Thanks for your responses.

It just showed me how little I know
on the subject. It does get me angry
though - that our cities are being
taken over - and our children are
having problems with the housing market.

I saw a program the other night about
"luxury apartments<" being built and
developed not in the inner city this time
but in Parramatta no less, at huge prices.
"Ah, well, it's still cheaper than
in Shanghai, some Chinese real estate agent stated.

I finally ended up going into the Australian
Taxation Office's website to clarify matters
for myself.

According to their site foreign residents are
apparently taxed in Australia on income earned
from their Australian investments.

Tax is generally withheld in
Australia at the time of payment.

But if you receive rental income from Australian
properties or capital gains from selling
Australian homes you must declare these amounts in
an Australian tax return.

Foreign investors cannot buy new properties unless
they're residents of Australia (even temporary
residents are allowed to buy established properties)
And they must be approved by the Foreign
Investment Review Board.

Foreign investors however - can buy vacant land, and
property that is to be re-developed. I guess loop-holes
do exist after-all.

mhaze,

It would be more interesting to see the value (as a proportion of total value) of the agricultural land owned by foreigners. Quality matters. There is a big difference between semiarid range land that might feed a few sheep or cows in a good year and prime arable land.

Currently, we are growing around 3 times as much grain as we consume ourselves in a good year, and about half as much in a drought year. Our politicians are determined to boost our population to 40 million or more, so these margins are going to go down, even if everything else stays the same. We currently have big problems with land degradation and availability of water, as can be seen from the conflict over water in the Murray Darling basin. Our agricultural production would also drop like a stone if geopolitical or other factors prevented us from importing oil or phosphate rock, and climate change is the wild card in all of this.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2010-05-06/can-we-feed-%E2%80%9Cbig-australia%E2%80%9D

The question is whether the foreigners are just investors who want to make a profit, similar to our own people, or whether their real concern is food security for the folks back home and whether our politicians would stand up to them if we were going short ourselves.

As you can see from this fact check, many countries restrict land ownership by foreigners. Are they all xenophobic or are they dealing with rational concerns?

https://theconversation.com/factcheck-do-many-other-countries-restrict-foreign-investment-in-agricultural-land-17691

Furthermore, just because a law is on the books doesn't mean that the government will enforce it. The Australian government is only now going after illegal purchases of residential land. Whether it is really serious or just taking on a few high profile cases to create the illusion that something is being done remains to be seen. This would be hardly unique. The US has strong laws against illegal immigration and hiring illegal immigrants. The federal government has just been refusing to enforce them and actually taking states like Arizona that have been trying to enforce them to court.

Just commenting on land, it is the control by foreign interests that is relevant and remembering too that only a relative small area of this ancient land is prime agricultural and grazing land. Also, we should be talking about all overseas interests, not just one and cumulative over time (not just the current year, or selected years).

So, while the percentage controlled by overseas interests might appear small compared with the land mass, that apparent small percentage coincides with the relatively small areas where minerals or prime agricultural land are located.

While overseas investment is useful to develop, there is a difference between timely, reasonable development and the reckless exploitation and greed seen too often in the past. Noticeably, that word 'exploit' is being used again and they mean it!

The essential point that should be brought home to the feds in Canberra, is that the Australian public would see government as failing in its duty to present and future generations where it does not identify and maintain a register of prime agricultural land and other real estate that is too valuable to ever be allowed to fall under foreign control, or to be placed at risk by shortsighted greed.

Interesting article from the
Australian Financial Review:

http://www.afr.com/real-estate/chinese-investors-heat-up-australian-farm-buying-spree-20150902-gjd67t

Some more facts. I always like to go from facts to opinion - I find that works better than the reverse.

Of the 370 million hectares devoted to "Sheep Beef Cattle and Grain Farming" (ABS terminology) 87.0% is fully Australian owned and a further 6% is majority Australian owned. The remaining 7% is almost all owned by US/Canada/NZ. The portion owned by Asian interests is less than 1%.

Of the 81,180 business involved in "Sheep Beef Cattle and Grain Farming" in Australia, 99.1% are fully Australian owned and a further 0.1% are majority owned. Again the majority of the remainder are US/Canada/NZ.

There seems to be this view that if a foreigner owns or controls Australia farmland then they have total say over the produce and can take it to feed their homeland and leave us hungry. This totally, and I mean 110% totally, misunderstands how food exports work. No one can export food from Australia anywhere without the say-so of the government through export licences, trade agreements, quality-control regimes and a myriad of other devices meaning that such a scenario is dreamland.

Just conjuring up notions of a future where the food grown here isn't available here is fanciful. It can't and won't happen.

The facts are that we as a nation are running into some serious problems economically and we need foreign investment to help further develop our still largely untapped resources. We need to be open to anyone who wants to put their money here.

____________________

The reason I used the word 'xenophobic' Divergence was that, despite the fact that by far the greatest number of foreigners buying up our land and housing are westerners, everything here is about those Chinese buyers. It was always thus - every generation has its favoured bogey-man. In the 1980s it was Japan buying up all our land, now its China. I'm guessing India will be the next scary food-stealer. But at least they speak English so that's probably ok.

mhaze,

You are right to say that some people are concerned about food security. Although you could have added water and energy security as well. Hold on, that sounds serious.

It is wrong to poison the well by implying that the people expressing such concerns are dog-in-the-manger, racist, xenophobic, or any other 'negging'.

To put things into perspective, it was only public opinion that caused the federal government to reluctantly block the sale of the Kidman property, which is larger than Ireland.

http://www.realestate.com.au/blog/for-sale-a-big-chunk-of-the-australian-continent/