Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ilana Yael Leeds on January 30, 2012 at 7:58pm

B'H

Not quite sure what is happening to my typing skills. I must be tired. This show on Today Tonight many Just Grounds members may be aware of what is happening with foreign buyers of Australian rural properties. What is being done about this and is Bill Hefferman really on top of things. We need to see what is going on and I actually think that foreign ownership of lands should only be on a limited leasehold with conditions attached. We need to protect our futures.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/consumer/article/-/12763636/...

I think this is of serious concern, but I do realise others may be far more knowledgeable than I am about this and that is why I am posting this discussion. I will also put up some more information links as I research.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ilana Yael Leeds on January 30, 2012 at 8:04pm

B'H

This is a link to another show which is related. It is worrying. 

 

http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/article/-/10882906/farmers-f...

 

http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/blogs/article/-/10882764/far...

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Norm Finkelstein on January 30, 2012 at 9:10pm

Some additional information that people on the land should be aware of, there is a common thread here and it comes down to control and Monsanto love the concept of total control.

http://youtu.be/trWcqxrQgcc

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ilana Yael Leeds on January 30, 2012 at 10:24pm

B'H

I think that your link relates to another topic entirely Steve. Please keep focussed. The issue is foreign ownership of rural land and property in Australia. You are way off target on this topic. Start your own thread about this please. I would suggest a title ' Corporations and human health'. You are unfocussed please correct it and relocate.

Your utube link is anti Jewish BS. As far as I am concerned you are stirring. Take your wooden spoon and put it where it fits best in a lower part of your anatomy.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Joanne Rea on January 31, 2012 at 8:03am

Ilana

Bill Heffernan is a solid and smart warrior for all things rural but according to him there are only 2 farmers in the parliament. He gets support from Barnaby Joyce and not too many others depending on the issue.

What he needs is a clear mandate to be tough about this but I am not hopeful.

Most parliamentarians of all persuasions either don't have a clue or they openly celebrate foreign investment. Even farming groups are only asking for properties above $15m to be examined.

ABARES claims only 1% of rural enterprises are foreign owned so most people think it is a bit of a yawn. That 1% is by enterprises not area.

Most people in positions of power and influence think that the family farm has passed its use by date and are doing their very best to kill it off.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ilana Yael Leeds on January 31, 2012 at 8:25am

B'h

Thanks Joanne for your rational response. Is it only me or is there really something wrong with the fact that we do allow foreign investors to buy up properties in Australia? I would like to see properties only in the hands of Australian corporations that do not have the bulk of their shareholders overseas. Apparently according to this report, it is 11.3 % and up from 5.9% in the last 17 years. It does not take rocket science to work out where that could go.

Remember we are talking about corporations and countries with enormous buying power. Why are we allowing them to buy up properties? It would be more to our advantage to have them lease only and make the terms of the lease generous but I actually think the Australian governments have been a little insane of late. It is not in national interests to sell.

It would be in our interests to find out how much of Australia is foreign owned land wise and other wise. We could be in for some rude shocks and do not forget that foreign interests can control government policies for rural landowners and the like.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Joanne Rea on January 31, 2012 at 8:38am

Ilana

Do you have link to the report?

Quensland does at least have a foreign owned land register but that is as far as it goes. As far as I know other states do not.

As for foreign interests controlling government policy they already do and they don't even have to own land.

Foreign environmental groups have their feet firmly on the ground here, have influenced government policy, receive tax deductability for donations and generous government research funding.

From another thread called "Coral Sea Together With Cape York World Heritage Matters" we can see that they also get funding to buy property.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ilana Yael Leeds on January 31, 2012 at 10:09am

B'H

Yes Joanne the figures were quoted on the Today Tonight and as much as I am loathe to accept media at face value, here I feel it would be quite credible to believe so. The fact that they are forcing out family owned concerns is a worrying trend. Countries need to have small business enterprises and family owned businesses are the back bone of this. The thing is with big corporations they are controlled by faceless people whose agenda is solely about making profits and often their ethics are nil. They will bandage things that people pick up as wrong to look good but it is all surface.

You will find that a smaller business, while still has to be profit driven to be viable, it is more ethical and has a sounder approach all round. You have fewer people in control and it is more manageable. When you have a large corporation, you have corruption because people feel invisible and therefore feel they are not accountable. It is like people who will thieve from Coles or Myers because they are large department stores and can 'afford to lose stuff because insurance covers their losses.' Not true, losses are passed down to the consumer through raised insurance premiums and costs of items retail. It is all factored in to things. Stealing from an individual, especially a vulnerable individual is considered 'more wrong' by some, but really it is one and the same, simply theft and there is nothing right about any of it.

I wonder about this drive to get family owned business out of business in Australia and I think it would be very useful to find out who owns what where.

This is the link to the Foreign Investment Board

http://www.firb.gov.au/content/default.asp

This is part of a Wikipedia article but I confess I have not had time to follow up this and investigate how reliable it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_property_bubble

Foreign Investment in residential property

Information and statistics regarding foreign ownership of Australian property is currently unavailable due to censorship, blanking and redacting by the Federal Government^[11]

In December 2008, the federal government introduced legislation relaxing rules for foreign buyers of Australian property. According to FIRB (Foreign Investment Review Board) data released in August 2009, foreign investment in Australian real estate had increased by more than 30% year to date. One agent said that "overseas investors buy them to land bank, not to rent them out. The houses just sit vacant because they are after capital growth."^[12]

In April 2010, the government announced amendments to policies to "ensure that foreign non-residents can only invest in Australian real estate if that investment adds to the housing stock, and that investments by temporary residents in established properties are only for their use whilst they live in Australia."^[13][14]

Under the rules, temporary residents and foreign students will be:

• Screened by the Foreign Investment Review Board to determine if they will be allowed to buy a property.
• Forced to sell property when they leave Australia.
• Punished if they do not sell by a government-ordered sale plus confiscation of any capital gain.
• Required to build on vacant land within two years of purchase to stop "land banking".

Failure to do this would also lead to a government-ordered sale.^[15]

^{Now this is a publication put out by the FIB and it costs $25 which is way way above my meagre means at the moment to buy but it would make interesting reading for those who can afford to get a copy and it was put out on the 18th of January this year, so it is quite recent.}

^{https://rirdc.infoservices.com.au/items/11-173}

 

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ian Davies on February 1, 2012 at 2:54pm

Hi Dale, same modellers used now as in other areas of debate I am afraid. I heard these figures a few days ago. More detail required IMO.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ilana Yael Leeds on February 1, 2012 at 2:55pm

B'H

Interesting reading, Dale. What I would like to see is some real hard research done on who owns what and whether it is freehold, lease or what? I do actually think we as Australians have to be wary about selling off land and allowing big money from overseas to buy in where ever and when ever. It is not about seeing the Chinese or any other country for that matter, (in that case we need to be worried about the Saudi and Arab oil interests buying in to the former Telstra Dome and the Melbourne Cup and renaming them - then one sounds really paranoid and ready for happy pills. I just would like to see more national interests being kept Australian. ) as bogeymen coming in to buy the country up. All said and done, it is about whether a country with huge buying power that buys up tracts of land could possibly have influence in a lot of areas that would not benefit the Australian public but be to the detriment. a little bit of self interest is healthy.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Rob Moore on February 1, 2012 at 4:55pm

Peter Spencer tells me that both Bob Hawke and Peter Costello have been  working together to flog Aust land overseas.  I asked him for a link.

 

What hope has this country got with scruples like this from the top of the tree. Also there are damn lies and statistics. ABARE are very often wildly out ans are no better than weather forecasters.

The FIRB needs the percentage of foriegn owned as a valuation $ value of the total  business assets.

A land percentage makes no distinction between an acre at Birdsville v an acre at Cecil Plains! 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ilana Yael Leeds on February 1, 2012 at 9:38pm

B'H

Well that is what we need to do. Make statistics on who owns what. It kind of amazes me that they have no record. You see in my book that in and of itself is sus. BIG TIME SUS. They have records of everything else, so why don't they have records of that. We have computers and it would be easy to compile a list of who owns what land wise and where. You just need access to the data. Might be quite tedious working it all out and imputing it but I am sure it would be recorded somewhere.

• ▶ Reply

▶ Reply to Discussion

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page