7 December 2011
By LESLIE WHITE
THE Federal Government has no idea whether foreign agricultural investors keep their promises on land use.
And one of the biggest foreign buyers of Australian farmland says the Government should order that agricultural land continue to be farmed - and check to ensure it is.
Hassad, which is owned by the Qatar Government, has bought 170,000 hectares of Australian farmland and plans to spend $200-$300 million buying more. It aims to supply 30-35 per cent of Qatar's food from those farms.
Hassad director John Corbett said while the company vowed to continue farming the land, the Federal Government had never made any compliance checks.
Asked if the Government had said it would carry out such checks, Mr Corbett said: "Not at any stage".
He told a recent senate inquiry the Federal Government should check if foreign owners continued to use land in the way they had proposed to Government.
"Why wouldn't you have a process where they have to come in every now and then, put everything on the table to the FIRB (Foreign Investment Review Board) and say, 'That's what I said I was going to do. I'm still doing it'?" Mr Corbett said.
Hassad would not specify what percentage of its Australian produce would be sent directly to Qatar. It said it would depend on market forces and the quality of the produce.
Nationals Senator Fiona Nash said Australia needed to decide whether it wanted foreign government-owned companies to be able to send produce exclusively to their country of ownership. "We haven't had that discussion," she said.
A Treasury spokesman said the intentions of foreign buyers were closely examined.
"These intentions and commitments ... are given a high level of weight when Treasury ministers determine whether a proposal can be approved."
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