Checklist · Agribusiness & Rural Law
Foreign investment in agricultural land: FIRB approval and Register checklist
Checklist for a foreign person acquiring an interest in Australian agricultural land: foreign person test, monetary thresholds, open sale process, approval timing, and notices to the Register of Foreign Ownership of Australian Assets.
- Kind
- Checklist. Steps or checks to work through and tick off.
- Where it applies
- Australia
- AI use
- Yellow AI can help in set ways. A lawyer checks specific points before use.
- Law stated as at
- 17 October 2026
- Status
- Maintained. Checked against the cited sources on 17 October 2026.
- Version
- 1
- Source
- Written for this library
When to use it
Use when a client that is, or may be, a foreign person buys, leases or otherwise acquires an interest in agricultural land or water entitlements. Do not use for residential land, national security land, or business acquisitions without adding the relevant tests.
How AI may be used
AI may track notification deadlines across a portfolio and summarise guidance, but the foreign person test and thresholds change and must be applied by the lawyer to each transaction.
AI may
- Build a portfolio table of agricultural land and water interests with acquisition dates and Register notice due dates.
- Summarise the current FIRB guidance notes into a checklist for the lawyer to confirm.
- Draft the factual background for an application from instructions, marked as a draft.
AI must not
- Must not decide whether the client is a foreign person, foreign government investor or FTA partner investor.
- Must not apply monetary thresholds or state that approval is not needed.
- Must not lodge or submit anything to FIRB or the ATO.
The lawyer checks
- The foreign person test applied to the whole ownership chain, including trusts and funds.
- Cumulative agricultural land holdings, including associates, against the threshold that applies to this investor.
- Evidence that the sale process was open and transparent, or grounds for an exception.
- Register notices diarised for 30 days after each relevant event.
Method: how the Green, Yellow and Red levels are decided. This is guidance for planning, not legal advice.
Official form
Open the official form. Always use the current version from the issuer.
Read the full text
The full text is for signed-in accounts. It is free. When you sign in you can:
- read the whole precedent, with its drafting notes beside it;
- copy it, or download it as a Word file or Markdown;
- add it to your firm’s knowledge base, so colleagues can find it;
- let the AI tools you connect read it from that knowledge base.
The summary, the law it rests on and the AI-use guidance above stay public. Privacy.
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