Selling vast tracts of Australia's farmland to foreigners is not in our national interest

In western Victoria, about 50 dairy farmers between Colac and Mount Gambier (running 90,000 cows) have signed individual option deals to sell their farms, worth a collective $400 million, to a ­Chinese-dominated dairy conglomerate. Also in Victoria, the Chinese Ningbo Dairy in September bought several dairy farms in Kernot, South Gippsland, and plans to build a feedlot and a $20 million milk-processing plant to export fresh milk.

Another Chinese company, New Hope Dairy Holdings, has set up a joint venture in NSW with the aim of exporting fresh milk to China. The consortium is absorbing the farms of its partners, Leppington Pastoral Company and Moxey Farms (with the latter purchase alone worth a reported $100 million).

Chinese investors have also bought into cotton and irrigation. In 2012 Shandong Ruyi bought Australia's largest cotton irrigator Cubbie Station for $232 million, while in 2014 Shanghai-based Orient Agriculture bought the cotton farm Undabri, near Goondiwindi, for $30 million. Meanwhile, Shanghai Zhongfu in 2012 won the right to lease and develop the second stage of the Ord ­irrigation project, with 13,400 ha of land under its control, and projected investment of $700 million.

It has also been reported that the Chinese Government owned Beijing Agricultural Investment Fund has committed to spending $3 billion on Australian agricultural assets, while innumerable private companies in China are also said to be planning to buy.

In addition to the Chinese, in late 2013 and 2014 Indonesian companies went on a buying spree. Indonesia's biggest importer of Austra­lian live cattle, Santori, bought Victoria River district properties Riveren and Inverway stations for about $30 million. The properties cover 5500 square kilometres (the same area approximately as Bali) and came stocked with 40,000 head of cattle. Great Giant Livestock Co bought the 170,000 hectare Willeroo south-west of Katherine for $15.1 million, including 17,000 head of cattle, while another Indonesian company bought Edith Springs near Katherine for $4 million.

Filipino businessman Romeo Roxas in November 2015 bought 560,000-hectare Murray Downs station and the 265,000-hectare Epenarra Station in the NT for $20 million. Mr Roxas already has substantial land holdings of some 60,000 hectares in the Cobar region of New South Wales.

All this followed the forced sell-off of much of Australia's privately-owned forestry plantations. North American and other investors in 2011 bought the timberland assets of Great Southern Plantations (over 2,500 square kilometres of prime plantation forestry across six Australian states) for AU$415 million following the MIS debacle . In 2014 the forestry assets (over 200,000ha) of insolvent Tasmanian timber company Gunns Ltd were sold off for $330 million.