Native Title Under Threat, We Must Resist

Below are some very telling articles of what the big money men and their foreign investor friends have in store for Australians.

Australia First alerts our Aboriginal friends to this con. The overarching agenda here will be to water down if not extinguish Native Title rights. All this talk of 'Food Forums, Food Bowl Of Asia' etc and prosperity for all is a lie.

The Northern Zone agenda will be anything but prosperity for all. The Northern Zone is designed to be a situation of profit for the elite and their foreign friends and a 'purpose built' destination  for refugees and other sources of cheap foreign labour to meet that end.

Make no mistake, this will mean total dispossession of Aboriginal and European Australians. Our politicians and their rich friends are no more than Rats with gold teeth, their greed knows no end.

Australia First Party intends to stridently resist this agenda.



AUSTRALIA'S largest agricultural corporation has called for an end to political squabbling about foreign ownership of farm land and a focus on achieving an ambitious food bowl vision for northern Australia.         
David Farley and Donald McGauchie, respectively managing director and chairman of the Australian Agricultural Company, the biggest owners of land and cattle in Australia, said it was not important who owned agricultural assets but that they were developed quickly and to their full potential.
In an exclusive interview with The Australian yesterday, the two men called for all pastoral leases in northern Australia to be converted to freehold or private land tenure to attract foreign rural development capital.
Mr McGauchie, a former Reserve Bank board member, said foreign banks, companies and cashed-up overseas pension funds did not regard leasehold land as a secure enough form of land ownership. The possibility that it could be tampered with or confiscated by governments made them unwilling to invest in developing high-cost irrigation and proposed new food projects on large pastoral lease cattle stations across northern Australia.
Legal implications about native title rights to ownership, royalties and compensation linked to leases were also deterring overseas investors, he said.
More than 40 per cent of the nation and most expansive outback rural properties - including most of northern Australia and the entire Northern Territory - are at present designated as state-controlled leasehold land, which is leased back to farmers, land managers and some indigenous groups.
Aboriginal leaders said last night it was incorrect to assume wholesale land title conversion of existing pastoral leases to freehold properties would be opposed by indigenous groups or that such a change would automatically extinguish native title rights.
Northern Land Council chief Kim Hill said that as long as all parties, including indigenous land owners, were involved in goodwill negotiations the issue of lease conversion to freehold title was an "interesting debate we have to have". "We need to develop northern Australia," he said. "We need capital infrastructure and foreign investment that will generate employment opportunities for indigenous Australians beyond the life of these mines.
"As long as we don't become a land or water grab for wealthy investors, let's have the debate about how to develop the north and do what we have to do to get the infrastructure here."
Mr Farley said that as the world reached "peak food" demand by 2040 Australia could not afford to waste the next five years bickering about foreign ownership.
If Australia missed the opportunity or delayed too long, Mr Farley said, the risk was that the nation would lose its leading position as the world's second-biggest exporter of beef and sugar and the third-biggest wheat and cotton exporter to countries with a greater pride in their agricultural potential such as Brazil. Exports worth $4.5 billion, projected to grow to $10bn by 2040, are at stake.
The outspoken AACo managing director said large-scale irrigated agriculture must be rapidly developed on remote rivers and outback stations from the Pilbara to the Queensland Gulf country and that billions of dollars of offshore or foreign capital was the only way to convert dry cattle stations to irrigated cropping food bowls. "There's plenty of capital in the world, but it's about getting the agricultural industry ready for it.
"But it won't happen unless we shift the debate very quickly from one where (Nationals Senate leader) Barnaby (Joyce) is talking about fears of Chinese money to one where we as a nation are preparing ourselves psychologically and structurally for agricultural growth," Mr Farley said.
Mr Farley said he had already discussed the urgent need for leasehold title conversion to speed northern development with the conservative Queensland Newman government and received a favourable response.


AACo, an Australian company listed on the Australian stock exchange, is 62 per cent owned by overseas shareholders and pension funds.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/food-boom-needs-foreign-cash/story-fn59niix-1226472211718

MAJOR parties are neglecting the $2 trillion opportunity of exporting agricultural produce to Asia, instead miring themselves in the "140 character" world of political bickering and failing to provide the vision and leadership required to take the nation forward, says the head of Australia's largest beef producer.
AACo chief executive David Farley said Australia should urgently develop a bold agricultural plan spanning geopolitical borders, similar to those of the British Empire in the 19th century, the US in the 1940s and Europe more recently with its Common Agricultural Policy.
It also should consider appointing a "ministry for feeding Asia", and begin root to branch reform of the bureaucracy to ensure it is best placed to manage the coming agricultural boom.
The comments by Mr Farley come as billionaire packaging and recycling magnate Anthony Pratt called yesterday for sweeping changes to allow Australia to quadruple its food exports and feed 200 million people.
Mr Farley said Simon Crean was the best person in Canberra to begin the process of turning Australia into a food superpower, and regretted that the former minister had lost his job in last month's failed Labor leadership coup.
He complimented the Coalition's leaked Developing Northern Australia plan, but said that in numerous meetings with conservative MPs he had not witnessed the depth of talent and experience necessary to build the international agricultural trade, with the Nationals too "internally focused".
"We haven't got a government platform at the moment big enough to take up this international opportunity," he said.
"It's going to take a fairly bold party to step into a project like this because on the front end there's no votes in it."
He said land rights and native title legislation should be redrafted to make Australia more attractive to foreign capital, without disenfranchising indigenous people. Governments should consider investing "hundreds of billions" in infrastructure in northern Australia, recouping the spending through asset sales to superannuation funds and foreign annuities. Meanwhile, agricultural research and development should be refocused north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and infrastructure links strengthened east and west.
"We've only got about a 22-year window," Mr Farley said, referring to predictions of peak demand in about 2050. "This needs a seriously broad plan thinker (who) can do strategy and take strategy into government and then bolt policy into government on a (long-term) bipartisan platform."
Asked who was best placed across both main parties in Canberra, he singled out Mr Crean as a politician "capable of delivering a future".
"(As a minister) he was deep in experience and he was a willing contributor. he was determined to leave footprints behind on what he was doing."
A spokesman for Mr Crean said the former minister was unavailable for comment.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/in-depth/push-to-sell-farm-produce-to-asia/story-fni2wt8c-1226623855192