The coalition is responsible for the foreign buy up of Australian farms, Joe Ebono, The Greens candidate for Richmond said this morning.
“It was the Nationals and Liberals under Howard who changed the rules about foreign investment and opened the floodgates,” he said.
His popular radio program, The Generator, covered the issue in depth, interviewing Dick Smith about the issue after the rules changed and foreign buyers started snapping up farms.
Ebono said, that his national news service reported the Chinese buy up of huge tracts of agricultural land in Africa and Madagascar and warned that the same thing was happening here.
“Three years ago this position was considered radical, now the Prime Minister of New Zealand is saying the same thing.
“The Greens are consistently described as alarmist and extremist, but a few years later our positions are adopted by the corporate parties and called sensible.
“Voters are waking up to this and going to the source,” Ebono said.
Ebono expects to top 20% in Richmond in this election and says there is a “reasonable chance” that he could pull off an upset win and take the seat from Justine Elliot.
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To download the Dick Smith interview go to http://thegenerator.com.au/interviews or
http://thegenerator.com.au/files/soundfiles/dick1.mp3 and http://thegenerator.com.au/files/soundfiles/dick2.mp3