Yes, seriously people. The Treasurer is consulting on reforms that would let “trusted, low-risk” foreign investors get automatic approvals for farm purchases.
But if approvals accelerate we risk waking up one day asking who really owns Australia’s productive heartland—and who calls the shots in our food system?
What we really need is ransparency, competition protections and water/critical-asset guardrails that are bullet-proof befiore we flog off our national assets – much of the lanf is being sold to countries that do not allow foreigners buying their farmland!!! Go figure that!!
The bottom-line is that fewer hurdles, faster ticks, more overseas money hoovering up Australian paddocks will speed up foreign land purchases.
Start with the base we’re already standing on. The ATO’s latest register shows 49.1 million hectares of agricultural land with some level of foreign ownership—about 12.7% of all Aussie ag land, up on last year.
Country-by-country, the biggest footprints by area are the United Kingdom (~7.38m ha), China (~6.57m ha), Canada (~5.12m ha), the United States (~2.73m ha), and the Netherlands (~≈2.3m ha). Remember: the register counts “foreign persons” at ≥20% equity, so a chunk of that land is partly Australian-owned—but the scale is still eye-popping.
Now layer on the reform signal. Global pension funds and ag conglomerates love certainty and speed. Give them a green-lane process and they will use it—because agriculture is a long-horizon, inflation-hedging, supply-chain asset class. Even a modest climb from 12.7% toward, say, the high-teens over the next decade implies tens of millions of additional hectares changing hands and tens of billions of dollars in transactions, depending on region and price per hectare.
That’s not scaremongering; it’s basic compounding on a giant land base—supercharged by faster approvals.
Supporters argue capital modernises farms, funds infrastructure, and helps manage climate and biosecurity shocks but at the risk of national sovereignty? I dont think so!
If you think the fast-track needs far tighter limits—or shouldn’t touch farmland at all—tell the Treasurer directly:
Email: jim.chalmers.mp@aph.gov.au
