Foreign investment data 18 months out of date

The Foreign Investment Review Board has not yet published its register of foreign-owned land for 2022-23, leaving an incomplete picture of who owns Aussie farms.

Australia’s registers of foreign-owned land and water are more than 18 months out of date, leaving farmers and investors alike with an incomplete picture of who owns Aussie farms.

The registers – which detail the size and scope of Australian agricultural land and water assets owned by foreign entities – have yet to be published for the 2022-23 financial year.

The Foreign Investment Review Board’s site shows the last published registers were for 2021-22 – meaning the most recent available data is from June 30, 2022.

Those registers were published in September last year, 15 months after the 2021-22 financial year ended.

National Farmers’ Federation president David Jochinke said it was “not ideal” the FIRB had not released an updated register of foreign-owned agricultural assets since

“Why it has taken so long between reports, I don’t know, but we need this information on a more regular occurrence. With a two-year delay it makes it really hard to keep abreast of any changes,” he said.

“These reports, as much as it is for understanding the trends, also show the weighting of those investments and could affect policy.

“The FIRB is an important step in ensuring we have a good understanding of foreign investment trends and provides checks and balances on those investments.”

A Treasury spokesperson confirmed the 2022-23 reports were yet to be published and that they were prepared “as soon as practicable after June 30”.

“As the reports require significant data consolidation, reconciliation and quality assurance, they can take some time to produce which can result in delays to the reports being published,” the spokesperson said.

The 2021-22 agricultural land register showed as of June 30, 2022, 47.709 million hectares, or 12.3 per cent, of Australian farmland was foreign-owned.

That was down on the 52.985 million hectares, or 14.1 per cent, registered in 2020-21.

China had the largest holding, with 2 per cent of all Australian agricultural land, followed by the UK (1.9 per cent); Canada (0.7 per cent), the US (0.6 per cent) and Netherlands.

The register does not include the value of the land nor the number of transactions in a year; it only logs the size of the land, whether it is freehold or leasehold, and what type of farming it is used for.

The foreign-owned water register from 2022 found water holdings had remained steady, with 4503GL of the 39,800GL water entitlements on issue in international hands.

The registers were introduced under the previous Coalition government in a bid to increase transparency of foreign investment and ownership in Australia.

The 2022-23 registers, when published, will be the final stand-alone reports. From July 1 2023, foreign-owned agricultural land and water assets are now included in the new Register of Foreign Ownership of Australian Assets, which is managed by the Australian Taxation Office and also includes mining assets, business and residential.

According to Treasury’s 2022-23 annual report, the FIRB approved 200 proposals in agriculture, forestry and fishing, worth a total $8.5 billion.

That’s on par in value with the 187 proposals worth $8.5 billion in 2021-22, and up on the 197 proposals worth $5.8 billion in 2020-21.