Sunday Night: July 5

This weekend on Sunday Night Chris Bath looks into foreign ownership issues in regional Australia.

Sold!
Many of the world’s largest nations are on a global hunt for farmland and a secure way to feed their populations and that race is rolling to and through Australia’s rich agricultural country. China’s leading the way, determined to acquire land, livestock, indeed, in many cases, the entire supply chain. Trouble is that for many farmers the shopping spree is coming at a time when they’ve been beaten by drought and crushed by debt so they’re in no position to repel the aggressive buyers or secure the best possible price for their life’s work. Sunday Night’s Chris Bath hitches a ride with a busload of cashed-up Chinese investors sizing up our big backyard and looking to snap up big chunks of Australia’s agriculture industry for their own. On the trail through central Queensland, Chris discovers heartbreaking stories of farmers on the brink and whose farms are vulnerable to acquisition. Many are concerned we’re selling off our own national capacity to feed ourselves. In this important Sunday Night investigation Chris also questions the shameful lack of information about who owns what in the bush. And as policy makers play catch-up with ownership registers and new rules for foreign buyers, Canberra’s newly signed Free Trade Agreement with China is also set to dramatically change the landscape.

Raging Bulls
As if bull riding wasn’t crazy enough. Now promoters of the sport have turned all the settings up to 11 and the result is one of the fastest growing, most ridiculously dangerous arena sports around. There’s more money, more fame and a whole new world of risk and pain. Breeders have decided to take nature into their own hands and build the perfect beast. They’re genetically engineering some of the meanest, most ornery animals ever to enter the ring and it takes a special kind of lunatic to take them on. Get aboard, Ben Jones. The Aussie has taken so many bone-crunching spills on his way to the top of the US Professional Bull Riding Circuit he’s decided to hold off replacing his teeth until his career is over. Sunday Night’s Alex Cullen enters the white-knuckle world of PBR where the winners are toothless grinners and the losers can pay a high price. Just ask up-and-comer Jordan Robb who’s now confined to a wheelchair after breaking his neck in a sickening fall.

Sunday at 8.15pm on Seven.