Nations free to buy Aussie farms as Barnaby Joyce steps back

Barnaby Joyce said he had no plans to introduce legislation blocking future rural land purchases by ­foreign governments.

Barnaby Joyce stands by his comments over foreign government ownership of Australian land. Picture: Kym Smith

Barnaby Joyce has reinforced his views that foreign governments or state-owned companies should not be allowed to buy Australian farmland or agriculture, putting him at odds with Tony Abbott.

But the Agriculture Minister said he had no plans to introduce legislation or new policy blocking future rural land purchases by ­foreign governments or linked state-owned companies, or to force the sale of the ­expansive agricultural investments held by foreign nations in Australia.

Foreign governments, state-owned companies and sovereign wealth funds have invested billions of dollars into Australian agriculture, directly buying cropping farms, cattle stations, sugar mills, almond plantations, cotton gins and dairy farms.

“He’s put his position; he’s very clear that he doesn’t like (foreign government investment),” Mr Joyce’s spokesman said last night.

“He is not backing away from his view but, by the same token, there is no proposal to change government policy; so everything else is hypothetical.”

The oil-rich Qatari government is the biggest sovereign ­investor in Australian farmland, directly owning 290,000ha of sheep and cropping farms in ­ 14 clusters in five states, worth $425 million, through its fully-owned subsidiary Hassad Foods.

The Sultan of Brunei, once a large direct investor in cattle ­stations in the Northern Territory, now owns just one beef property, Opium Creek, on the rich Mary River floodplains, east of Darwin, while the Sarawak government owns the 280sq km Rosewood station on the NT border with Western Australia.

Neither Hassad Australia chief executive Tom McKeon nor the Australian representative for the Sultan of Brunei would comment yesterday.

The Singapore government is also a major investor in Australia through its Temasek investment fund which owns Olam Inter­national, and with it the historic Queensland Cotton company, 11 cotton gins and several cotton farms in Australia, and 27,000ha of almond orchards and a $60m almond processing plant on the Murray River near Mildura.

Other major government holdings in Australian agriculture include Norway Central Bank’s 5.5 per cent investment in GrainCorp, the Chinese government’s direct investment via various funds and companies in Tas­manian dairy farms and the $136m Tully sugar mill, and the Abu Dhabi national investment fund’s purchase of sandalwood plant­ations.

The Canadian government pension fund also recently made a $200m cash injection into a large-scale Queensland family cattle joint venture.

Tony Abbott yesterday tried to play down Mr Joyce’s comments, saying he had merely been talking about changes to the Foreign Investment Review Board’s farm purchase approval thresholds.

The Abbott government is preparing a new set of reforms and rules to underpin its foreign ­investment policy affecting urban real estate and agriculture.

Labor agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon urged the Prime Minister to haul his minister into line, labelling Mr Joyce the “single greatest threat to Australian agriculture’s future”.