December 2025
Cash cow: WA dairy booms thanks to billionaire Gina Rinehart’s backing
Bannister Downs, run by third generation dairy farmers, Suzanne and Mat Daubney, is the cream of the crop in a struggling industry.
Here are 10 of the best episodes from The Fin in 2025
There were land grabs, crypto scams and corporate scandals. These are the podcast’s top episodes from this year that you should catch up on over summer.
August 2025
Wagyu Rich Listers fatten outback portfolio with Qld deal
Peter and Jane Hughes, already among the world’s biggest producers of wagyu beef, have added a central western Queensland cattle property to their operation.
April 2025
Cattle baron Sterling Buntine puts $20m central Qld run up for grabs
Buntine’s is a big name in northern Australia, with a portfolio that stretches from the Kimberley, across the Northern Territory to central Queensland.
February 2025
The Bangkok teacher who saved the Lukin tuna empire
When pioneering fisherman Dinko Lukin died in 2011, nobody thought his wife – 31 years his junior – could save the business he had left drowning in debt.
January 2025
Why 2025 could be a bumper year for these Australian farmers
The agriculture sector may be in for a stellar 2025 but much still depends on the weather, Trump’s tariffs, and the war in Ukraine.
December 2024
‘Authentic’ Jeremy Clarkson tops polls in disaffected, desperate UK
His shift from Top Gear cars to Diddly Squat cows has so enhanced Clarkson’s everyman appeal that people are asking if a political future beckons.
October 2024
Project Crescent: Ellerston taps into WA’s wheat belt with agri bet
The deal terms mean it can force an IPO of the leading John Deere agricultural equipment distributor after three years.
Ed Peter’s Duxton empire in pain as it cuts jobs, sells properties
The former bank executive has built a considerable asset management business with wealthy backers. But tough times have forced it to restructure – and shrink.
September 2024
Why the family farm has become a huge inheritance challenge
Succession planning can be extremely difficult, but it doesn’t have to be if you start talking early and come up with a workable strategy.
August 2024
The beef baron, the waste magnate and the battle for Brisbane
A bustling weekend farmer’s market on the city’s fringes has emerged as a battleground in a stoush between two industry titans.
July 2024
Cattle farmers go to war with Labor over class action
Cattle farmers have accused Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus of launching an appalling, contemptuous and “outrageously misleading” attack on them.
Cattle farmers trying to boost profits at taxpayers’ expense: Labor
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus says the government was not budging on its $215 million offer to settle a decade-old class action.
March 2024
Farmers have $6b sitting in tax haven accounts
Australia’s farmers have almost $6 billion sitting in tax haven accounts and most are financially secure despite a much smaller national grain harvest and big fluctuations in cattle prices.
January 2024
Inside the descent into chaos at a Chinese billionaire’s cattle empire
“My view was that animals would die, employees would leave, the companies would be sued, and then more cattle would die.”
November 2023
John Kahlbetzer, from oil rigs to the Rich List, dies
German-born Kahlbetzer worked in the fossil fuel industry after arriving in Australia in his early 20s before his entrepreneurial flair built a vast fortune.
July 2023
What Robert Costa thinks of $1.6b takeover offer
The co-founder of Costa Group sees spinning off part of Australia’s biggest horticulture business as a smart option, amid a $1.6 billion private equity approach.
May 2023
Labor offers $215m to end decade-old live export legal stoush
Cattle farmers have been offered the money to end the court battle over Labor’s 2011 temporary ban, well below the industry’s $2 billion demand.
March 2023
Banker warns super tax may force ‘a hell of a lot’ of farmers to sell
AMP director Mike Hirst, who owns a cattle farm near Geelong, says Labor’s proposal could force farmers who “eke out a living” on the land to sell their properties.
January 2023
Billionaire cattle barons cash in on booming beef prices
Gina Rinehart and Brett Blundy offloading up to $1 billion worth of property, in a once in a generation change.