Fireside chat
Fireside chat Ticky Fullerton and Sir Rod Eddington AO Key points: • • •
Global sentiment towards open trade is challenging the liberal trading regime in ways never seen before. Organisations need to take a long-term view of hard and soft infrastructure when considering investments. Context and understanding are crucial for the media to discuss issues in the infrastructure sector. What worries me is that we currently live in a world where
Panellists: ► Sir Rod Eddington AO, Chairman, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia ► Ticky Fullerton, Australian business journalist
the premise on which my working life was based – things like open markets, and the free flow of goods and services – is being challenged in a way that it’s never been challenged before. It’s most visible in the US–China trade issues. Many years ago, a French economist said that if goods
Ticky Fullerton (TF): Sir Rod, you are across infrastructure and so many different sectors of the economy. I want to talk about Australia as an investment compared to elsewhere in the world. Regarding all of the current tensions in the world, what really worries you? Sir Rod Eddington AO (RE): For most of my business life, I have believed that free trade and an open trading environment lifts benefits the most. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t some losers in that environment, and you need to think carefully about it. Most of my business life was in Asia, and I saw what liberal trading regimes did in many Asian countries. It has lifted about 500 million people from the lower class into the middle class.
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and services don’t flow across borders, soldiers will – and that’s broadly right. The thing about most of my time in Asia was the economic success, which has been the story of the last 50 years. It started with Japan, followed by Korea and China, and it’s been based on peace in the region. The Korean War finished in 1953; the Vietnam War was clearly a conflict of consequence, but it didn’t have an impact on trade. Peace has led to trade and free trade has led to peace, and it’s being challenged now. TF: The starting point for the tensions between China and the United States was a spat over technology intellectual property (IP). Donald Trump might argue that this is not a war
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