Foreign investment in Australia under the Coalition averaged $274 million per year. Under Labor it has risen like our debt – it is now averaging $2.7 BILLION per year! *

 

“Australia must, as a priority, maintain the capacity to feed our own people. We need to make sure we keep control of key strategic assets. There is no more strategic asset than the ability to feed yourself and have ownership of your greatest national asset – farming land,” said Senator Barnaby Joyce today.

 

“China and other countries are explicit in their goal to secure food supplies for their exclusive use and that’s fair enough, anyone would do the same thing, but these investments do risk limiting Australians’ access to food. You can’t feed two people with the same potato and you can’t feed any if someone else owns all the factories that process them.

 

 We do not have to stifle healthy investment, to stop excessive foreign investment.

 

We need a strong, bipartisan approach to foreign investment in Australian farms, because if the Greens get involved we know where it will end, parochial overreach that hurts more than it helps.

 

The Coalition and Labor changed the foreign investment rules for residential housing in a bipartisan fashion earlier this year. This was done at the speed of a thousand gazelles, and I’m suggesting that that cooperation be brought to this question so that we have food security now and for future generations.

 

A register of foreign owned land has been suggested and that’s fine, but it doesn’t solve the problem. The Foreign Investment Review Board need to be given the brief by Mr Swan to look more closely at how we are managing not only the sale of land but our future food production capacity. We’ve done it with houses, but you can’t chew through a block of flats if you’re hungry.

 

Labor doesn't have a plan to guarantee the best reflection of your

standard of living, the food on your plate and the price you pay for it."