{"id":1886,"date":"2011-10-04T10:27:58","date_gmt":"2011-10-04T00:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/?p=1886"},"modified":"2015-02-23T16:01:02","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T06:01:02","slug":"foreign-ownership-of-australian-land-and-resources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/foreign-ownership-of-australian-land-and-resources\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign ownership of Australian land and water"},"content":{"rendered":"

There has been quite a bit written about recently published figures by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)<\/a>\u00a0showing\u00a0the percentage of overseas ownership of Australian land.\u00a0 Many writers have conveniently interpreted the figures to mean Australians are a paranoid, parochial lot – unreasonably concerned with mythically increasing\u00a0overseas ownership.<\/p>\n

There is virtually no objective\u00a0analysis and in-depth discussion\u00a0of the figures in our mainstream media.\u00a0 Nor discussion of the fact that the figures appear to be approximations, at best.\u00a0 Rural organisations have pointed out\u00a0the figures\u00a0are not detailed enough to be of any real use and\u00a0there is no regular recording of property owner citizenship details, so foreign ownership trends cannot be accurately identified.\u00a0 And that there is\u00a0no\u00a0analysis of the size of the agricultural businesses concerned, so it is utterly pointless and meaningless for the ABS to state:\u00a0 ‘99% of Australian businesses are entirely owned by Australians’.\u00a0 Oh yes, and just how many tiny hobby farm-type properties were lumped in with the multi-million dollar company-owned businesses?<\/p>\n

And how has ownership been calculated when the land owner is a company, with both overseas and Australian shareholders?\u00a0 This issue applies to some of Australia’s largest pastoral companies – for example, the AACo and Terra Firma.\u00a0 It appears about as much accuracy as we get is a statement saying a certain percentage have some degree of foreign ownership.\u00a0 It could be 10% foreign owned\/90% Australian owned, or vice versa.<\/p>\n

Regarding\u00a0objective analysis of the figures.\u00a0 I am astonished that a number of journalists and others believe these figures are\u00a0no reason for concern.<\/p>\n

The major factor that seems to be overlooked by all and sundry\u00a0is a) we have very little good quality agricultural land, and b) if someone has, for example, a 10% stake in something that is not homogeneous throughout, it is imperative to analyse whether that 10% is of the very best quality, the worst quality, or a mixture.\u00a0 Just as is the case with urban residential land purchased by overseas owners, I suspect analysis would show\u00a0the majority (if not all) overseas owners have bought up\u00a0slices of our very best quality (most valuable, scarcest etc) land.\u00a0 In other words, for example, foreign ownership may\u00a0only be 10% of all our agricultural land, but it could well be 80% of the top 10% quality land.<\/p>\n

In the case of agricultural land\u00a0ownership, I suspect a\u00a0thorough analysis would reveal that it’s a case of quality being more significant than overall quantity.\u00a0\u00a0Classic examples of ‘cherrypicking’ the very best –\u00a0the ownership by Argentinean John Kahlbetzer’s Twynham Pastoral Co, of numerous\u00a0blue-ribbon historic\u00a0wool\/cropping properties throughout the Murray-Darling river system in New South Wales.\u00a0 And 7th Day Adventist ownership of\u00a0the exceedingly valuable Kooba Station, at Darlington Point (south of Griffith, NSW).\u00a0\u00a0 In land area terms, a relative small percentage.\u00a0 But if New South Wales farmland was graded into categories according to the levels of productivity (quality), it would show that a disturbingly significant percentage of the very best agricultural land available in NSW, is owned by people who are not Australian citizens.<\/p>\n

For this reason, this ABS survey is virtually useless, and one is left with the impression that those responsible for running the survey wouldn’t know an arid 6″ variable rainfall plot flat out running 1 flea per hectare even in a good year, from in incredibly productive and intensely farmed river flat on the outskirts of Sydney’s southern suburbs.\u00a0 Because they’ve lumped the two in together.<\/p>\n

The fact that this appears not to have been addressed by anyone writing on the subject, smacks of either lazy journalism or simply a lack of understanding of Australian agriculture – or both.<\/p>\n

Two of the basic figures provided in the ABS survey are of utmost concern.\u00a0 One is the fact that 91% of Australian agricultural water entitlements are 100% Australian owned.\u00a0 This means that 9% of our agricultural water entitlements are owned\/part owned\u00a0by people who do not live here.\u00a0 That’s almost 1 gigalitre out of every 10, doesn’t belong completely to Australian citizens.\u00a0 In a continent that is often described as the driest on the planet, with undeniably the most unreliable rainfall (to the great detriment of our agricultural productivity and rural living standards), that figure should be of great concern.\u00a0 I don’t believe\u00a0anyone other than Australian citizens should own Australian water rights.\u00a0 We take our food and water security for granted at our peril.<\/p>\n

The second issue of major concern is\u00a0the level of overseas ownership in the Northern Territory, which is given as 24% of NT agricultural land as having ‘some level’ of overseas ownership.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ABS, in their infinite wisdom, have lumped together ‘sheep beef cattle and grain farming’ into the one category.\u00a0 It is this category that has the highest level of foreign ownership.\u00a0 Given that our cattle stations are the largest in the world, generally can run only cattle (no grain cropping, ever, and no sheep these days), and that most Territory agricultural land – where there is the highest level of overseas ownership – is used for running beef cattle; and there are plenty of regions that successfully run sheep but could never grow grain crops, creating a category that combines cattle, sheep and grain growing, for the whole of Australia, \u00a0is next to useless for anything much.<\/p>\n

About the ownership of Australian agricultural water entitlements, the ABS report\u00a0says:\u00a0“The Northern Territory reported no agricultural water entitlements for agricultural purposes being owned by businesses with any level of foreign ownership. ” Yet the ‘Beef cattle sheep and grain growing’ category had the highest level of Australian ownership.<\/p>\n

The fact that a $231 million and above purchase is the point at which the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) purchase approval is required, is a joke.\u00a0 Are we stupid, or what?\u00a0 As it stands today, buyers from other countries could at least in theory, buy up a whole state, piece by piece, and still not come under any scrutiny (let alone control) by government authorities.<\/p>\n

Best of all, it appears the ABS report was based on a survey filled in by property managers or owners:<\/p>\n

“The Australian Land and Water Ownership Survey (ALWOS) was a large survey, with a sample of 11,000 agricultural businesses which represented the Australian farming industry. The businesses reporting they were not fully Australian owned may have been either partially or entirely foreign owned and, as such the survey provides information about business, land and water entitlements by the extent of their foreign ownership.”<\/p>\n

Well it must be completely accurate then, if the\u00a0property owners\/managers were the ones who provided the ownership details!\u00a0 Surely\u00a0we need a long term,\u00a0Federal\u00a0Government-run property ownership register?\u00a0 So that the ABS doesn’t have to rely on self-filled out surveys filled out by people who may have a vested interest in answering in a particular way?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been quite a bit written about recently published figures by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)\u00a0showing\u00a0the percentage of overseas ownership of Australian land.\u00a0 Many writers have conveniently interpreted the figures to mean Australians are a paranoid, parochial lot – unreasonably concerned with mythically increasing\u00a0overseas ownership. There is virtually no objective\u00a0analysis and in-depth discussion\u00a0of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,6,10,165],"tags":[100,158,161,166,178,220],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1886"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4222,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions\/4222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}