Are there any grains in the northern food bowl?

This is colonial cringe par excellence. Redolent of the Japanese vertically integrated corporate structures of the 1980s in Australia (Mitsui, Mitsubishi, etc.) – everything diverted through their trading arms, with massive turnover, minimal reported profits and minimal taxes paid. Thus the omnipresent transfer pricing genie that the Australian Tax Office has never managed to successfully bottle.

As for the presumed meritorious FTAs, what are the pluses and minuses of the NZ-China FTA? Are not the failings of Australia's FTAs with the US and Thailand, for example, self-evident? The China FTA negotiations have been stalled to date under Labor for good reason.

The acid test is in the ultimate impact on the Current Account. Thanks to longstanding policy ineptitude, in 2011-12 the Services Trade deficit was $10 billion and the Income Payable deficit $42.6 billion, contributing to a $40.2 billion current account deficit. (Ireland's Current Account is comparable – the Celtic Tiger's glorious future was a hoax.) The Coalition's scenario of unmediated investment and trade, coupled with inevitable transfer pricing, will only enhance the sizeable deficits on Current Account.

Robb also supports the idea of large scale national champions Well, the first cab off the rank should be GrainCorp and its retention from the clutches of US giant Archer Daniels Midland. Robb should rally his Coalition colleagues to that cause.

There's already slim pickings in the food sector, with (according to ABARES) 'the ownership of about half of the nation's dairy, sugar and red meat sectors' in foreign hands – Kirin's takeover of the ex-cooperative Dairy Farmers is representative. ('Almost half Australia's food industry is owned by foreign investors', ausfoodnews, 19 January 2012)

Robb acknowledges that large firms, within oligopolistic sectors, need to be constrained by effective competition policy. But, short of unlikely divestment, the horse has bolted. The appalling tolerance of growth and abuse of market power by the ACCC under Graeme Samuel's chairmanship, 2003-11, has entrenched the problem.

Two significant sectors are retailing and banking. Corporate predation from both sectors has had dramatically adverse effects on the profitability and sustainability of agricultural production in Australia.

The retail duopoly has long exploited producers (and their corporate processors) in endless downward pressure on supply prices. At least this modus operandi has had exposure and the current ACCC chairman, Rod Sims, has it in his sights.

Not so with the banks. Regulatory and legal profession complicity, with little public exposure, has allowed the banks to default and foreclose on agricultural producers at will. Local SMEs, with comparable dependence on debt financing, likewise. The predation constitutes a national scandal. During a speech in July Robb himself recognised the general SME financing problem, but missed the attendant corruption in the industry ('Sector starved of finance: Robb', 26 July 2013).

Robb has also lamented the small number of recent agriculture graduates ('Time is ripe to cash in on Asian hunger, 19 April 2013). But rural children have witnessed firsthand the maltreatment and deprivations experienced by previous generations – why sign up for a comparable fate? Agricultural sector vibrancy requires sympathetic regulatory support – and it isn't there. A rural depopulation crisis is threatening and under the radar. Will this hoped-for food bonanza be generated on the backs of indentured labour (shades of the 19^th Century) and backpackers?

Strange – Robb himself has an agricultural background with considerable experience, as his Wikipedia entry highlights. It doesn't show in the naiveté of his utterances.

Robb's ill-tutored mindset is reflected in the fact that he has blamed Labor red tape for BHP's shelving of the disaster-waiting-to-happen Olympic Dam project ('A Coalition government can drive a new resources boom with competitiveness the key', 13 July 2013).

No doubt well-intentioned, Andrew Robb's 'vision' is all over the place. He needs better informed advisers and less political partisanry. More, the agricultural political apparatus (centred on a decadent National Party) in which Robb himself has been involved may need a root and branch reconstruction.