Australia has baffled foreign investment communities for quite a while, increasingly so after 1992 when compulsory superannuation helped grow what was 0.4 per cent of the world's adult population’s savings into the worlds single largest pot of wealth ever –more than US$3 trillion ($4.33 trillion) at last count.

This single pot is larger than China’s reserves of US Treasuries, larger than any sovereign wealth fund’s collective wealth (including Russia or Saudi Arabia’s) and even larger than any savings pool the US Federal Government or Reserve Banks have ever mustered.