I fail to see how selling anything to foreigners is in our national interest.

That said, if they want a piece, let them migrate as persons of good character; and then qualify for citizenship as new Australians! Some of our most outstanding/successful Australians came in that way.

Moreover, the sale of government guaranteed self terminating thirty year bonds, [more than popular offshore], would unlock as much as 2 trillion lazy foreign investment dollars, currently lazing about in corporate strong rooms, what have you; earning nothing and looking for a safe harbor/return.

However, minus the foreigners, and foreign control/endlessly expatriated profits.

With the sale of self terminating thirty year bonds; and used exclusively to build income earning assets, (eastern seaboard rapid rail, the range crossing etc) you know from the get go what it'll cost the nation in total. Not so with the fire sale of income earning Australian assets!

Our iron ore deposits were bought for a song and developed initially with money raised internally and so the story goes, backed with worthless paper. Since then have earned the foreign corporations literal billions in tax avoided expatriated profits.

We can see the same thing now occurring, with our gold plate electricity distribution. A fool or fools never learn.
Rhrosty.

Hokey numbers. Gotta love 'em.

"Official Government data for June 2014 indicates that 12 per cent of Australia's agricultural land (about 50 million hectares, an increase of 4.7 million hectares since 2010) featured some level of foreign ownership. It is obvious (given recent and continuing buying) that by mid 2016 the percentage of Australian farmland subject to foreign ownership could easily reach 15 per cent."

Note the first sentence described land that "featured some level of foreign ownership", without telling us what "level" that was.

1%? 10% 49%? It does make a difference, y'know. Especially when the intent of the article is clearly to frighten the natives.

And the second sentence continues the deceit.

What does "subject to foreign ownership" mean in this context?

If it means "owned by foreigners", then why does he not say so? Or is it just "a level of foreign ownership" again, without the quantification?

Pshaw.

And please Rhosty, do you really mean this?

>>I fail to see how selling anything to foreigners is in our national interest.<<

The prosperity of this land of ours has been created by exports. Or has that fact simply passed you by?

Pericles

I don't collect or publish the statistics on foreign ownership of Australian land. The Government/Australian Bureau of Statistics does, and the information (on percentage foreign ownership) you refer to is simply not collected.. My wording comes from the government publications virtually verbatum. If you have a problem with what is collected or published take it up with the relevant authorities. There is no intention on my part to mislead.

The main issue is the extent of the recent purchases. As indicated in the Appendix, these have been very substantial and nearly all by 100% foreign owned entities.

Bren

Selling things is what makes money. People who don't quite get this write articles like the one above.

Captain Col, that's the type of statement that Runner would make.

Most countries have quite strong rules about who can own land in their country. Ours are some of the weakest in the world. As with our pollies utter obsession with free trade so are they keen to sell all of this countries assets.

Despite just about every Australian having super, with billions of investment dollars floating around. It is virtually impossible to get any invest money for anything outside of the three east coast capital cities.

Australian Pollies have done what they can to kill off manufacturing in Australia.
They increasing allowing the sell off of our mineral and agricultural resources.
They have even started offshoring services.

Apart from blaming the Nationals for their utter incompetence, the real blame goes to us the voters, who mindless keep voting in people who have no interest in making Australia a strong wealthy country.

Unfortunately Political corruption is well and truly entrenched in Australia. As they say many good people go into politics but only bad people stay in politics.

Australian land and assets certainly should not be sold to a Communist government.