By Matthew Franklin and Lanai Vasek
Agriculture Minister Tony Burke said yesterday the Coalition must embrace the longstanding bipartisan support for foreign investment, insisting it drove jobs growth and warning that the Opposition Leader's position would smash business confidence and damage trade links.
The demand came after Tony Abbott declared he wanted to monitor foreign ownership of farm land and was prepared to take the appropriate action if the scale of investment threatened the national interest.
"We must be in charge of what happens in our own country, and obviously if we are going to be genuinely sovereign in our own country we've got to know what's going on," Mr Abbott said while campaigning in Adelaide.
While Mr Abbott insisted he was not an opponent of foreign investment, Labor sources said the opposition was dog-whistling to appeal to xenophobic voters.
And Australian Greens leader Bob Brown backed the creation of a register of foreign ownership and called on the Nationals to protect their rural constituents.
Mr Abbott's concern is based on the fact that the Foreign Investment Review Board examines investment by foreigners in commercial and residential property but not small-scale rural purchases.
Yesterday Mr Burke said the FIRB had the power to examine any acquisition by a foreign company or government, regardless of the value. The minister said Australia's agricultural export markets had developed over more than a century in a partnership between Australian farmers and international companies, allowing Australian producers to maximise the prices they could demand for their products.
"Federal Labor calls on the Coalition to immediately return to the longstanding bipartisan position in support of foreign investment to drive economic growth and job opportunities in rural and regional communities right across Australia," he said.
Earlier, Mr Abbott said the Coalition did not want to create a formal register of foreign-owned farmland because state titles offices already held ownership details relating to all property.
But he said foreign ownership should be monitored more closely.
"It is important that the public understand that this country is run by the Australian government in Australia's national interests," Mr Abbott said. "We do want to sell the food, rather than sell the farm."
But he said Australia would always need foreign investment, just as Australian foreign investment in other countries was "a good thing" and part of a healthy, vigorous world economy.
The debate flared yesterday after opposition agriculture spokesman John Cobb told The Australian on Thursday that he wanted monitoring of foreign purchases.
Yesterday Mr Cobb said he did not support the creation of a register of foreign-owned farmland.
Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce said there was no formal shadow cabinet position on the issue, which he would want to debate in cabinet if the Coalition won the election.
