More questions are being asked about the Federal Government's relationship with Singapore following its decision to award the Singapore Government owned SingTel Optus over $1 billion to duplicate Telstra's shareholder financed infrastructure.
Last week in The Australian, John Durie posed the question, "Imagine the outcry if Singapore Airlines was given a couple of the new big jumbo planes and $1 billion to compete with Qantas on the Pacific route."
Now Crikey (www.crikey.com.au) founder and The Age columnist, Stephen Mayne, has entered the debate. In an Age column published yesterday, Mayne examines Singapore's growing influence in Australia and asks whether Australians should be worried.
"Planes, child-care centres, shopping centres, department stores, satellites, hotels, power lines, gas pipelines and mobile phones: the Singapore Government owns all that and more in Australia yet this is barely mentioned in public debate.
Does anybody else out there feel a little uneasy about this phenomenon, especially given the secretive, autocratic and undemocratic tendencies of the Singapore Government?"
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