Chinese in land grab

CHINESE interest in Aussie farming land rose by an extraordinary 880 per cent – or 13 million hectares – in the past year, as foreign ownership of our land overall dropped.

A report by the Australian Taxation Office, to be released today, shows the area of Australian agricultural land that has a foreign interest fell from 52 million hectares to 50 million in the past year.

But the area of land with Chinese interests increased from 1.46 million hectares to 14.4 million hectares.

Of the 14 million hectares, 9.1 million were entirely owned by Chinese firms.