Its evident to the joe blow in the street what influence foreign buyers are having in the residential market. However, in the commerical market they have been quietly buying out office towers across major cities, even our favourite nightclubs we used to frequent as young teens. Look at the Metro in Melbourne - Chinese, Prince of Wales - Chinese, a company search and you will find one of the directors is a young fella but there are usually backers and they try to hide their identity.
For Resi sales, the FIRB is a joke, chinese buyers are ignoring the rules, no one has been fined and if they do the capital growth they have achieved has covered the fine in any case.
A huge concern is agribusiness, over the last 10 years, I have seen many agricultural and particularly dairy farms snapped up by the chinese, with no barriers, they just buy. These are large chunks of land, and they can just go in, with no restriction. Aussie agribusiness managers will not pay what they pay and the chinese for example have some theories about our cows and how they produce milk so around Gippsland for example, they snap up the dairy farms and make those cows work hard.
This will definately have a long term effect on Australia, particularly with the FTA, with all the apartment towers they build = they can bring chinese workers without visa restrictions, same as regional australia with the farms - how will this impact employment and economic growth in the long term?
Its a catch 22 as if was not for the chinese we probably would have been eating bread and water in a recession for the last 5 years but now, we will see the lasting effect of reliance on the chinese. They have done the same thing to the USA where, if the US was to go to war with China, they would have to borrow money off china to fund the conflict - yes a joke but true.
Cheers Ivan
