Gina Lennox

Absentee ownership of rural land: trends, modes and implications

Worldwide, absentee ownership of rural land has historical significance and contemporary extent. In the last fifty years, farmers migrating to urban centres and urban dwellers and corporations purchasing rural properties have caused an increase in absentee ownership.

In Australia and elsewhere, the granting of collective land rights to indigenous people has resulted in land being managed by absentee councils for people who may not reside there. Yet absentee ownership has received little attention in academic literature. There are no national statistics on absentee ownership in Australia. Worldwide, research has usually focused on a single type of ownership. Scant attention has been given to a comparative analysis of the trends, motivations and implications of the different modes.

Gina will investigate these research gaps through the development of a matrix reflecting the different modes, a review of international literature and a case study of a rural district in southern Australia.

Gina’s research fall into the CRC’s Program 4 research area.

Objectives:

• Determine the historical significance and contemporary extent of absentee ownership of rural land.
• Determine the modes, trends, and extent of absentee ownership in the Lachlan district of NSW
• Determine the macro and micro factors contributing to absentee ownership in the Lachlan district of NSW
• Work out Implications of absentee ownership for agriculture, the environment and community.

For more information, email Gina.