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​Australasia is a region of Oceania comprising Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and neighboring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term was coined by Charles de Brosses in 1756. There are approximately 35 million inhabitants in the region, with the majority residing in Australia.
​The following headlines have been reprinted from The Penn Wealth Report and are protected under copyright. Members can access the full stories by selecting the respective issue link. Once logged in, you will have access to all subsequent articles.
No citizens voted, but Australians just woke up to a new leader. (24 Aug 2018) Australia has had five different leaders over the course of the past 11 years. Overnight, it got its sixth. The ruling Liberal Party, which is actually a center-right conservative party, ousted Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and put 50-year-old Scott Morrison in his place. Australia's political structure is different than America's: citizens vote for a ruling party which, in turn, selects a party member to lead the country. Party members were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with Turnbull's left-leaning views, and his decision to enforce Paris Climate Accord rules within the country was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was appearing more and more likely that the ruling Liberal Party would lose ground to the left-leaning Labor Party in next year's election. 76 seats are needed for a majority in the Australian House of Representatives. As of now, the Liberal Party holds precisely 76 seats.
The country's new prime minister had been manager of Tourism Australia, an organization created by Prime Minister John Howard during his 11-year tenure, and is considered a hard-liner—at least compared to Turnbull. He supports greater religious freedom within the country, was against the Paris Climate Accord, and took a tough stance against asylum-seekers as the country's immigration minister. Most recently, Morrison was Australia's treasurer, well respected for his business acumen and fiscal problem-solving abilities. In 2017, he successfully pushed through tax cut legislation for Australia's small- and mid-sized businesses, but lost in his bid to get tax cuts for the country's largest companies. Morrison must now prove that he can keep the infighting to a minimum within the Liberal Party, and lead a successful bid against Labor in 2019.
Australia's "Open Door" Policy Shuts for America's ADM
​(29 Nov 13) Recently-elected Prime Minister Tony Abbott pledged that his election win would mean that Australia was once again "open for business" with respect to foreign investment. Those words seem quite hollow following the treasurer's surprise decision to veto Archer Daniels Midland's (ADM) $2.7 billion bid to buy GrainCorp.
The bid for GrainCorp, a wheat-handling company, was a big play for an Australian agricultural interest, and the deal had already been approved by the country's competition regulator. It was opposed, however, by the farmer-backed National Party, which has its highest representation in the Liberal-National coalition in three decades. The next test will come with China's bid to buy electricity and gas networks in Sydney and Melbourne. While Singapore Power already owns these interests, there are concerns as to whether or not Chinese state-owned firms should have that much control over the nation's infrastructure.
The Chinese effort will be worth watching, as a rejection of ADM's bid and an approval of Beijing's bid may portend deeper issues with the current state of America's global trade strategy. It is also ironic that the American firm's deal was quashed shortly after the U.S. government allowed Chinese meat producer Shuanghui International to buy Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork producer. Images of the multitude of dead pigs floating down the Huangpu River comes to mind. Shuanghui has a terrible food safety record itself, which makes us want to avoid buying Smithfield food products in the future.
There is no doubt that the flagging Australian economy needs an international boost, but doing business with the Chinese while shunning ADM might be a miscalculation. That being said, China needs Australia's vast supply of natural resources, and over one quarter of the nation's exports end up in China. China and the United States are Australia's major importers, with each country sending about $45 billion worth of goods into the country each year.
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