Page 2487 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 14 November 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
This was in keeping with the so-called "Silver Columbia" concept of Japanese retirement and tourist communities to relieve some of the population and spatial pressures in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.
This "retirement villages" dimension has since been played down by the Australian Government, but it is clear from the statements of people like Barry Jones that the polises are still planned to attract wealthy foreigners ...
The Government is concerned to avoid any suggestion that the new cities would be "Japanese enclave(s)" within Australia or a form of Japanese "cultural imperialism."
However, those spokesmen of the steering committee, such as Mr Will Bailey of the ANZ Bank, continually stress that other countries may join the scheme, in two years none have shown more than limited interest.
The original Japanese proposal was in fact knocked back by a number of countries fearing an intrusion upon their national integrity.
Beneath all the rhetoric the plan has two basic thrusts.
First, it is intended to relieve pressures on Japan's overcrowded tiny islands.
Second, it is intended to provide for extensions of Japanese predominance in scientific research. In other words the polises are to be off-shore service stations for excess Japanese capital.
The MITI's initial report, for example, showed explicit interest in Australia's strategically significant resources including zirconium, titanium and uranium.
Quite apart from the social problems endemic in having elite foreign enclaves in proximity to Australian cities, the grand hopes for technological spin-offs to Australia are ill-founded.
As Australian officials are half-aware, whenever Japan's MITI has contributed to joint research ventures, the Japanese have monopolised all rights to research results.
Victoria's brown coal liquefaction project provides a telling illustration of this tendency to take control of intellectual property.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .