Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the Senate inquiry into foreign investment in agriculture. Yesterday it was announced that the Senate Rural Affairs and Transport References Committee will conduct an inquiry into how the Foreign Investment Review Board's national interest test is applied to the purchase of Australian agriculture and agribusinesses. I called for a Senate inquiry into the sale of our farmland after I was approached by farm groups about the sale of 252,000 hectares of Great Southern Plantations land.

It is worth reminding the House what happened with the sale of this land. The National Farmers Federation and the Victorian Farmers Federation on behalf of local farmers approached the government to see whether this 250,000 hectares could be broken up into the original allotments so that family farmers could have the chance to buy this land. Sadly, although they wrote to the government, a response was never given to that letter and that 252,000 hectares was sold as one package to an overseas investment company at what ended up being a rock-bottom price. I look forward to seeing how the Senate inquiry views the sale of this land. Since then we have seen state owned enterprises come in and buy land in western Victoria and in New South Wales, and once again there has not been proper transparency around these purchases. One of the things that I am hoping that we will see from the Senate inquiry is a review of the inconsistencies in how we deal with urban land and rural land. With urban land, foreign governments are required to get the approval of the Foreign Investment Review Board before they can go ahead and purchase. Rural land is treated differently. State owned enterprises can come in and purchase the land and then it just seems to be a flick-and-tick process with the Foreign Investment Review Board. We need to keep confidence in how we deal with foreign investment, because it is crucial to Australia, and this Senate inquiry should help us to do that. (Time expired)