CHARKER, Dr Jill, Acting First Assistant Statistician, Australian Bureau of Statistics

HODGES, Ms Jacqueline (Jacky), Regional Director, Tasmania, and Program Manager, Environment and Agriculture Business Statistics Centre, Australian Bureau of Statistics

[15:15]

CHAIR: Welcome, Dr Charker. I take it that is a doctorate of thinking, not a doctorate of medicine. Most of our thinking gathers dust on shelves, by the way. Would you care to make an opening statement?

Dr Charker : Yes, we will make a brief opening statement. Late last year, the ABS was asked to undertake a survey to examine foreign ownership of businesses operating in agriculture, ownership of agricultural land and of water entitlements. In designing the survey, the ABS worked with the Commonwealth Treasury, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, or ABARES, and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, or DAFF, to define the key data requirements. A sample of 11,000 businesses was selected to represent the 165,000 businesses which undertake agricultural activity. All information was collected under the Census and Statistics Act 1905, where the Australian Statistician can direct a respondent to respond if necessary and where it is a legislative requirement for the ABS to maintain the confidentiality of those who are selected to take part in ABS surveys.

In March 2011, the selected businesses were sent a survey form by mail and were asked to report on the ownership of the businesses' land and water entitlements as at 31 December 2010. The ABS received an excellent response to this survey, with 92 per cent of businesses responding. The results not only consider the ownership of those businesses which undertake agricultural activity to the farm gate, but also those who own the agricultural land and water assets. Survey results indicated that, as at 31 December 2010, 99 per cent of agricultural businesses in Australia were entirely Australian owned, 89 per cent of agricultural land was entirely Australian owned, and 91 per cent of water entitlements for agricultural purposes were entirely Australian owned. As stated, this survey was a large survey, with a sample of 11,000 agricultural businesses which we believe represented the Australian farming industry. The businesses reporting that they were not fully Australian owned may have been either partially or entirely foreign-owned and, as such, the survey provides information about business land and water entitlements by the extent of their foreign ownership. The survey results are broadly comparable with levels of foreign ownership of agricultural businesses and land collected in the ABS's agricultural census of 1983-84, and I note that the ABS has not previously collected data on foreign ownership of agricultural water entitlements. Thank you.

CHAIR: Would you care to table the form you sent out?

Dr Charker : Absolutely. We can do that.

CHAIR: This was based on tax office advice on ABN numbers and qualification for agricultural tax deductibility?

Dr Charker : The form was not.

CHAIR: No, the sample was.

Dr Charker : Yes. So what we did—

CHAIR: So it was not related to title; it was related to ABN tax qualification?

Dr Charker : Yes. So essentially we have compiled, as we routinely do for any business or establishment survey that we run, a group of all the known businesses in operation in this country. One of the foundations of that frame, which is what we refer to it as, is in fact information from the Australian Taxation Office about businesses operating in Australia.

CHAIR: Could you also table the model that you used to produce the figures you produced?

Dr Charker : Would you be able to explain to me a bit more about what you mean by the model?

CHAIR: You have gone to ABN numbers and qualification for tax deductibility under the Tax Act for agriculture, so you could clearly distort the information you have gathered. You could get 300 farms within 100 kilometres of Canberra which are toy farms but which have a $50,000 turnover while excluding some huge operations simply by the way you have set out the form.

Dr Charker : If I can provide a bit more information: the starting point is all of the businesses who, based on information from the tax office, have indicated that they undertake some form of agricultural activity. On top of that we only look for at, for the purposes of this survey, businesses with an estimated value of agricultural operations of at least $5,000.

CHAIR: Jesus—what a joke! That is outrageous!

Dr Charker : That is standard practice in—

CHAIR: You need $50,000 as a trigger to qualify for a tax deduction in a business in agriculture, and you say $5,000?

Dr Charker : That is the standard method we use for all agricultural collections in the ABS.

CHAIR: My God you are out of date! That is a disgrace! Jesus!

Senator NASH: What are those 11,000 businesses that you said?

Dr Charker : There were 11,000 businesses surveyed for this collection.

Senator NASH: What is the average property size across those businesses?

CHAIR: You do not know.

Dr Charker : No; I would have to take that on notice.

CHAIR: You do not know!

Senator NASH: You can take that on notice, but do you have the bottom end of the range and the top end of the range? In percentiles can you break that down for me so it is from the biggest to the smallest and then how many of those business entities fall into each of the 10 per cent percentiles?

Dr Charker : We would have to take that on notice. I do not have those figures immediately here right now.

CHAIR: Could you just explain to me the $5,000 threshold?

Ms Hodges : It is consistent with all of our ABS surveys which we run where we set a threshold, and above $5,000 is the estimated value of operations. That will pick up your family-run farms where they are running an agricultural business; it does not pick up your hobby farms. It goes from there, and what we try to do is to pick up all of those who are running agricultural operations.

CHAIR: Is the $5,000 turnover or what?

Senator COLBECK: What does the $5,000 mean?

Ms Hodges : It is from the business activity statement.

CHAIR: Yes, that is turnover. But you do not qualify for a tax deduction on a farm until you have $50,000 of turnover, so how can you do it for $5,000? You do not qualify for primary production tax status until you get to $50,000.

Ms Hodges : It might help you if I clarify something: the way that we ran the survey and the key thing that underlines all of this is trying to represent the area of holding for all of agricultural activity in Australia. All of our ABS surveys for agriculture are based on what we call 'area of holding'. What we have tried to do is to represent all of the agricultural land and to look at the foreign ownership of that agricultural land. On top of that we look at businesses, so, when we are talking about the size of the business that is being operated for agricultural purposes, we are talking about an estimated value of over $5,000.

What we do then is select the businesses again. We have what we call a 'completely enumerated sector', which means that they will automatically be part of the survey, and then we also have a sampled survey. So we are trying to represent all of the agricultural activity in Australia.

Senator COLBECK: But how do you say that you do not include the hobby farms in that? How do you say that that does not pick up the hobby farms? We are really struggling to come to grips with that as a concept when you are talking about $5,000 as a business turnover. To those of us who have been or are involved in farming, that just does not compute.

Dr Charker : I think that all I can really do is make the point that, from that total number of farms or agricultural businesses operating, we split them out into a group of farms which absolutely will have received a survey form—that is, anyone we have information about who has any likelihood of being foreign owned, using tax data and our own data sources—and for the same group we make sure that we absolutely have surveyed the larger businesses which have a value of agricultural operations of over $10 million.

Senator COLBECK: So you are trying to get a representative sample—I get that.

Dr Charker : That is right.

Senator COLBECK: And 11,000 is a reasonable cohort of the estimated 165,000 estimated number, but the ranges are what we are trying to work out. You are starting at $5,000. Someone with a pony in the backyard would spend almost that much money on an annual basis.

CHAIR: You are talking about 35 lambs or five decent steers and you think that is a commercial enterprise. You do not qualify for tax deductibility in the operations of the people you have surveyed. They are not agriculturalists.

Dr Charker : What we are saying is that essentially we recognise there is going to be a lot of variation at those lower levels of value. We understand that. Therefore we actually sample from those. We do not send a survey form to all of them. They are sampled.

Senator COLBECK: Can we divide this cohort up into the sectors, for example? Can we go, say, from 5,000 to 50,000, 50,000 to 100,000?

Dr Charker : At the highest level, that is what we do when we split them into a group where everyone gets a survey form and a group where only a sample of them get a survey form.

Senator COLBECK: From our perspective, that is where we are going to start to see meaningful data.

Dr Charker : That is essentially what we have done.

Ms Hodges : I can tell you, based on our proportional methodology, that the final sample selection resulted in 54 per cent of all large businesses with an estimated value of agricultural operations greater than $5 million, on the survey frame being selected. Only six per cent of the microbusinesses, which are those that have less than $125,000, were selected, and seven per cent of small businesses, which are those between $125,000 and less than $500,000. So the majority of the actual sample that we selected were large businesses.

Senator JOYCE: In my miserable former life I was an accountant, and one of the things I had to do was audit. One of the things you have to do in an audit is actually go out and have a look at what you are talking about. If someone says, 'I have this many houses in a housing trust,' the auditor would kick you out the door and say, 'Just drive around to the street and make sure they are there.' Did you actually get out and visit some of these areas and talk to some of these people?

Dr Charker : For this particular collection we have not done that, but I would make the point that we run a much broader agricultural statistics program than just this collection where we do go out on a fairly regular basis and make contact with agricultural businesses.

Senator JOYCE: So you think this is a desk audit basically.

Ms Hodges : Just to add a clarifying point to that: before we send out the survey form we do go out and test the survey form in the field to make sure that it is understood by those—

Senator JOYCE: Where did you do that?

Ms Hodges : I cannot tell you the exact area. I would have to take that on notice. That is something that may be confidential; I will need to check that.

Senator JOYCE: If I were to test your theory—I mean, when those numbers came back they just did not ring true to me; they just did not make any sense, because I think of where I live and I would say that 25 to 30 per cent of the country in my district would be foreign-owned, either directly or indirectly. One of the ways they do it indirectly, of course, is that maybe the nominal people are Australian but all the finance is overseas. The way they control you is not necessarily through an equity instrument; they control you via a debt instrument. In your analysis did you say: maybe their controlling entity is debt, where you have a nominal company and then something in the Cayman Islands, but where the actual money is coming from is foreign and where the control is is foreign, and the ultimate ownership, by reason of a mortgage document, is foreign.

CHAIR: Not included in your survey were the title details, not included in your survey were trusts, and not included in your survey were mining companies.

Dr Charker : It is not as black and white as that. The situation is that we—

CHAIR: That is your own advice to us.

Dr Charker : were unable to track back to really complex chains of ownership. What we were able to do was go back a certain way, so that, where a respondent indicated that they themselves were not the owner, we asked them who the owner was and we went back to the owner. But if that owner in turn were owned by another sovereign fund, or there was some sort of situation beyond that, we were not necessarily able to track back as far as that.

Senator JOYCE: Did you say earlier that 91 per cent replied?

Dr Charker : Ninety-two; that is right.

Senator JOYCE: I would also suggest that if I had something to hide I would not reply. Did you have a look at the eight per cent who did not reply and say, 'I wonder why they did not'?

Ms Hodges : We have a policy with all of our agricultural collections where we try to ensure especially the large companies are represented, so we had very high response rates for what we called our 'fully enumerated' sector. I think it was around 97 per cent of the large businesses who actually responded. Yes, we do go back and do what we call our intensive follow-up, and actually follow up businesses.

Senator NASH: Did you specifically look at that eight per cent and see if there was any trend in the non-reply?

Ms Hodges : We specifically looked at whether it was in particular areas where it affected the industry estimates for Australia. We also looked at whether it affected particular regions and then we did do more intensive follow-up in those areas. In terms of actually going back and looking at trends, we have not gone through and looked at trends in specific, apart from validating the actual results to say that we think they are accurate.

Senator COLBECK: Is it possible to give us the compliance rate in the various categories when you break that information down for us?

Dr Charker : Which categories were you thinking of?

Senator COLBECK: You have talked about microbusinesses, 5,000 to 125,000—I think that is the numbers, if I have it right. Then you had another range which, from recollection, was 125,000 to 500,000. Is that correct?

Ms Hodges : We will need to take that on notice.

Senator COLBECK: Then there are the larger businesses, which I think you said were 500,000-plus. They are effectively the three ranges that you have given to us so far. I am interested in getting the percentages of each of the agribusiness land and water ownership in each of those classifications, but also the compliance rate in each of those classifications.

Dr Charker : We will take that on notice.

Senator COLBECK: That is fine.

Dr Charker : There may be some issues with the robustness of some of the numbers in terms of proportion of ownership information, in terms of by land and by water, at some of those levels of breakdown—simply because there are fewer businesses in some of those levels and so the numbers become shaky. Certainly we should be able to take on notice and try to provide you with some more detailed response rate information. If we could just note that we will go away and try to find that.

Senator COLBECK: That is fine.

CHAIR: Would you see your survey as a rough guess?

Dr Charker : We would see it as providing quality estimates of foreign ownership at the Australian and state levels.

CHAIR: As I understand it, one of the qualifications for you to send the survey out was based on the tax status and the ABNs.

Dr Charker : It was based on a business indicating to the tax office that their business performed any agricultural activity.

CHAIR: All right. In the case of Shenhua, who have bought 40-odd farms, did they qualify?

Dr Charker : They may have been in scope had they indicated to the tax office—

CHAIR: But they are miners; they did not. I understand that they were not included.

Dr Charker : I cannot comment for Shenhua. I certainly cannot provide information about a particular respondent because of confidentiality reasons.

CHAIR: With great respect to the ABS, and the ABS have been honest enough in a private discussion with me to say that there is a changing phenomenon on the horizon and that is sovereign phenomenon, some of the greatest foreign ownership propositions in the recent two or three years which have a sovereign arm to them have been mining companies. My understanding is that mining companies did not make the cut.

Dr Charker : They would have made the cut had they reported that they continued to undertake agricultural operations on that land that in this case Shenhua or someone may have owned.

Senator JOYCE: Dr Charker, they do not because the farmer who is still there conducts it. They own the land but they are not conducting farming.

CHAIR: Exactly.

Senator JOYCE: They do not conduct the farming operation but they certainly own the land.

CHAIR: They missed the cut.

Senator JOYCE: So this the question: if, for instance, I had the Great Aussie Farm Company Pty Ltd, for which the directors are Jacky Hodges and Jill Charker, but they got all their debt financing from overseas and in that debt instrument was basically an instrument of control, would you note that company as Australian or foreign?

Ms Hodges : They would have self-identified as Australian owned.

Senator JOYCE: Australian owned?

Ms Hodges : Yes.

Senator JOYCE: So what happens if we have the Great Big Foreign Company Pty Ltd and they buy up a whole heap of country and then they just lease it straight back to the farmers and they just own the title, the farmers are back on the place working away, and they have no ABN that says they are agricultural. The farmers still there say they are agriculture. Would you pick them up?

Ms Hodges : Yes. It went to the operator of the land. The question we ask them was whether they owned the land. If they did own their land and they only leased it we went back to the original owner of the land until we got to that direct owner of that parcel of land.

Senator JOYCE: Even if that direct owner never said they were involved in agriculture and had never put an ABN as an involvement in agriculture?

Ms Hodges : Yes, that is correct.

Dr Charker : Yes, because we would have been to the operator of the land and they would have referred us back to the owner.

Senator JOYCE: In following any of this up, did you ever go out and say, 'Righto, I'm going to take a sample of this section of country in northern New South Wales'? Why? I can think right now of 10 farmers who have been approached in extremely good farms in northern New South Wales—right now. Did you ever go and take a sample and say, 'Right, let's go for a wander around Moree. Drive up and down the road and actually go in and knock on the door and say g'day to people and do some on-the-ground assessment'? Did you ever do that?

Dr Charker : For this collection, no. There was certainly not the time nor the funding available to support that. But, as I said, we do maintain field visits for our broader agricultural collections, and to the extent that we had any information at all from that or other statistics we have got which indicated to us that a particular area or a particular company may have had a degree of foreign ownership, then automatically we made sure that that area or that company was included and received a survey form.

Senator EDWARDS: Following on from Senator Joyce's comments, do you have any idea whether there was a large amount of respondents that responded with the fact that they were no longer owned by themselves and were owned by foreign companies? Did it stand out to you or was it a very, very small number?

Ms Hodges : I think the results from the survey, which talks about the actual ownership, is probably what you are asking. In particular areas there were greater amounts of foreign ownership than in other states, for instance. The Northern Territory comes up as one. But in terms of the ABS, our role is to collect the information and to make sure it is robust and to make sure it is an accurate reflection of what is happening in the industry. That is what we have done in trying to select a representative sample from the agricultural industry.

CHAIR: We actually have—sadly, it has 'Confidential' across it—the guidelines that you used. So I will not look at them! But it is so flawed I cannot believe it.

Senator ADAMS: I wanted to make the comment that the reason the committee is so concerned is the fact that the statistics you have got—and you have handed them on—then they go to the Foreign Investment Review Board and they take those as gospel. So if you have a flawed area. This $5000—and I'm sorry if I'm sounded rude, but, really—having been a farmer for a long time, that did not ring true at all, even for a hobby farm. It is quite a crazy figure. The problem for us is that this is then skewed where the guidelines come in for the Foreign Investment Review Board and the whole issue. As a committee I think we have a lot more hard work to do because of this particular—

Senator EDWARDS: Who gave you terms of reference?

Dr Charker : The origins of this arose out of a private member's bill brought by John Cobb. That has been led to some discussions between the ABS's minister, the Hon. Bill Shorten. That provided the overall direction, if you like, for the conduct of the survey—the requirement, if you like. In terms of the details or the specifics around what the parameters were and the specifications, ABS worked very closely with Commonwealth Treasury, with Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and ABARES to clarify from their point of view and we consulted closely to understand what level of quality of estimates, statistically speaking, they were looking for, what breakdowns as well as obviously the time requirement around when we needed to deliver this information.

CHAIR: My understanding is the great restriction on you was the timeframe, which was all about legal cover. Fair enough. So that is the reason you perhaps did not go to the states and go to the land titles office, which would be the completely accurate way to do this. Would it be fair to say that an disinterested person standing at the back of the room listening to how you went about this would say that there was a lot of unreliability about what could have come out of this? Based on the fact that you did not do mining, you did not do trusts, you could not look down into the complex corporate arrangements hidden away. We had an instance just last week just down the track here towards Sydney where two smart lawyers from a law firm bought a very prominent property from a very prominent person who thought he was selling out to a couple of successful lawyers when in fact he was selling out to a Korean coal mine. You would not have picked any of that up. If you had your time again—and do not answer this if it is going to get you into trouble—would there have been a better model you could have used?

Dr Charker : I think you are correct when you identify that there certainly were time constraints around the delivery of the information. That said, we did not use, and we still maintain that we think that we would not use, land trust or land title information. There are several reasons for that. One is that there is a complex relationship that exists between a land title and the businesses which exist—it is not a one-to-one relationship. There is some level of complexity associated with working out for a given land title, who are the owning businesses and vice versa. In order to build a sample based on that information you would have had to create a sample which was much larger and therefore much less efficient from a statistical point of view and more costly. The second reason that we would not do this is that in order to secure land title information from land titles all over the country, one would have to negotiate agreement for the provision of that information with each individual state or territory.

CHAIR: True.

Dr Charker : That also was not possible within this time frame.

CHAIR: So, if we are to inform the decision makers—and we have heard about the hierarchical journey to the Foreign Investment Review Board and its journey to the government—would it not be responsible to actually understand who owns the title to Australia's agricultural land rather than some tax proposition?

Dr Charker : It may be Senator. I cannot comment on what the FIRB should do. I can say that the methodology that we used is completely consistent with all business based collections that we run.

CHAIR: It absolutely does not tell us who owns the land.

Dr Charker : We believe we have provided information about that.

CHAIR: To the best of your ability, given the time constraints.

Dr Charker : We have noted that we unable to track all the way back through complex chains of ownership. We note and have acknowledged that.

CHAIR: Does that not say that this is totally flawed?

Dr Charker : We would not accept that, Senator.

CHAIR: I bet you would not. I do not want to get you the sack but we are supposed to base our—anyway, I will not tell you what I think.

Senator XENOPHON: I think they know! I have a couple of questions. When your statistics came out the government put out a media release saying that 99 per cent of agricultural businesses were entirely Australian owned. You were not responsible for that release I take it? Or were you?

Dr Charker : No, not at all. We put out our own media release which you can find but we certainly are not responsible for the government's media release.

Senator XENOPHON: The government's media release, as I understand it, was entitled '99 per cent of Australian agricultural business is entirely Australian owned'. That is a bit misleading, is it not, given the work that you have done on this to date?

Dr Charker : In what regard do you regard it as misleading, Senator?

Senator XENOPHON: Your study found that 11 per cent of agricultural land and nine per cent of water entitlements are either wholly or partially foreign owned. Is that correct?

Dr Charker : Yes. Let me just clarify the information.

Senator XENOPHON: I am just asking you whether you—

Dr Charker : The information we released was that 99 per cent of agricultural businesses in Australia were entirely Australian owned.

Senator XENOPHON: Yes.

Senator NASH: Can I ask what the definition of agricultural business was?

Dr Charker : Yes. Would you like to comment on that?

Ms Hodges : It is whether they undertake agricultural activity as either their primary or secondary activity.

Senator XENOPHON: Okay, but in terms of the overall value of agricultural production owned by partially or wholly foreign owned businesses, do we go to the 11 per cent figure or the nine per cent figure. In terms of the actual value of—

Dr Charker : Value is a different concept.

Senator XENOPHON: Yes. Was that covered in this survey?

Dr Charker : No. What we have reported on here is number of businesses; proportion of land owned and proportion of water entitlements, not value of production.

Senator XENOPHON: You could look at value of production if you agreed to do so?

Dr Charker : Hypothetically, yes.

Senator XENOPHON: Because value is very important here. You would want to look at the value. You could say that 99 per cent of businesses are entirely Australian owned but there could be 20 or 30 per cent of value which—

Dr Charker : Which are accounted for.

CHAIR: How can you say 'area of land' if you do not know the title for that?

Senator XENOPHON: And value of production as well.

CHAIR: You say what proportion of the area of land, but you do not know that.

Dr Charker : We do have benchmark information about area of land, Senator.

CHAIR: That is as good as the model you build it on. If you leave big pieces out you could have a very flawed model. Do you agree?

Dr Charker : I do not agree that we could be potentially leaving big pieces out.

CHAIR: But if you do not know, for a company that I have which has a blind trust through the Cayman Islands which you cannot track, who is the real owner, how could it be accurate?

Dr Charker : As I have said today, we believe that the information that we have provided is accurate, noting that it does not cover complex chains of ownership.

CHAIR: I fully appreciate time restraints and political direction. Was this at the direction of Mr Shorten?

Dr Charker : There was a request that we conduct the survey, but it is entirely at the direction of the Australian Statistician to independently determine the method, the questions, et cetera.

CHAIR: So who is that person who had this discretion?

Dr Charker : The Australian Statistician.

CHAIR: Who is that?

Dr Charker : That is Brian Pink.

CHAIR: Perhaps we should have him in for a little discussion.

Dr Charker : That is at your discretion, Senator.

CHAIR: Thank you very much.

Senator XENOPHON: I would like to finish up on this, Chair, because I know that time is short. You do not see that there is anything potentially misleading in having a big headline figure saying 99 per cent of agricultural business is entirely Australian owned when that does not actually go to the land and water entitlements that Senator Milne has spoken about and also the value of the agricultural production?

Dr Charker : I really cannot comment on what the government's media release was, but if you refer to our media release—

Senator XENOPHON: No, I am asking you—

Dr Charker : Yes, but if you refer to our media release, where we did say that 99 per cent of agricultural businesses were entirely Australian owned, we do not believe that that was misleading, because we had clearly stated that we were not looking at value of production; we were looking at the numbers of businesses. We have made that quite clear.

Senator XENOPHON: My very last question, following Senator Joyce's and your line of questioning, Chair, is this: I do not know if you were listening to the evidence earlier today of the Foreign Investment Review Board.

Dr Charker : I was not here.

Senator XENOPHON: It was on line. It was Treasury's representative on the Foreign Investment Review Board. There were some questions I put on notice at last estimates that looked at issues of chains of ownership where, for instance, there was a guarantee involved—the sort of thing Senator Joyce was alluding to—where, as to the effective control, the title shows that it is Australian owned and the mortgage documents show it is Australian owned but there could be a guarantee behind it where effectively the control is from somewhere overseas. You really did not have the brief to look at that, did you?

Dr Charker : That is correct.

Senator XENOPHON: Thank you.

Senator NASH: Can I just follow up on the value issue, because this is spot on the money. As you say, you did not do it on value. The 99 per cent of businesses being Australian owned could, hypothetically, be only 30 per cent of the total value of the 100 per cent of businesses.

Dr Charker : It could be. We do not know what their contribution is in a financial production sense.

Senator NASH: That is the point. Just so I am clear, a very small per cent of businesses that are not Australian owned could own a significant portion of the overall percentage value of the 100 per cent?

Dr Charker : They may or they may not. We have no information to inform that.

Senator NASH: It is just that we do not know.

Senator JOYCE: To give you another example, Dr Charker: if we had 99 titles in this room and then one other person owned the whole of the ACT, you would say that 99 per cent of the ACT was owned by Australians?

Dr Charker : Yes—technically, on that basis. Numerically, as I have made quite clear, I think, we have consulted. We discussed intensively with Treasury, ABARES and DAFF about what was required. The value of production was not required, and so therefore I am sorry that I am unable to provide more information about that.

Senator COLBECK: Can that information be informed in any way by breaking down the different categories that we are looking at? Going back to the figure that you gave us before, you have six per cent of farms in the 5,000 to 125,000. Knowing the numbers and the proportion, can that actually give you some sense of scale to build in around the information that you have?

Dr Charker : It may. We would have to go and look at that. It may. If we can look at the information—

Senator COLBECK: Is it possible for you to have a look at that for us?

Dr Charker : Yes.

Senator COLBECK: Take it on notice, obviously.

Dr Charker : We are happy to.

Senator COLBECK: I would be interested to know whether that data gives any sense of that scale, because, again, I think it is fairly obvious from the committee's questions—

Dr Charker : I appreciate your interest. We will take that on notice.

Senator NASH: I think I am going to ask it in a different way from the way that Senator Colbeck just did: as to that one per cent that is not Australian owned, can you provide to the committee the turnover of each of those businesses that fell into that one per cent?

Dr Charker : We can take that on notice. We will investigate what we can provide and, to the extent that we can, we shall.

Senator COLBECK: Or which of the categories they might fall into?

Senator NASH: Or which of the categories they might fall into?

Dr Charker : That is right. I think all I can say really is that we accept that there is a level of interest here and we will go away and investigate what we can provide.

Senator NASH: Can I just ask one other question on a different matter. Is it in June that you do your normal farm survey which goes out to all farms?

Ms Hodges : The agricultural census was done in June, and the preliminary results come out tomorrow. The more detailed results will come out in June next year.

Dr Charker : And that is five-yearly.

Senator NASH: With that one, given the interest in this topic, did you ask any questions about foreign ownership in the survey that went to all?

Dr Charker : No, we did not.

Senator NASH: Why not?

Dr Charker : There was insufficient time. In terms of the time in which this information about foreign ownership was required to be produced, it was simply not possible, at the late stage when we were approached to collect this information, to add that into the agricultural census.

CHAIR: You could add the questions without the information.

Senator NASH: Chair, just one second. What was the time frame? How hard is it to add a question onto a sheet?

Ms Hodges : If you have a look at the survey form, there are a number of pages to collect the information for this. The agricultural census form was locked in before this was decided, and the big concern was in terms of the timeliness of providing this information. Because this information came out in September—

Senator NASH: No, I am not talking about it as part of the same thing; I am talking about doing it by running it in parallel. You have done all this other stuff, and that is all fine, but why wouldn't you, as a separate opportunity to try to garner some information from a survey which is going to all of those agricultural entities, include some sort of questioning on the survey—and not just a sample, as you have done with the others—which would go to every single entity?

Dr Charker : It is quite possible, going forward, that that might be something that could be done.

Senator NASH: But I am just trying to get clear what the length of time was that made it impossible for you to do it for the last one.

Dr Charker : I do not have the specific number of days with me, but, as Jacky has said, the form and all the systems and all the testing was locked down and well and truly underway before any this was finalised or requested of us, so we were unable to incorporate all of those questions about foreign ownership into the agricultural census form. It was operationally not possible.

Ms Hodges : And, if we sent it as a separate form from the agricultural census form, it would increase the time required for farmers to fill in the form. The cost to conduct it would also be substantially greater.

Senator NASH: Could you take on notice, just in terms of the reference to the greater cost, the question of how much extra it would have cost? An extra couple of pages for a farmer is not that onerous, so that is probably not a good reason not to do it.

Dr Charker : We are—

Senator NASH: I am interested in the cost issue which may have been one of the reasons.

Dr Charker : I can certainly try to provide an estimate of that, recognising that we are talking about hypotheticals and counterfactuals.

Senator NASH: It is just that Ms Hodges raised it as one of the reasons that it was not done, so obviously there would be some sort of assessment—

Dr Charker : Yes, but I am just making the point that, because we did not do it, it would be our best estimate. We can certainly try to provide that. There is, though, an issue, as Jacky said, about response burden. It is a real concept and it is something that we try to minimise. We are conscious of the load that ABS can place on businesses—and particularly on large businesses—so it is worth noting that there are good reasons sometimes for being cautious about the load in terms of questions and forms that we provide and require people to complete.

Senator NASH: Did you ask any farmers if additional information would make it prohibitive for them to fill it in?

Dr Charker : Not on this occasion, no.

Senator NASH: So you are only assuming.

Dr Charker : No, that is based on this particular case.

Ms Hodges : On the statistics.

Dr Charker : Yes.

Senator ADAMS: So the survey going to all farmers was not test-run anywhere; you just did it.

Dr Charker : The agricultural census was certainly tested. It is routinely tested.

Senator ADAMS: Where was it tested?

Dr Charker : As I said earlier in response to Senator Joyce's question, we would have to the provide information about the locations in broad terms of where we did the field testing, but we certainly undertook field testing.

CHAIR: On notice, if you like: what were the agreed output specifications for the survey?

Dr Charker : We will take that on notice, Senator.

CHAIR: There will be a series of other questions which I will put on notice.

Dr Charker : That is fine, Senator.

CHAIR: Because my understanding is that it included area.

Senator MILNE: I want to add to Senator Nash's list of questions on notice. What is the land area represented by the one per cent of Australian agricultural businesses which are not Australian owned?

Dr Charker : Okay—we will note that.

Senator McKENZIE: I note that the methodology looked at region and turnover in terms of breaking down the data. I am wondering if you have any information around industry sector and whether ABARES or DAFF was interested in that sort of data being generated from this type of survey.

Dr Charker : We do.

Ms Hodges : Can I just clarify: when you are talking about 'industry sector', are you talking about within agriculture?

Senator McKENZIE: Yes.

Ms Hodges : The information actually does provide it and it does go into a variety of different industry sectors.

Dr Charker : In the actual publication we provide some breakdowns.

Senator McKENZIE: So might that be another way, when you cross reference it against the other data that has been generated, that should be able to get a picture, if you like, of either land size or monetary value—that valuation question?

Dr Charker : It is potentially another dimension. Can I just make the point that, without having had a look at the particular numbers right now that you are looking for, when you start breaking down high-level numbers into more and more disaggregated components, you start getting fewer and fewer businesses in each of those possible combinations, and what that means is that it is possible that some of the numbers that we produce for a particular level of combination are going to be extremely flaky. So, with that caveat, which I think is really important, we will certainly take that on notice.

Senator McKENZIE: Finally, am I to understand that the ag census is done every five years?

Dr Charker : That is correct.

Senator McKENZIE: So we have potentially to wait until 2016 before we can actually start beginning to generate real data about foreign ownership from a different methodological perspective.

Dr Charker : There are no questions at the moment on the agricultural Census form about foreign ownership. So, at the moment, there is no time when there will be additional fresh information about foreign ownership at all. At this moment in time it is not planned for the 2016 agricultural Census.

CHAIR: Could you confirm that agricultural businesses which own land or water, but are not in the business of agriculture, are in the Census?

Dr Charker : They may have been in scope, yes.

CHAIR: What is that code for in bureaucratic talk?

Dr Charker : That means they may have been part of that overall universe of businesses that we have sampled from and selected from. They had the probability of being in the survey.

CHAIR: How could you have, as your main or secondary business, a business with turnover of $5000—is that gross or net? What is that $5000?

Dr Charker : We might have to take that on notice to give you much more detail about that.

CHAIR: Yes, but you sent these surveys out. How did you trigger the $5000?

Dr Charker : That was based on taxation information about turnover; that is my understanding. But we will have to take that on notice. That is the level of technical detail we will have the check to make sure—

CHAIR: Well, at $5000 turnover for tax purposes does not qualify you for agriculture; it is $50,000.

Dr Charker : I suppose the issue here is that what we are looking at is trying to identify the largest scope possible or the most comprehensive scope possible of businesses who may potentially—

CHAIR: But the tax laws says—

Dr Charker : need to be reported on.

CHAIR: You have got to have $50,000 turnover.

Senator COLBECK: Would those thresholds that you are talking about apply in other survey work that you do?

Dr Charker : Yes.

Senator COLBECK: So, in that context, you maintain a consistency in the data that you are collecting?

Dr Charker : That is correct.

Senator COLBECK: So, in the farm survey, for example, does it incorporate things from $5000 up?

Dr Charker : Yes.

Ms Hodges : The agricultural resources management survey does. So our ag census does as well. And the reason we do that for consistency is so that we can actually validate the data against other sources as well.

Senator COLBECK: So you have the capacity to track the data over time?

Ms Hodges : That is correct.

CHAIR: So does that mean that, if you have two peach trees in your back garden and you sell $5,000 worth of peaches at the local farmers market, you qualify?

Senator JOYCE: It means 99 per cent of the alpaca farms at Timbumburi are Australian owned.

CHAIR: We are most grateful for your lovely input this afternoon, and we will most definitely be putting some questions on notice. Will most definitely be asking Mr Pink as well. God bless you, and send our kindest regards to everyone back at ABS.

Dr Charker : Thank you very much.

CHAIR: Thank you very much. That concludes today's evidence.

Committee adjourned at 15:59