Day: April 8, 2009

Australian political identity survey – last chance

~ Andrew Norton ~ 1 Comment

I’ve had many more responses to my survey on Australian political identity than I was anticipating – 1,155 as of a few minutes ago. But the more the better, so if you have not yet taken it and you feel that a political label such as classical liberal, libertarian, conservative, social democrat or green describes you, please help what I think is the first-ever Australian research into this topic and do the survey here.

I’m going to start analysing the results on Good Friday, so you need to complete the survey by 8am Friday 10th April for your answers to count.

My original post and some discussion of the survey in comments can be found here.

Capital xenophobes

~ Andrew Norton ~ 30 Comments

Two polls this week confirm that Australians take a largely negative view of foreign direct investment. On Monday, an Essential Media poll reported that only 25% of respondents agreed with the proposition that Chinese investment in mining companies should be welcomed because it helps our economy and provides jobs. Yesterday’s Newspoll, as reported in The Australian, found a small majority against any foreign company being allowed to acquire shares in Australian mineral companies.

As Tom Switzer’s recent paper on attitudes to foreign investment showed, there is nothing new in these attitudes. There also seems to be a particularly xenophobic flavour to some opposition. The Lowy Institute found stronger opposition to investment from Asian countries than from the UK or US.

While there are some political concerns in this as well as ethnic – state-owned companies raise slightly different issues to privately owned companies, particularly when the state involved is not democratic – ethnic or cultural factors do seem to influence attitudes. Japanese investment is strongly opposed along with that from undemocratic countries such as China.
Continue reading “Capital xenophobes” →