Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor's opened yet another front and it's war against Australian farmers. This time they have a Chinese ally. Xi Jinping, the authoritarian dictator leading the oppressive Chinese communist regime, has been praising the Prime Minister recently. The Prime Minister might want to reflect on all the implications of that praise.

I raise this because I watched Landline last Sunday, and I am absolutely appalled by the application of a Chinese mining company to mine prime agricultural land at Horsham in Victoria to the tune of over 3,000 hectares of land. This is a mining company that wants to compulsorily acquire prime farmland around Horsham. This is some of the best cropping land in the world, and a key area for lentils and wheat. This is land which some families have farmed for many generations. One family has a home there that's over a hundred years old, which could be sold from under their feet to a Chinese miner. If it was an Aboriginal midden, which is a bloody rubbish dump, then it would be stopped immediately. But this is about prime agricultural farming land and we're allowing a Chinese company to take this over, mine and destroy the productivity of this land, which is some of the best in the world. It's going to be permanently damaged and never produce the same good yields again, despite farmers' claims of full remediation.

Why I'm angry about this is because it's about time we woke up to ourselves. You're clamouring for foreign investment in this country. You're handing over mining plus agricultural land to foreign investors, when they should only own 49 per cent. We should have Australian ownership of 51 per cent, and we should have Australian directors on the board. What is wrong with you people that you are allowing these people to rip the guts out of this country? They don't pay enough taxes here. You're going to destroy prime agricultural farming land—disgraceful.