AUSTRALIA needs to hang on to its food-producing land, writes LESLIE WHITE
The dirt-cheap sale of Great Southern Plantations estate to foreign interests should have both sides of politics hanging their heads in shame.
Treasurer Wayne Swan signed off on the sale of the 252,000ha to Canadian company Alberta - in presumably the biggest foreign sell-off of Australian land - while his government remains in the middle of a review into foreign ownership of Australian agricultural assets.
If the Government was fair dinkum in its concern about foreign purchases of agricultural assets, why not hold off on the sale until the review is finished?
If the review finds we are selling too many of our key agricultural assets overseas, it will be too late to shut the gate on the GSP sale given Mr Swan has left it open and given the horse a firm slap on the hindquarters.
During an interview about the review, Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten said: "Is land being bought up by foreign interests? Are we losing control of our food and water?"
Which suggested the Government would do something about it if we were.
The review is an admission we don't know if we're selling too much, so to allow a huge sale during it seems ridiculous.
Our Foreign Investment Review Board does not even look at purchases of less than $230 million.
Furthermore, the FIRB almost never rules a sale contrary to the "national interest".
China has identified this and started a multi-billion-dollar raid on Australian agriculture, openly stating it will target farms, businesses and processors under that threshold.
In an age of growing population, concern about food security and long-term water scarcity, it's difficult to see how the sale of 250,000ha of formerly food-producing land to an overseas company is in the national interest.
The land should have been sold in farm-size lots.
This would have allowed family farmers to have a crack at buying it, maximised the total sale price and giving a better return to GSP investors and creditors.
Farm groups put up a plan for Elders to sell the land in smaller lots, but receiver McGrathNicol said the sale process was too far advanced.
The farm groups complained to the Australian Securities Investments Commission, which said it would further investigate if the groups produced legal advice saying the sale process breached the Corporations Act by not getting the maximum return for investors.
Here's some free advice, ASIC: pay for your own lawyers and do your job. Don't expect others to spend their time and money doing it for you.
Unfortunately this story gets worse. Alberta paid only $1646 a hectare for this land.
The rock-bottom price creates a real estate opportunity - Alberta intends to break the estate up and sell part of it in smaller lots. This profit will line the pockets of Canadian fat cats instead of being returned to GSP investors, many of whom lost their life savings.
So: a Coalition government invented a scheme which saw Australian taxpayers fund the purchase of land by a corporation, which collapsed.
A Labor government and its agencies stood by while the land was sold off in a package too big for Australian interests to bid on - doing nothing to ensure investor returns were maximised by breaking the land up to sell it.
Despite a review into these exact sales, the federal treasurer signed off on it.
Now an overseas company will make a killing doing what the receiver should have.
Greens deputy leader Christine Milne said she's "horrified" and has written to Mr Swan asking why the sale was allowed to proceed.
Nationals senate leader Barnaby Joyce said he can't understand why Australia has failed to realise it's in its interests to keep natural assets given other nations have identified it's in their interests to buy them.
Mr Swan said: "while greater transparency is important, the fact is that overseas investment is vital for Australian farmers and regional communities because it supports local jobs and economic growth."
But more jobs would have been generated from 252,000ha of family farms and the resulting food than from 252,000ha of near-worthless trees.
Countries around the world recognise natural assets such as water and food-producing land will be the most valuable in coming decades. They may just be worth holding on to.
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