It's not foreigners owning land but how they use it

In the Second World War the foreigners tried to invade Australia to take our land, now they are buying it instead. That, at least, is the popular catch cry surrounding foreign ownership of agricultural land. Oh, and the subscript is that the Chinese are the villains.

This is not what is really happening, however. The Register of Foreign Ownership of Agricultural Land now makes the facts around foreign ownership clear.  

However, the real issue is how well foreigners are managing and using the land. That is something neither side of politics is willing to grapple.

The nation that has the biggest stake in agricultural land in Australia is the United Kingdom. UK owners hold almost 60 per cent of foreign owned agricultural land in Australia, and those from the US another 16.7 per cent.  

Asian owners make up only a small percentage of foreign holdings. China comes a long way behind the UK and US with only 3 per cent of all foreign owned land, and it is exceeded by the tiny island nation of Singapore.

Getting our knickers in a knot over how much the Chinese own is simply absurd. More absurd is paranoia over the Indonesians or Japanese, who own even less. There is a deep racism in this discussion that is not only uninformed, but unhealthy.

What we should be worried about is foreigners who own agricultural land and then do nothing with it.

In Queensland 147,000ha of agricultural land is owned by foreigners who are not using it for primary industry production. The foreign owners of another 1,407,000ha of land in the state have failed to report how, or if, the land is being used.

Primary industry is the lifeblood of every town in Queensland west of the Great Divide. Even ostensible mining towns such as Emerald and Blackwater derive as much from primary industry as mining. Without farms there are no businesses, no jobs, and no towns.

We simply can't afford to allow land to be locked away and not kept in production.

And before the greenies get on their bandwagon, doing nothing with the land is not environmentally friendly. Letting land go to waste is even more environmentally damaging than overworking it.

Land that is not properly maintained doesn't become some pre-1788 wonderland; it becomes a haven for feral animals and noxious weeds.  

This is because we have already introduced these weeds and feral animals to the landscape, and they need constant management to prevent them spreading.

Once weeds or feral animals get established they don't observe the niceties of property boundaries. They spread to neighbouring properties and damage them as well. The loss of small marsupials across some parts of Queensland is a direct consequence of the presence of feral pigs more so than sheep or cattle.

What we need is the power to force foreign owners - in fact any owners - of agricultural land to sell if they do not keep the land in production. How this might be achieved is a matter for discussion, but the imperative is clear.

Being the custodian of any portion of Australia's primary industry land is a privilege and a responsibility.

When it come to agricultural land the rule should be simple: use it or lose it.

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