Touting for foreign investment is really no different than sitting in the street with a begging bowl and a sign saying: wife and six kids to support".
It is only a question of scale.
Why do we need foreign investment when we have everything we need here in Australia?
We have all the commodities we need to manufacture anything. We have the labour. We should have the know how with our system of universities that are actually selling education to overseas students. We have the land to produce plenty of food for our own population.
We could process our own wool into finished products.
Oh I forgot, we do not have cheap labour willing to work for a pittance to survive and give huge profits to multi nationals.
Oh well back to the begging bowls.

Tell me.
IF America was buying up land would you complain as loudly.
Did you here the 1980s joke America wished to buy Queensland? appeares the Japanese did not want to sell.
How do we break the news to AUSTRALIAN FARMERS they must not sell their land unless to an Aussie.
We all did not see an English man owning our once biggest cattle station did we, heard the song, from little things big things grow.
We can sell our minerals to them from over there, take the cash, but keep them away from our land.
No xenophobes here just looks and smells like them.
I have trouble sleeping, keep dreaming about the biggest chain saw I ever saw,cutting parts of our country and towing it to China.

Yes I would certainly complain about the US buying up land.
yes we can sell our minerals to them from over there, take the cash, why not? we do not have to prostitute ourselves to make a living.
Nothing wrong with xenophobia .
Yes there is a way out of globalisation. It will disintegrate with peak oil and the really big GFC that is coming. get used to it. You can manage without all the Chinese junk, we are used to. It would really do us a lot of good when you see all the kids, with their heads stuck in their I phones or whatever. They would be a lot better talking directly to each other.
As for foreign investments, the sooner the banks self destruct the better, they are nothing more than casinos for the rich anyway.
One good government bank to lend money to provide tempory finance to a well vetted recipient, is all that is needed.

Such an old, old song.

I'm pretty sure the same complaints were made in eleventh century England - all those nasty Normans, bleeding the country dry.

Sanity is however required at some point.

For those who are unhappy with overseas investment In Australia, have you actually considered what you would like to do about it? We already have the FIRB reviewing every aspect of every deal to ensure Australia is not dudded - and they use a recognized benchmark, the OECD Guidelines, to maintain an appropriately level playing field.

http://www.ausncp.gov.au/content/content.aspx?doc=home.htm

If you would like to curtail inward investment, would you similarly require e.g. BHP Billiton to rid itself of their overseas investments? Would you extend this to e.g. AMP, and prohibit their investing your super funds in lucrative overseas stocks, shares and bonds?

At a more practical level, could you perhaps contemplate the logistics involved in, say, a foreign-owned agricultural company (e.g. The Australian Wheat Board, AWB) exporting food overseas, if there existed a greater need for it in Australia?

Sleep safe in your beds, guys. The only thing underneath it is your potty.