Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak on this particular bill, because it is a very important bill—as all bills are here, but this goes to the heart of our ability as a nation to grow our products and produce food on the land. To do that, we need water. Therefore, the Register of Foreign Ownership of Agricultural Land Amendment (Water) Bill 2016 goes to the heart of those things.

Labor for a long time has supported an agricultural land register and also a register of water rights. When I was in this place last time, from 2010 to 2013, there was a group that was very vocal on this issue. We formed a caucus committee to speak to the minister at the time and to do some research, and it was agreed then that Labor would come up with a bill for an agricultural land registry and also a water rights registry. Of course, the election was then called, and Labor was not able to implement its bill.

At the last election, both parties went to the electorate promising that there would be a water rights registry and, of course, the foreign ownership of agricultural land registry as well. Disappointingly, though, the current register that exists is very secretive. The public does not have access to that register. As we heard the member for Mayo say earlier, if someone wishes to look up the particular ownership and to find who is buying, who is selling and at what time they are buying and selling, unfortunately there is no way of doing that. Therefore, as we heard the shadow minister say earlier, it is the Clayton's register, the register you have when you do not have a register. So, in developing this particular amendment for a water rights register, it would be very important that we open up the doors and the blinds that are covering the information that is required to give the Australian public the confidence that is required to know that the registers of water rights and agricultural land rights are informative and can tell people the time that rights are being bought and sold, who is buying and who is selling these products.

We need to build public confidence on this issue so that people have no fear of our system. It is an important system, because if you have a look at what was taking place during the years when we had the drought—so it is not that long ago, and no doubt there will be more droughts in this nation in years to come—you find that at that time there were people buying water rights all around the country—international companies and people that had absolutely no relationship to agriculture. It was all on speculative decisions made to make money.

It could be an extremely dangerous situation, when you think that people who are speculating in these water rights are purchasing them on behalf of clients and maybe manipulating the market. But what is even scarier—and you may say it is something that is very extreme—is that, if we allow them to take control and manipulate that price, what is stopping them from going back to the people who are growing our food and saying, in a drought year or a year when there is an extreme shortage of water, 'If you want the water, we've got the water for you, but we want to buy your product at a certain price'? When people are in need, when people are desperate, these sorts of deals do take place. If, under this bill, you had a registry for water rights that was open and transparent, you would be able to see who is buying and who is purchasing, and if there are any dangers to our nation and any detriment to our agriculture, our industries et cetera.

This bill, as I said, fails to give the Australian public confidence on who owns what, when they owned it, when they transferred it and for what purposes. Water rights and water registration are really important. In the state of South Australia, anyone is free to go to the land titles office and see when a particular property was bought and sold, by whom, and who has the mortgage on it. If we had the same system here, you would be able to see if there are any detrimental effects towards a particular industry—maybe agriculture—or any other areas where it would be detrimental to our nation.

Labor will be supporting this bill. But, as I said, it is a bill that does not go far enough. The bill is supposed to allow for the collection of information and the publication of statistics about foreign holdings of registerable water entitlements and long-term contractual water rights. Australia is a world leader in the regulation and trade of water entitlements. It is recognised around the world. Since about 2004, governments here have progressively had water entitlements from land titles to encourage a greater market for water to develop. Australian water markets are well established, relatively large and greater than $30 billion in size—that is a lot of money—and on average over 1.5 billion cubic metres of liquid is traded annually. They are supported by a robust regulatory framework. We want it to be more robust. We want infrastructure and market mechanisms that facilitate efficient water trade.

In The Sydney Morning Herald today was an article about how the land register is not keeping up with what is actually happening. The article stated that the amount of land that was foreign owned was far higher than what had been reported. I understand it may take some time for reporting of the purchase of a particular acquisition of land et cetera to reach the registry, but certainly that story this morning reflected that we are not on the mark when it comes to this. For example, the article states:

The amount of agricultural land owned by Chinese interests has soared above 3 million hectares—

way above the amount that had been reported. Further:

The ATO said it did not comment on individual land holdings and acknowledged its register relied heavily on self-registration, with penalties up to $9000 …

When you are spending $50 million, $100 million or $20 million, $9,000 is absolutely a joke. There is no incentive for you to register, because the onus is on the person that is buying the land. Another article about international investors, published in The Sydney Morning Herald a couple of years ago, states:

International investors are circling Australia's water market, looking to snap up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of our most precious national resource, with almost no government limit on how much they can buy.

As I said earlier, we are in a unique position in Australia, where we have vast lands that grow everything, from grapes to wheat—you name it. Water entitlements are extremely important for our agricultural industries. If we allow control of that water in the hands of those who do not have the same interests as we do and who are basically speculating to make money on a particular entitlement, then we are going down the wrong track. I think our future here in Australia, with the collapse of manufacturing around the nation, is in value-adding to our agribusinesses. It is ensuring that we open up markets overseas, and we do export quite a bit.

It is not to say that I am against foreign investors or people investing in Australia. It has always been a very important part of our economy. But I think we have a right as a nation to be able to access who owns what, who is buying what, who is selling what and on what scale people are purchasing, whether it be water rights or whether it be agricultural land—ensuring that we are in control of our destiny. I am not saying that lightly. What I am saying is that we need to ensure that what takes place in this nation does so because we have determined it, not because a foreign company is looking at making some money very quickly for their investors or shoring up what their needs are before our needs. I am all for investment. Bring it in if it is to the benefit of this nation, if it is to the benefit of creating jobs—that is fine. How do we do that? By monitoring a register. But this register basically has a curtain over it and we cannot see who is buying and who is selling. The way this is set up, if there are trends et cetera it will be very difficult to identify those things.

Basically, this bill only fuels the xenophobia that perhaps is out there, by making it sound like we are hiding something. We should open it up. Open it up and allow everyone—allow members of parliament and journalists—to see who is behind the buying and selling of our precious land and water rights here in Australia. It was not that long ago, when we had a drought here, that we saw people investing in our water rights in an area where at the same time people who were slugging it out on the land were suffering because of the drought. We had people and companies investing and trying to make money by speculating on water rights. So I would encourage the government to ensure that we take away that veil and open up the curtains to allow people to see exactly what is taking place, and not creating more xenophobia by keeping that veil on there and not letting us know who is buying and selling, at what price, and when and where.

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