ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

Another 30000 acres in Western Australia sold to the Chinese so that they can secure their food supply ?

What are these people thinking ?


Bob

I'm with you Bob but there can't buyers without sellers.

Probably thinking that soon they will own Australia and no war needed to obtain it - our bloody Government should be shot for allowing the farm to be sold and we as Australians should never whinge about any assistance given to our farmers to stay on the land. Despite popular belief our food does not come from Coles and Woolies

I wonder why a Government long term purchase/leasing arrangement has never been considered? At least that way we as a nation would retain ownership of the land and the farmer would get his cash in hand

Australia was built with foreign investment and we still need it but I think we should be selling leases to those interested not freeholds.
There is nothing new in that idea and why we haven't continued with it I do not know.
In the very near future the most precious commodities in the world will be water and land and we are foolishly selling both at a furious rate to those who understand the looming scarcity.

We used to have crown land that was given with a (from memory) 99 year lease to the landholder and handed down from father to son, I am not sure when this practice ended I remember the shock we had when my FIL passed away to discover that the little house we thought was owned was in fact sitting on a crown land lease. We could have purchased it as it went up for sale but couldn't afford to do so. My MIL did receive money from the sale which was if I remember right the sale of the unexpired part of the lease not the actual land itself.

I'm not presuming it was crown land Marty I doubt it was - what I was trying to get at was that huge tracts of land like this that come up for sale because the individual farmer can no longer hold onto it should never be sold to offshore buyers but if no Australian landowner or conglomerate can buy it then the Govt should consider stepping in and making it a purchase as crown land. It could then hopefully be leased and managed by someone who perhaps was unable to purchase it outright.

Not sure if this is a viable solution or not but it has got to be better than selling our country off to foreign buyers who could in the foreseeable future evict the lot of us or at the very least hold us to ransom by refusing to allow the crops and products to be sold here but exporting them all back to feed the masses in China or wherever their home country is.

Entrepreneur Dick Smith says he has “no doubt” there has been an increase in foreign-controlled companies buying up local agricultural properties. Smith has recently been advocated a push to a more sustainable level of economic growth.

“What people don’t realise is that if someone buys prime agricultural land, we can’t force them to sell us the food from that land,” . “They can ship the food form the land directly to their country and I think that should be looked at.”

Yes Maureen they can.

Bob

HOW can the goverment afford to by the land when they owe so much in debt. Each man woman and child pays a fortune just in interest that this group has borrowed

bill w

Bob we can always (hopefully) control what is exported and to where.
I have listened to Dick Smith and he makes a great deal of sense. Our current consumer based economic system cannot be sustained. We simply cannot continue to base our lives on endless market growth. At the moment the government is worried that we are not spending enough and saving too much! Hence the interest rate cut. What a nonsense.

30,000 acres = lots of pak choy.