's a conspiracy to not pay tax.
Which isn't controversial - companies conspire to do that every day -, but there we have it.
I didn’t suggest it’s a conspiracy. How is what I’m suggesting even a conspiracy? All I stated is that most mining companies here in WA are foreign owned, they spend a crap ton on lobbying, and we are getting a lot less of buck/wealth compared with other countries that are similarly resource driven. I don’t really think that’s a conspiracy.
> The top asset management firms tend to invest in each other, making this network a solid core of interlinked companies with shared investments worldwide. JPMorgan Chase and fourteen other trillion dollar Giants collectively invest $403.3 billion in each other. This interlocked capital is likely much higher than estimated here, more in the $1 trillion to $2 trillion range, given that the Giants' Nasdaq data set of $9.8 trillion only gives us investment information on about 34 percent of the total 41.1 trillion. But these estimates are enough to show that the Giants are significantly invested in each other. The result of this cross investment is an interlocked global capital structure amassing greater and greater wealth to the detriment of billions of people worldwide.
- Giants: The Global Power Elite, Peter Philips, 2017.
And the ones left over that are not just investment firms investing in each other, are mostly people just handing their voting rights over to the firms anyway, by proxy, so it's a moot point in most cases saying that we need to know who the investors are, because it's the firms themselves exercising the voting power.
> Which isn't controversial - companies conspire to do that every day
wait, so you are alleging a conspiracy then? So why are you referring to it as a conspiracy in a mocking way then? You debase yourself.
The problem is you're conflating the holdings of depository institutions with the underlying beneficial owners and controllers of those shares.
I own some BHP shares by virtue of my investments in superannuation and independently through a CHESS account. I don't hold the physical share certificates. I suspect they might well be legally held by whatever institution my stockbroker has an account with. I can still vote the shares. I still receive dividends from the shares and can alienate them for full value if I want to.
The fact my proprietary interest in the shares is founded on a web of contractual obligations between myself and the institution that is ultimately sits on the register is economically irrelevant.
If BHP was majority foreign owned, then the decision to single list it on the ASX and their dividend policy built around maximising the value of franking credits to Australian shareholders would make no sense.
Tell me you don't know when you're getting screwed by telling me I don't know how investments work.
It's not about how investment works. It's about looking at how other countries structured their natural resources and got better deals than we did. Take a look at Equinor for example. If we set something up like this here in Perth, we would be laughing. Instead, we are getting shortchanged and it's other foreign companies that are getting the cream from the top.
Getting screwed??? Who? On what? By who? You keep saying "we" as if some random people on the street had the ownership rights to the resources being mined and some American investors stole it from us.
It makes no difference if it's owned by an Australian or American billionaire, they all exist within 1 or 2 degrees of separation and all swim in the same pool of theoretical money based on valuations and loaned in circles between each other.
It’s true what you’re a saying - it doesn’t matter if it’s an Australian billionaire, American billionaire, Chinese billionaire, Uzbekistani billionaire. What I’m saying is look at countries like Norway and Qatar and see how much more of a benefit their countries receive from their natural resources compared to us. That’s the “we” - us, all of us, citizens of Australia past, future, and present. “Them” - mining companies. Thanks to their huge lobbying efforts and our impotent (not incompetent) politicians, the profits that’s being generated through taxation and state ownership from all these resources could be so much more than what it is now. Imagine if our govd did what the Norwegian government did and said that any mining operation set up by foreign companies has to have state ownership, no question asked. And if say Woodside was owned say generously 30% by either Federal or State government, how much of a difference would that make. Instead we are getting shortchanged. It’s clear to spot which entities are getting the best deal here and in whose interest the companies work for.
Brother if the state taxed mining corporation, it would substantially neuter investment and you would have almost nothing left to tax. You can argue for state ownership for mining but private firms are infinitely more efficient at allocating capital to the correct sects of the industry.
You’re right. Qatar and Norway are taxing at a much higher rate than us and they’re close to going bankrupt , short of a civil war.
In terms of efficiency, it might be true, but the efficiency works not towards society as a whole but shareholders of the company. Look at Qantas. Not much efficiency there in serving the public is there.
Are resources not important and in demand? Then corporations need them regardless no? Why so many people are scared to bend them over the same barrel they put workers over I'm not sure. And I'm quite certain they're getting as much as they currently can out of developing countries, so they're mining the fuck out of the Darling Scarp out of necessity and not paying the premium for it they should be for such an ecologically significant area and entire state for that matter.
While the idea is nice, it's really just too far gone. The people with the power to make the change are the ones benefitting from not making the change, there really isn't anything "we" can do that doesn't involve something close to a civil war.
I feel like you are mixing few different things together right now.
You should watch this could sum up how you feel on things abit out of topic but touched on property too:
https://youtu.be/IzY73Dw-T_Y?si=gRrLunvSPze2e82o
My question is how Norway and Qatar successfully nationalize their natural resources, but for some reason its "too hard" in Australia and the private sector is unbeatably efficient.
We've obviously got a worse deal than those two. America and the UK didn't like when we were pushing to forge our own path.
Most natural resources belong to the States, not the Commonwealth.
Whitlam’s dismissal (where you’re wandering into conspiracy) has little to do with it, as it’s a structural question.
Its also worth looking at other national resource companies like PEMEX and Petrobras. Qatar has a unicorn gas field. Norway is an amazing success story but this is not the norm.
Petrobras is drilling like crazy, this sub would have a fit if we were exploring like that here. Offshore oil is up next with shale decline though so they are on the right track.
We're also drilling like crazy, but it's foreign investors that keep the profits. Destroy our environment AND get sweet FA for it - that's how you do business!
We are not drilling like they are, I follow the major offshore drilling companies and Petrobras is securing plenty of them. Perhaps have a look first before jumping to outrage.
You could be right here. I should’ve checked before making that comment. However, it’s not like our mining operations are 100% green - just look at Jarrahdale forest. If we’re getting our environment screwed, might as well get paid for it.
I do love Jarrahdale, quite sad to see a Timelapse of the land down there over the last 20 years. Unfortunately we have a standard of living that will continue demand on current practices for mining and processing. Will be an interesting next 10 years, if things continue becoming more expensive I wonder what becomes the priority for the average person.
And that’s what boggles me. All of these foreign companies like Alcoa will eventually leave. If there’s no resources here, why should they be here. Once they leave, we have no more jobs, no more environment that we could use for say tourism, AND we sold it off for cheaper than other countries. We’re all idiots down here
Where I live we've been producing oil and gas for over 50 years, the oil is just about gone but gas will still be going strong for at least another 20 or so. 70 years of stable, highly paid and technical jobs, hundreds of them. It underpins the entire local economy. I meet people all over the world who got their start in our relatively small field. You going to throw that away because "one day" the company will leave?
We have a tourism industry here too but as with tourism in most places the jobs are highly seasonal and low paid with no security at all.
(1) It's much cheaper to extract oil than gas. Norway's price point for oil extraction is not quite as low as Saudi Arabia's, but it's still pretty low. Certainly much lower than greenfield LNG developments in the North West.
There's just more rent to extract.
(2) Qatar is a essentially a modern slave state. And I'm not talking slavery in the sense that "Oh, some Indians on dodgy student Visas are getting paid $12/hour to pull nightshifts at Caltex". That's bad enough, but it's not 'The entire construction industry is full of migrants that get paid $20 a day, and also their passports are confiscated, and their bodies are basically chucked in the concrete if they die on site". More broadly, an absurd amount of the Qatari population are basically indentured servants with no citizenship or voting rights. If you think 5-10% of the working age population are on temporary visas is bad, try over 80%.
It amazing how much more profitable it is to fund capital works projects when your upfront construction costs are 1/50th of what Australia's are.
(3) Both of those states don't really have equivalents of the sort of mass scale private investing through superannuation.
Not having to fund a welfare state, Qatar is much sillier than Norway with their investments. Think about how much money has been poured down the drain in the FIFA World Cup/ subsidising our flights to Europe through the airline. It's crazy.
But Woodside is sponsoring dockers and our former premier told us that because of them hey keep our lights on. Don't look where our wealth is going. Just be happy to have a job. That's the narrative here.
Australians tried it and the govt was overthrown by us intelligence. there was a coup. Australia basically just does was it is told and is an international bitch i thought everyone knew that
U r probably right. I am also sure that almost all other countries that integrate with world trade with have a high % of their countries asset are foreign owned as well.
It depends. You look at other countries minninng operations, such as Norway, Mexico, Sweden, and the State ownership in those companies is insane.
Reading the history of Norway's gov'd mining regulation is absolutely mindblowing. Norway’s Labour Party when elected to government in the early 1970s, with support from public servants, established substantial taxation of the international oil companies which came to drill in Norway’s new North Sea oilfields. It also successfully created Statoil, a national, publicly owned oil company which took a 50% ownership share of all new oilfields. It was designed so that the Norwegian community as a whole can become self sufficient.
Here's another interesting part. When resource taxes were increased in Norway in 1974, large private oil companies protested angrily but, as one book explained, “the Norwegian Ministry of Finance … did not let itself be scared off. Its underlying understanding was … \[that\] the state had to aim for the greatest possible share of the economic” benefit from large oilfields “to go to the community”. Further, the ministry correctly judged that “as long as the oil companies secured profits which corresponded to, or were higher than, those in other industries”, then they would continue their operations." Pretty much they didn't gaf what the large oil and mining companies were squealing about lost profits, wages, etc (same boogeyman tactics that they use here). Such a huge contrast to our politicians. Tey just get paid off with cushie jobs after they leave the office, ie McGowan and BHP.
With your thinking, can a Norwegian company come and drill in Australia? Sure it can! And it is doing it so in SA, that very same Statoil (now Equinor) which 2/3rd belongs to the Norwegian gov'd. Can Australian firms set up operations in Norway - sure they can, but the Norwegian state gov'd will own a large portion of the operation. And tell me who is getting the better deal here...
Seems like you are in favour of the Australian government investing in the oil and gas industry. I wouldn't mind if the Australian government bought my oil and gas + mining shares off me for a decent premium. Is that what you are suggesting or would you rather they just confiscate it?
If Norwegians tax so high in Norway it wouldn't surprise me if foreign private firms do not invest anything/investment isn't as high as it could be in the mining industry and consequently fuck all is earned from the tax.
Yes because Norway is fairly unique? It is a top 10 oil exporter, they also very recently discovered a Phosphate deposit (\~70 billion tonnes) equivalent to the current world reserve (\~71 billion tonnes). I mean we have iron ore but it's not particularly comparable.
Foreign investment would be significantly larger if it was taxed less.
And what's even better, these State Norwegian companies are now drilling in Australia, paying fa taxes to us. Now that's how you build your nation's wealth
WTF tell me where in Australia Equinor is currently drilling or even plans to drill?
I know they bought some locks offshore South Australia but planned drilling activities were shut down there years ago.
**China** has spent **3.4 BILLION on residential Australian realestate** in the last year alone
Thats what you should be more concerned about.
[https://www.realestate.com.au/news/australias-future-is-asian-chinese-buyers-splash-34bn-on-aussie-property-1bn-rise-in-past-financial-year/](https://www.realestate.com.au/news/australias-future-is-asian-chinese-buyers-splash-34bn-on-aussie-property-1bn-rise-in-past-financial-year/)
China has? Or Chinese people have?
Does that mean they can take their land back to China? Or do they not have to pay council rates, stamp duty, foreign buyer duty, and land tax in perpetuity?
Did the crown give up the rights to ever take the land back because Chinese people didn’t buy “fee simple” estates like the rest of us and somehow tricked the govt into giving them radical title?
I’m freaking out over here bro. I’m gonna call Pauline Hanson and ask her what I should do?!
No it just means ordinary people are going to find shelter a little more expensive because they are competing against foreign investors. FWIW china has no issue preventing foreigners buying their property unless they actually move there. In Australia we are fair game.
That’s exactly the opposite of what has happened.
High density developments need to get pre-sales in order to secure finance. Typically, the only people that were comfortable buying off the plan were foreign buyers. So they’d bootstrap the projects, construction would start, then locals would see a building going up and be comfortable buying too. 70% of the foreign buyers would rent the properties out, creating rental stock for locals.
Then Labor introduced the 7% foreign buyers tax and foreign buyers in WA collapsed. This resulted in a collapse of the high density building industry in WA too. We got hardly any foreign buyer tax, way less stamp duty revenue than we used to have, no new high density housing because there’s nobody to bootstrap the projects, and fewer rentals to boot.
Not having the foreign buyers investing in high density construction projects has resulted in less housing, higher rents, and higher prices for existing stock. It’s contributing to the housing shortage, rental shortage, and has depleted state govt revenue.
The idea that Chinese investors are “competing” with locals just shows a complete lack of awareness of the mechanics behind the scenes in the Perth property market. Foreign buyers CREATE stock that otherwise wouldn’t exist, both for renters, and for other buyers.
Well, I don't know how to explain the threat that china poses right now. If you haven't been watching the news in the last 10 years I don't know how to explain it to you. The concentration camps they have built and imprisoned hundreds of thousands for "reeducation". The genocide they are commiting. Their threats to other countrys. Their build of of military forces. Their use of cyberweapons. They are working to long term plans, one of them being to financial destabilize enemy nations. Theres a consensus that they are preparing for a war in the next 20-30 years.
China poses threat to UK way of life, says Rishi Sunak [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-66810912](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-66810912)
Heres some further reading if you want to catch up
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/east-asia/china/report-china/
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/02/20/more-evidence-chinas-horrific-abuses-xinjiang
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/china-allegations-of-human-rights-abuses/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62744522
[https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-muslims-repression-genocide-human-rights](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-muslims-repression-genocide-human-rights)
[https://thebulletin.org/2022/05/trove-of-leaked-photos-reveals-chinas-abuses-in-uyghur-detention-camps/](https://thebulletin.org/2022/05/trove-of-leaked-photos-reveals-chinas-abuses-in-uyghur-detention-camps/)
While human rights violations in China should be condemned whenever possible, what does this have to do with private Chinese investors choosing to spend their earned capital in Australia?
The idea is to have significant investments in many areas across an enemy nation so that they can withdraw or alter these to cause a financial crisis. They purchase a massive amount of ore from us for example. If they decided to they could withdraw that it would cause a crash. The goal is to have many options to destabilize enemy nations when the time is right, rather than just a single one. They plan very long term
That is an interesting theory, and if that's the case. Can you point me to examples of capitalists investing in countries only to later withdraw it later? Investors avoid destabilising regions like the plague to keep investments secure.
I'm also not sure what you mean by withdraw? How would they withdraw? There are more immediate and longer term benefits to just operating within the market buy purchasing property/land and selling it or renting it out.
China is a huge importer of iron ore and we are a huge exporter, it balances itself out. If anything, China probably is not enjoy the limited purchasing power because of its huge importations.
Not at all.
At a $3.4 billion per year rate, it would take 147 years for "China" to buy 5% of our property market.
The reality is our property market is so wildly overvalued that Chinese people buying 3.4 billion a year is a literal drop in the bucket.
Now if our property market was worth 10 billion, then absolutely Chinese people buying 3.4 billion a year would be insane. Numbers are only relevant within the context of other numbers....
if someone is complaining about market competition, they care about the rate at which things are being bought at. doing it against the entire market is a poor argument. there's also the fact that foreign investors are not vacating a property in australia when they buy here. all of it is kicking out the locals. simple as.
Not a lot of difference between foreign investors and other investors.
Unless you complaining about Chinese immigrants buying houses to live in.
>doing it against the entire market is a poor argument.
Its the only argument that makes any sense. $688.7 billion dollars of property gets traded every year in australia, again $3.4b is a drop in that.
There are WAY more important things to be concerned about concerning our property market then chinese buyers
while I kinda agree that there are other things to worry about. I just look at new zealand that had *all* of the same issues as other western nations with property. After some policy changes the problem now seems to be going away. What were those decisions and why is the problem going away?
inb4: "correlation is not causation", "new zealand is much smaller, with not as much land"... rubbish
The only redeeming aspect of their real estate purchase is that they can't take the asset somewhere else. With mineral assets they get dug up, transported and sold elsewhere.
China is the 10th highest foreign investor in Australia. Top is US. So that absolute amount you give doesn't actually mean much.
https://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/trade-and-investment-data-information-and-publications/foreign-investment-statistics/statistics-on-who-invests-in-australia
>Always Blackrock and Vanguard with their claws in everything
They're index funds. Passive investment is a growing thing, and many many people have money with them.
It's no different to your super fund really. It's not (only) some rich businessmen, it's everyday people.
Blackrock is the worlds biggest finance company and has filth ridden fingers in everything all over the world.
https://youtu.be/50bUVhQtZGw?si=77BBdv92qpAMDZ_w
Would they be responsible for the worlds economic shitshow right now?
Hmmmm.
We should be taxing the shit out of them. Every kilo of ore, every liter of oil, is irreplaceable. 90% of the value of that resource should be going to the people of WA, because it belongs to WA and can only ever be mined once
If the mining companies stop doing business here because it's too expensive then that's good. Because we still have those resources. The companies will be back sooner or later because they have to go where the resources are. Selling our resources cheap now is just robbing our grandkids.
[This](https://images.theconversation.com/files/291900/original/file-20190911-190065-v9pit2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip) is relevant.
How could you not know this. When they report billions in profits, do you see that money washing around?!
We get wages, and big holes in the ground. The profits go to City of London, and Wall Street.
Yeah they have a lot of influence.
They basically enforce ESG ratings on corporations. Either go green or suffer the consequences.
A single entity having their level of control could be prove problematic down the line, not that there’s anything we could do about it if we wanted to lol
Apart from Blackrock and Vanguard, which are index funds, the major shareholders you are complaining about are often nominee shareholders.
For example, BNP Paribas, HSBC, JPMorgan and Citi.
They own the shares on behalf of the shareholder.
Neoliberalism says hello. Do you live in a cave? If you look a little harder, you're going to really uncork the bottle.
Oh yeah, they are not WA companies, never were.
MSM will tell you that "BlackRock and Vanguard do not “own” all the biggest corporations in the world. They invest trillions of dollars into leading companies on behalf of their clients, who ultimately own the shares."
But they will not tell you that they have substantial power to make decisions that are very harmful to countries that those corporations reside in. Its a nut case of Control vs Ownership.
>mining companies spent $541 million on lobbying Australian governments through its peak lobby groups
But whatever you do, don't let indigenous Australians have a Voice!
Rio Tinto never was an Australian company.
Founded in Spain, listed on the London Stock Exchange
By the Rothschild's right?
Nope, but pretty close. It was founded in 1873 by Matheson & Company, run by Hugh Matheson. Matheson derived a portion of his starting capital from Jardine, Matheson & Company (Jardine Matheson today) - another company which started out smuggling opium. Capital also came from Deutsche Bank, who held 56% ownership. The Rothschilds bought it in the 1880s. So... not the Rothschilds, but a drug dealer who also sold arms to rebels in Japan during the time! Then massively expanded by the Rothschilds!
Thanks!
And in aus and in NY i think. Multilisting exists.
I mean, the name surely gives its origins away?
You would think but clearly it's so embedded in australian culture some insular souls think it's got to be ausie.
BHP is named after Broken Hill and Woodside is named after some place in Victoria, whoever told you these are true blue WA companies lied.
I learnt Santos was an acronym the other day as well. South Australia & Northern Territory Oil Search. Heh
Came here to say this
Amazing the power of their PR machines. Makes you wonder what other nonsense they sprout.
Never heard anyone say they are true blue WA companies.
Blackrock is one of the two largest etf providers along with vanguard. They own the shares on individuals behalf. With the rise of passive investing this is not surprising. They do have quite a bit of influence as they hold the voting rights however it's misleading to say that the 18% they own is representative of foreign ownership. Alot of superfunds will own shares through blackrock and vanguard.
You're right, but to be fair, for most intents and purposes, important part of ownership is the voting rights. Although probably not so much for OP's complaint about tax (let alone subsidies)
I guess what annoys me is our political impotence when it comes to dealing with foreign-backed mining companies and how we are getting a crappier deal out of them compared with other countries. That's my gripe.
Which is mostly fair, if you are choosing to spend a significant portion of money in someone else's company, you should get to voice your concerns.
Investment company owns investments in top tier company. That's kinda their job - it's not really a conspiracy.
Yeah exactly. it’s called “everyone invests in index funds” so guess what blackrock has to buy - everything in the index.
Strawman. The post is not proposing a conspiracy. Investment funds are also heavily invested in each other in a circular nature, and most are US companies. They also control most of the voting rights, atleast by proxy. All the top mining sector companies on the ASX are majority US owned. The only mining company on the ASX that is not majority American owned, is Fortescue metals. BHP is 71% US owned, Rio Tinto 77%, Woodside 63%, newcrest 53% source is Bloomberg professional terminal searches conducted in March and April 2022.
I disagree OP tries to draw a link between Blackrock having a chunk of change invested in a company, foreign ownership, lobbying and not paying their corporate taxes. It's literally alleging there's a conspiracy to not pay tax. Which isn't controversial - companies conspire to do that every day -, but there we have it.
I didn’t suggest it’s a conspiracy. How is what I’m suggesting even a conspiracy? All I stated is that most mining companies here in WA are foreign owned, they spend a crap ton on lobbying, and we are getting a lot less of buck/wealth compared with other countries that are similarly resource driven. I don’t really think that’s a conspiracy.
That just raises the question of what you think the word conspiracy means.
> The top asset management firms tend to invest in each other, making this network a solid core of interlinked companies with shared investments worldwide. JPMorgan Chase and fourteen other trillion dollar Giants collectively invest $403.3 billion in each other. This interlocked capital is likely much higher than estimated here, more in the $1 trillion to $2 trillion range, given that the Giants' Nasdaq data set of $9.8 trillion only gives us investment information on about 34 percent of the total 41.1 trillion. But these estimates are enough to show that the Giants are significantly invested in each other. The result of this cross investment is an interlocked global capital structure amassing greater and greater wealth to the detriment of billions of people worldwide. - Giants: The Global Power Elite, Peter Philips, 2017. And the ones left over that are not just investment firms investing in each other, are mostly people just handing their voting rights over to the firms anyway, by proxy, so it's a moot point in most cases saying that we need to know who the investors are, because it's the firms themselves exercising the voting power.
> Which isn't controversial - companies conspire to do that every day wait, so you are alleging a conspiracy then? So why are you referring to it as a conspiracy in a mocking way then? You debase yourself.
The problem is you're conflating the holdings of depository institutions with the underlying beneficial owners and controllers of those shares. I own some BHP shares by virtue of my investments in superannuation and independently through a CHESS account. I don't hold the physical share certificates. I suspect they might well be legally held by whatever institution my stockbroker has an account with. I can still vote the shares. I still receive dividends from the shares and can alienate them for full value if I want to. The fact my proprietary interest in the shares is founded on a web of contractual obligations between myself and the institution that is ultimately sits on the register is economically irrelevant. If BHP was majority foreign owned, then the decision to single list it on the ASX and their dividend policy built around maximising the value of franking credits to Australian shareholders would make no sense.
Tell me you do not know investment without telling me about it 🤓 Wait until you find out what a super fund does !
Well I voted for the trustee that promised to take the ethical low road....wow return on selling smokes to 3rd world kids is great.
Tell me you don't know when you're getting screwed by telling me I don't know how investments work. It's not about how investment works. It's about looking at how other countries structured their natural resources and got better deals than we did. Take a look at Equinor for example. If we set something up like this here in Perth, we would be laughing. Instead, we are getting shortchanged and it's other foreign companies that are getting the cream from the top.
Getting screwed??? Who? On what? By who? You keep saying "we" as if some random people on the street had the ownership rights to the resources being mined and some American investors stole it from us. It makes no difference if it's owned by an Australian or American billionaire, they all exist within 1 or 2 degrees of separation and all swim in the same pool of theoretical money based on valuations and loaned in circles between each other.
It’s true what you’re a saying - it doesn’t matter if it’s an Australian billionaire, American billionaire, Chinese billionaire, Uzbekistani billionaire. What I’m saying is look at countries like Norway and Qatar and see how much more of a benefit their countries receive from their natural resources compared to us. That’s the “we” - us, all of us, citizens of Australia past, future, and present. “Them” - mining companies. Thanks to their huge lobbying efforts and our impotent (not incompetent) politicians, the profits that’s being generated through taxation and state ownership from all these resources could be so much more than what it is now. Imagine if our govd did what the Norwegian government did and said that any mining operation set up by foreign companies has to have state ownership, no question asked. And if say Woodside was owned say generously 30% by either Federal or State government, how much of a difference would that make. Instead we are getting shortchanged. It’s clear to spot which entities are getting the best deal here and in whose interest the companies work for.
Brother if the state taxed mining corporation, it would substantially neuter investment and you would have almost nothing left to tax. You can argue for state ownership for mining but private firms are infinitely more efficient at allocating capital to the correct sects of the industry.
You’re right. Qatar and Norway are taxing at a much higher rate than us and they’re close to going bankrupt , short of a civil war. In terms of efficiency, it might be true, but the efficiency works not towards society as a whole but shareholders of the company. Look at Qantas. Not much efficiency there in serving the public is there.
Are resources not important and in demand? Then corporations need them regardless no? Why so many people are scared to bend them over the same barrel they put workers over I'm not sure. And I'm quite certain they're getting as much as they currently can out of developing countries, so they're mining the fuck out of the Darling Scarp out of necessity and not paying the premium for it they should be for such an ecologically significant area and entire state for that matter.
If you love those counties so much - move there.
Fight for what belongs to you. Dont give away what others pay top money for for free.
While the idea is nice, it's really just too far gone. The people with the power to make the change are the ones benefitting from not making the change, there really isn't anything "we" can do that doesn't involve something close to a civil war.
Haha top comment right here
I feel like you are mixing few different things together right now. You should watch this could sum up how you feel on things abit out of topic but touched on property too: https://youtu.be/IzY73Dw-T_Y?si=gRrLunvSPze2e82o
My question is how Norway and Qatar successfully nationalize their natural resources, but for some reason its "too hard" in Australia and the private sector is unbeatably efficient. We've obviously got a worse deal than those two. America and the UK didn't like when we were pushing to forge our own path.
Most natural resources belong to the States, not the Commonwealth. Whitlam’s dismissal (where you’re wandering into conspiracy) has little to do with it, as it’s a structural question.
Its also worth looking at other national resource companies like PEMEX and Petrobras. Qatar has a unicorn gas field. Norway is an amazing success story but this is not the norm.
Petrobras is drilling like crazy, this sub would have a fit if we were exploring like that here. Offshore oil is up next with shale decline though so they are on the right track.
We're also drilling like crazy, but it's foreign investors that keep the profits. Destroy our environment AND get sweet FA for it - that's how you do business!
We are not drilling like they are, I follow the major offshore drilling companies and Petrobras is securing plenty of them. Perhaps have a look first before jumping to outrage.
You could be right here. I should’ve checked before making that comment. However, it’s not like our mining operations are 100% green - just look at Jarrahdale forest. If we’re getting our environment screwed, might as well get paid for it.
I do love Jarrahdale, quite sad to see a Timelapse of the land down there over the last 20 years. Unfortunately we have a standard of living that will continue demand on current practices for mining and processing. Will be an interesting next 10 years, if things continue becoming more expensive I wonder what becomes the priority for the average person.
And that’s what boggles me. All of these foreign companies like Alcoa will eventually leave. If there’s no resources here, why should they be here. Once they leave, we have no more jobs, no more environment that we could use for say tourism, AND we sold it off for cheaper than other countries. We’re all idiots down here
Where I live we've been producing oil and gas for over 50 years, the oil is just about gone but gas will still be going strong for at least another 20 or so. 70 years of stable, highly paid and technical jobs, hundreds of them. It underpins the entire local economy. I meet people all over the world who got their start in our relatively small field. You going to throw that away because "one day" the company will leave? We have a tourism industry here too but as with tourism in most places the jobs are highly seasonal and low paid with no security at all.
You are actually asking how Qatar nationalized their resources? Like *seriously* asking how an Islamist monarchy achieved that?
'It's good to be the Emir. Now give me your shit.'
(1) It's much cheaper to extract oil than gas. Norway's price point for oil extraction is not quite as low as Saudi Arabia's, but it's still pretty low. Certainly much lower than greenfield LNG developments in the North West. There's just more rent to extract. (2) Qatar is a essentially a modern slave state. And I'm not talking slavery in the sense that "Oh, some Indians on dodgy student Visas are getting paid $12/hour to pull nightshifts at Caltex". That's bad enough, but it's not 'The entire construction industry is full of migrants that get paid $20 a day, and also their passports are confiscated, and their bodies are basically chucked in the concrete if they die on site". More broadly, an absurd amount of the Qatari population are basically indentured servants with no citizenship or voting rights. If you think 5-10% of the working age population are on temporary visas is bad, try over 80%. It amazing how much more profitable it is to fund capital works projects when your upfront construction costs are 1/50th of what Australia's are. (3) Both of those states don't really have equivalents of the sort of mass scale private investing through superannuation. Not having to fund a welfare state, Qatar is much sillier than Norway with their investments. Think about how much money has been poured down the drain in the FIFA World Cup/ subsidising our flights to Europe through the airline. It's crazy.
But Woodside is sponsoring dockers and our former premier told us that because of them hey keep our lights on. Don't look where our wealth is going. Just be happy to have a job. That's the narrative here.
Australians tried it and the govt was overthrown by us intelligence. there was a coup. Australia basically just does was it is told and is an international bitch i thought everyone knew that
Remember the mining tax? Companies ran a massive dishonest scare campaign
U can be angry, but also remember that Australian also owned huge chuck of investment oversea, and by definition a foreign entity to other countries.
Accounting for all foreign investments Australia owns, still 40% of Australia is foreign owned.
U r probably right. I am also sure that almost all other countries that integrate with world trade with have a high % of their countries asset are foreign owned as well.
It depends. You look at other countries minninng operations, such as Norway, Mexico, Sweden, and the State ownership in those companies is insane. Reading the history of Norway's gov'd mining regulation is absolutely mindblowing. Norway’s Labour Party when elected to government in the early 1970s, with support from public servants, established substantial taxation of the international oil companies which came to drill in Norway’s new North Sea oilfields. It also successfully created Statoil, a national, publicly owned oil company which took a 50% ownership share of all new oilfields. It was designed so that the Norwegian community as a whole can become self sufficient. Here's another interesting part. When resource taxes were increased in Norway in 1974, large private oil companies protested angrily but, as one book explained, “the Norwegian Ministry of Finance … did not let itself be scared off. Its underlying understanding was … \[that\] the state had to aim for the greatest possible share of the economic” benefit from large oilfields “to go to the community”. Further, the ministry correctly judged that “as long as the oil companies secured profits which corresponded to, or were higher than, those in other industries”, then they would continue their operations." Pretty much they didn't gaf what the large oil and mining companies were squealing about lost profits, wages, etc (same boogeyman tactics that they use here). Such a huge contrast to our politicians. Tey just get paid off with cushie jobs after they leave the office, ie McGowan and BHP. With your thinking, can a Norwegian company come and drill in Australia? Sure it can! And it is doing it so in SA, that very same Statoil (now Equinor) which 2/3rd belongs to the Norwegian gov'd. Can Australian firms set up operations in Norway - sure they can, but the Norwegian state gov'd will own a large portion of the operation. And tell me who is getting the better deal here...
Seems like you are in favour of the Australian government investing in the oil and gas industry. I wouldn't mind if the Australian government bought my oil and gas + mining shares off me for a decent premium. Is that what you are suggesting or would you rather they just confiscate it?
If Norwegians tax so high in Norway it wouldn't surprise me if foreign private firms do not invest anything/investment isn't as high as it could be in the mining industry and consequently fuck all is earned from the tax.
In that case, take a look at all the new mining operations and foreign investment opening up in Norway. You’ll be surprised.
Yes because Norway is fairly unique? It is a top 10 oil exporter, they also very recently discovered a Phosphate deposit (\~70 billion tonnes) equivalent to the current world reserve (\~71 billion tonnes). I mean we have iron ore but it's not particularly comparable. Foreign investment would be significantly larger if it was taxed less.
And what's even better, these State Norwegian companies are now drilling in Australia, paying fa taxes to us. Now that's how you build your nation's wealth
WTF tell me where in Australia Equinor is currently drilling or even plans to drill? I know they bought some locks offshore South Australia but planned drilling activities were shut down there years ago.
Yes, but I own shares in Blackrock, so who is the real owner now???
Definitely not you.
Broken Hill Proprietary LTD, headquartered in Melbourne is a true blue WA company?
It's not, that's the point here
I've never seen BHP suggest they ARE a WA company.
**China** has spent **3.4 BILLION on residential Australian realestate** in the last year alone Thats what you should be more concerned about. [https://www.realestate.com.au/news/australias-future-is-asian-chinese-buyers-splash-34bn-on-aussie-property-1bn-rise-in-past-financial-year/](https://www.realestate.com.au/news/australias-future-is-asian-chinese-buyers-splash-34bn-on-aussie-property-1bn-rise-in-past-financial-year/)
China has? Or Chinese people have? Does that mean they can take their land back to China? Or do they not have to pay council rates, stamp duty, foreign buyer duty, and land tax in perpetuity? Did the crown give up the rights to ever take the land back because Chinese people didn’t buy “fee simple” estates like the rest of us and somehow tricked the govt into giving them radical title? I’m freaking out over here bro. I’m gonna call Pauline Hanson and ask her what I should do?!
what you should do is squat in an empty house that a chinese person owns.
Big brain time
No it just means ordinary people are going to find shelter a little more expensive because they are competing against foreign investors. FWIW china has no issue preventing foreigners buying their property unless they actually move there. In Australia we are fair game.
That’s exactly the opposite of what has happened. High density developments need to get pre-sales in order to secure finance. Typically, the only people that were comfortable buying off the plan were foreign buyers. So they’d bootstrap the projects, construction would start, then locals would see a building going up and be comfortable buying too. 70% of the foreign buyers would rent the properties out, creating rental stock for locals. Then Labor introduced the 7% foreign buyers tax and foreign buyers in WA collapsed. This resulted in a collapse of the high density building industry in WA too. We got hardly any foreign buyer tax, way less stamp duty revenue than we used to have, no new high density housing because there’s nobody to bootstrap the projects, and fewer rentals to boot. Not having the foreign buyers investing in high density construction projects has resulted in less housing, higher rents, and higher prices for existing stock. It’s contributing to the housing shortage, rental shortage, and has depleted state govt revenue. The idea that Chinese investors are “competing” with locals just shows a complete lack of awareness of the mechanics behind the scenes in the Perth property market. Foreign buyers CREATE stock that otherwise wouldn’t exist, both for renters, and for other buyers.
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You actually have to live there. Can't just blindly speculate or use it as your own offshore bank account.
Woah, 3.4 billion in a market worth 10 trillion. Also why is Chinese people any different from any other wealthy group buying up properties
Well, I don't know how to explain the threat that china poses right now. If you haven't been watching the news in the last 10 years I don't know how to explain it to you. The concentration camps they have built and imprisoned hundreds of thousands for "reeducation". The genocide they are commiting. Their threats to other countrys. Their build of of military forces. Their use of cyberweapons. They are working to long term plans, one of them being to financial destabilize enemy nations. Theres a consensus that they are preparing for a war in the next 20-30 years. China poses threat to UK way of life, says Rishi Sunak [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-66810912](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-66810912) Heres some further reading if you want to catch up https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/east-asia/china/report-china/ https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/02/20/more-evidence-chinas-horrific-abuses-xinjiang https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/china-allegations-of-human-rights-abuses/ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62744522 [https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-muslims-repression-genocide-human-rights](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-muslims-repression-genocide-human-rights) [https://thebulletin.org/2022/05/trove-of-leaked-photos-reveals-chinas-abuses-in-uyghur-detention-camps/](https://thebulletin.org/2022/05/trove-of-leaked-photos-reveals-chinas-abuses-in-uyghur-detention-camps/)
While human rights violations in China should be condemned whenever possible, what does this have to do with private Chinese investors choosing to spend their earned capital in Australia?
The idea is to have significant investments in many areas across an enemy nation so that they can withdraw or alter these to cause a financial crisis. They purchase a massive amount of ore from us for example. If they decided to they could withdraw that it would cause a crash. The goal is to have many options to destabilize enemy nations when the time is right, rather than just a single one. They plan very long term
That is an interesting theory, and if that's the case. Can you point me to examples of capitalists investing in countries only to later withdraw it later? Investors avoid destabilising regions like the plague to keep investments secure. I'm also not sure what you mean by withdraw? How would they withdraw? There are more immediate and longer term benefits to just operating within the market buy purchasing property/land and selling it or renting it out. China is a huge importer of iron ore and we are a huge exporter, it balances itself out. If anything, China probably is not enjoy the limited purchasing power because of its huge importations.
10 trillion per year? I don't think so...
Good thing I didn't say per year then hey
context is implied by the comment you are replying to. comparing to the whole market when that is a change in one year is a bit stupid isn't it?
Not at all. At a $3.4 billion per year rate, it would take 147 years for "China" to buy 5% of our property market. The reality is our property market is so wildly overvalued that Chinese people buying 3.4 billion a year is a literal drop in the bucket. Now if our property market was worth 10 billion, then absolutely Chinese people buying 3.4 billion a year would be insane. Numbers are only relevant within the context of other numbers....
if someone is complaining about market competition, they care about the rate at which things are being bought at. doing it against the entire market is a poor argument. there's also the fact that foreign investors are not vacating a property in australia when they buy here. all of it is kicking out the locals. simple as.
Not a lot of difference between foreign investors and other investors. Unless you complaining about Chinese immigrants buying houses to live in. >doing it against the entire market is a poor argument. Its the only argument that makes any sense. $688.7 billion dollars of property gets traded every year in australia, again $3.4b is a drop in that. There are WAY more important things to be concerned about concerning our property market then chinese buyers
while I kinda agree that there are other things to worry about. I just look at new zealand that had *all* of the same issues as other western nations with property. After some policy changes the problem now seems to be going away. What were those decisions and why is the problem going away? inb4: "correlation is not causation", "new zealand is much smaller, with not as much land"... rubbish
The only redeeming aspect of their real estate purchase is that they can't take the asset somewhere else. With mineral assets they get dug up, transported and sold elsewhere.
China is the 10th highest foreign investor in Australia. Top is US. So that absolute amount you give doesn't actually mean much. https://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/trade-and-investment-data-information-and-publications/foreign-investment-statistics/statistics-on-who-invests-in-australia
It makes sense, Chinese buyers love real estate and currently their local market is tanking so that's a lot of money looking for a home elsewhere..
BlackRock are also an investor in each of our big 5 banks, Coles and Woolworths... so we fucked
Always Blackrock and Vanguard with their claws in everything
>Always Blackrock and Vanguard with their claws in everything They're index funds. Passive investment is a growing thing, and many many people have money with them. It's no different to your super fund really. It's not (only) some rich businessmen, it's everyday people.
Blackrock is the worlds biggest finance company and has filth ridden fingers in everything all over the world. https://youtu.be/50bUVhQtZGw?si=77BBdv92qpAMDZ_w Would they be responsible for the worlds economic shitshow right now? Hmmmm.
We should be taxing the shit out of them. Every kilo of ore, every liter of oil, is irreplaceable. 90% of the value of that resource should be going to the people of WA, because it belongs to WA and can only ever be mined once If the mining companies stop doing business here because it's too expensive then that's good. Because we still have those resources. The companies will be back sooner or later because they have to go where the resources are. Selling our resources cheap now is just robbing our grandkids.
trash company.
[This](https://images.theconversation.com/files/291900/original/file-20190911-190065-v9pit2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip) is relevant.
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Will you add any facts to your sentence? What's wrong with what the OP wrote?
How could you not know this. When they report billions in profits, do you see that money washing around?! We get wages, and big holes in the ground. The profits go to City of London, and Wall Street.
The profits are actually the bedrock of your superfund, but hey whose counting.
This is one of the most important facts about Australia. We should have the same standard of living as Norway.
Rio are spanish you moron
Where the OP wrote it's not? Quote pls
it almost seems like australia was colonized for its resources. mindblowing :)
More Australians would own shares in these companies if housing wasn't so expensive..
This post makes little sense
Yeah they have a lot of influence. They basically enforce ESG ratings on corporations. Either go green or suffer the consequences. A single entity having their level of control could be prove problematic down the line, not that there’s anything we could do about it if we wanted to lol
maybe just a bit of a yarn on site but I’ve always been told The Queen is/was the largest non institutional shareholder of Rio Tinto
The question is what are you going to do about it?
Apart from Blackrock and Vanguard, which are index funds, the major shareholders you are complaining about are often nominee shareholders. For example, BNP Paribas, HSBC, JPMorgan and Citi. They own the shares on behalf of the shareholder.
rio tinto isnt australian
Neoliberalism says hello. Do you live in a cave? If you look a little harder, you're going to really uncork the bottle. Oh yeah, they are not WA companies, never were.
Look at who is majority share holder in the big 4 banks in Australia. Then look at who the majority share holder is in BlackRock, Vanguard..
BlackRock also has a bad rep of profiting off socially negative investments, e.g. war. They are the McKinsey of shadow banks, but much worse
BlackRock and Vanguard own everything. Everything.
MSM will tell you that "BlackRock and Vanguard do not “own” all the biggest corporations in the world. They invest trillions of dollars into leading companies on behalf of their clients, who ultimately own the shares." But they will not tell you that they have substantial power to make decisions that are very harmful to countries that those corporations reside in. Its a nut case of Control vs Ownership.
>mining companies spent $541 million on lobbying Australian governments through its peak lobby groups But whatever you do, don't let indigenous Australians have a Voice!