Three cheers for the government for saving us from the Yellow Investment Peril. If it weren’t for Treasurer Scott Morrison, Sino saboteurs would have taken over the power grid and before you could say ‘Earth Hour’ we’d be sitting in the dark, looking for matches.

Well, not all of us. The Orientals were bidding for Ausgrid, which only supplies electricity to a mere one and half million customers in NSW.

So what’s the drama? Like Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only, Treasurer Scott Morrison is a man of mystery. He told journalists, ‘The only person who is security-cleared in this room to be able to hear the answer to that question is me.’

He couldn’t even divulge his secret to New South Wales Premier Mike Baird, despite dashing his hapless colleague’s hopes of paying off the state’s debts sometime this century.

Still, you only have to look at Ausgrid’s Annual Report to see the dagger pointing at the nation’s heart. Ausgrid supplies electricity between Waterfall in Sydney’s south – a town with six streets and a school with two rooms, Auburn in its western suburbs – the drive-by shooting capital of Australia, and north to the Upper Hunter township of Barry – population 232. Admittedly, the nation could probably survive a blackout in Waterfall and Barry and even in Auburn a power outage wouldn’t make that much difference to drive-by shootings.

But our Yellow frenemies – don’t mention the Free Trade Agreement – could leave cunning time bombs in our poles and wires, the electronic equivalent of bat droppings, and even after expropriating the company, we would be forced to rely on the comrades in the Electrical Trades Union to fix the grid. You see the dilemma.

Actually, it was the ETU that first alerted us to un-Australian behaviour at Ausgrid. They detected, in the lead-up to its sale, that it was trying to make a profit, which no doubt excited the interest of the panda-huggers who, as well as being good at maths, science and ping pong, like saving money.

It was just the sort of thing that worried our second prime minister, Alfred Deakin, when he wrote:

‘It is not the bad qualities, but the good qualities of these alien races that make them so dangerous to us. It is their inexhaustible energy, their power of applying themselves to new tasks, their endurance and low standard of living that make them such competitors.’

Smart alecks point out that Hong Kong bidder, Li Ka-Shing, already owns South Australia and Victoria Power Networks, as well as other strategic assets such as vineyards, but obviously no-one is going to notice if Ka-Shing turns off the power in Victoria. Certainly not a New South Welsh treasurer. Even Victorians would just assume it was Adam Bandt going about his business. And as for South Australia, if they build anymore wind turbines, no-one is going to be able to afford to turn on the power, let alone worry about it going off.

But Ausgrid provides power to the Sutherland shire in Morrison’s own electorate. Morrison is as inscrutable as the Orientals so who knows what he is thinking? Could it be that China’s cunning ruse is to pass Ka-Shing off as a running dog of capitalism when in fact he is a Manchurian candidate awaiting orders from the cadres in Beijing to flick the switch at Ausgrid?

Sure, this would instantly destroy the value of Ka-Shing’s $31 billion empire, as Western governments seized his assets all over the world, but it would be a small price to pay to deprive the citizens of the Sutherland Shire of the possibility of updating their Facebook pages.

China’s official news agency might rail all it likes that, ‘To suggest that China would try to kidnap (Australia’s) electricity network for ulterior motives is absurd and almost comical,’ but perhaps that’s exactly what they intend to do.

And more.

Maybe the treasurer blocked the sale of S Kidman and Co cattle empire to a Chinese-led consortium because of a sinister plan to kidnap the cows and hold them to ransom? Kelly O’Dwyer certainly did her bit to prevent the Chinese from kidnapping apartments. And did Wayne Swan block Chinalco’s attempt to buy eighteen per cent of Rio Tinto because the Chinese wanted to kidnap the coal?

Surely, it is only a matter of time before the Chinese bid to buy our banks so they can kidnap our money. But it is not just the Chinese that can’t be trusted running the banks. Nobody can. Except the vanguard of the proletariat.

Bill Shorten needs to show ambition. Why waste time with a Royal Commission into banks when the only way to save the nation is to nationalise them. Of course, there must be a show trial, with Comrade Wayne Swan in charge. Nobody should be able to make a profit without being publicly humiliated. But that should be done in parallel with getting decent citizens to run our financial institutions such as Pauline Hanson, Nick Xenophon and Alan Jones.

And the problem doesn’t stop there.   In February, Sam Dastyari spilled the beans on what is really going on at the big end of town.

‘I’m a product of the (Labor) machine like you would not believe,’ he said, although for many people that is not such a stretch. After all, this is a man who took over his first branches at 17. But eventually Dastyari discovered a cabal of companies that wielded so much power even he couldn’t stack their boards and he was prepared to name names.

‘Four banks, and we all know who they are – the Commonwealth Bank, NAB, Westpac, and ANZ – three big mining companies, in Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, and Fortescue Metals, you’ve got your two big grocery chains, and you’ve got your big telco, which is Telstra,’ he said.

It’s time, as Gough would have said. Dastyari must rush in where even Rex Connor and Ben Chifley feared to tread and nationalise the lot. Coles and Woolies included.

As Morrison said, ‘Australia’s national security is Australia’s business, and it will always be Australia’s business.’ Too true. Indeed, the way things are going, it may be our only business.

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