Costello's conundrum Michael Gordon reports. Answer this simple question and all the others about Australia and its place in the globalised world should slip logically, neatly, inexorably into place.
Problem is, there is no easy answer.
Finally, it is why the Liberal Party, the voice of free enterprise, is split down the middle on whether Treasurer Peter Costello should block the takeover as contrary to the national interest, or do nothing and allow it to go through. There is no definition of national interest to assist Costello in the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act, and the Treasurer knows that whichever way he goes in the next week, it will send a powerful signal to the world on Australia's attitude to foreign investment and globalisation, with an impact, for better or worse, on the value of the struggling Australian dollar. The most extraordinary aspect of the debate is that it has failed to penetrate the national consciousness, having been confined largely to the business and opinion pages of the nation's broadsheet and financial press. Here lies a possible contradiction. Despite fears that approval of the takeover would incite even more resentment from a hostile electorate, entrenching fears of Australia becoming a branch-office economy, an exit poll of voters in the recent Ryan byelection suggested that foreign investment in general, and Shell's hostile takeover of Woodside Petroleum in particular, had failed to register.