Did the Chiko Roll change Australian history?

As a matter of fact, yes. Efforts by the reviled US company IT&T to take over the company making the Roll in the early 1970s marked a turning point in Australian foreign investment policy. And this is just one of the strange twists and turns in the buying and selling of Australia.

Takeover is an authoritative, engaging account of the history of foreign investment in Australia – both the economics and the politics. It explores the strange coalitions of left and right that have sought to insulate us from the world economy and the equally unpredictable forces that have embraced it. It is a story of the fights between the protectionists and free traders of the nineteenth century, of our relationships with the US, Britain, Japan and China, and of the rise of Google and Uber.

Australia’s economy has been built on the back of foreign capital – alone among nations advanced or emerging, we have been able to run deficits with the world throughout our history precisely because foreigners are so keen to invest here. Yet there is an insecurity about the source of our prosperity coming from somewhere else. Where does the national interest lie, and what issues are at stake?