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Wan LixinOpinion deputy editor of Shanghai Daily
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No sale of cattle land to foreigners
Print Edition
AUSTRALIA’S current government will never sell its largest cattle empire to foreigners, the treasurer said yesterday after blocking a takeover by a Chinese-led consortium.
China-based Dakang Australia Holdings on Tuesday withdrew its application to buy an 80 percent stake in Australia’s largest private landholding, S. Kidman & Co, after Treasurer Scott Morrison last week rejected the bid.
Morrison said yesterday that the main reason he opposed the A$371 million (US$277 million) sale was that the collection of cattle ranches was too big.
“As a result of the decision I took last week ... Australia’s largest land holding will not be sold to foreign interests,” Morrison told the National Press Club. “There’s got to be a limit, and it was just too big.”
Kidman owns 10 cattle ranches, a bull breeding stud and a feed lot covering 101,411 square kilometers in four states. That’s an area bigger than South Korea and almost the size of the US state of Virginia.
Morrison said the company founded by beef baron Sir Sidney Kidman in 1899 might be sold into foreign ownership if the government changes at elections in July.
Greg Campbell, managing director of Kidman, said he expected the consortium, led by a subsidiary of Shanghai Pengxin Group, would return after the election with a new offer for a smaller parcel of land or with a higher proportion of Australian investor money.
Morrison had offered no guidance on how much of Kidman land the Chinese might get to buy, Campbell said.
“It’s highly likely they’ll back with a re-application after the election and get the populist hysteria out of the way,” Campbell said.
Foreign ownership of farmland is an increasingly sensitive issue in Australia, where many fear that foreign-owned farms could supply Australian-grow produce to parent companies at discount prices or refuse to sell to Australian buyers.
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