China is slowly buying up Australian land by making farmers an offer they can’t refuse. Property owners near the NSW township of Gunnedah have become instant millionaires as Shenhua Watermark Coal – a subsidiary of the world’s biggest coal company Shenhua Energy – buys land to drill for coal. Forty three farmers were happy to sell out to the Chinese in the past two years because they were prepared to pay much more than their property was worth. One example is a house on 594 hectares in Breeza that sold for $376,000 in 2002 sold for $5.2 million last November. The Chinese government have paid the NSW government $300 million for an exploration licence covering 19,500 hectares and promised not to mine within 150m of the productive "black soil" farming country.
But alarm bells are ringing and the Mayor of Gunnedah Adam Marshall is worried. He said "It's perfectly legal, and some of the people have been able to make some very, very good money out of their properties and are very, very pleased.” He went on "But the concern is more that the Foreign Investment Review Board allows overseas-owned companies -- and in this case an overseas state-owned company -- to buy Australian land, to mine Australian resources and take them out of our country."
Let's hope the Foreign Investment Review Board is awake and taking note.
They're buying the land to send gas back to China. The Chinese have set up coal seam gas fracking equipment all across the great Artesian basin. Our land will soon become uninhabitable and unsaleable because the fracturing of the underground rocks sends gas into the water table and it seeps up through the ground poisoning everything that grows, including animals and humans. The land will soon lose it's beautiful greenness and become China's baron wasteland. Conservative Australians have sold out to the Chinese for greed.
ReplyDeleteThese Right Wing Australian patriots have sold out on the country they purport to be proud of.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds very worrying to me. I am a proud Australian and I want our children and grandchildren to inherit this great country. We should have control in our Australia and not be subject to those who may not have the Australian people at heart.
ReplyDeleteAs if it matters whether or not the chinese are mining or farming resources directly from Australian soil themselves, Australia sells all of their natural resources and best food to the highest foreign bidder asap and that buyer is usually China or Japan anyway. Australia needs to learn to invest in utilizing its own natural resources in production and manufacturing and it needs to stop selling away its land, jobs, resources, future, culture, people and society to China for temporary monetary gain. The blame firstly lies on the government on rudd and gillard in particular for their direct approval of laws and acts which permitted foreign investors to buy and sell Australian land without any consideration of what the Australian public feels about it.
ReplyDeletei am ashamed that the chinese man lacks the courage of his conviction. why instead of worrying about how to get more food why shouldnt they introduce a 0 child policy. the worlds about sharing and they have their fair share espcially since they are absolute arsholes when it comes to equality who would want to share in his misery
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