Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is relaxed about the sale of Australia's biggest dairy farm to a Chinese buyer.
Treasurer Scott Morrison last week approved the sale of Van Diemen's Land Co to China's Moon Lake Investments for $280 million.
Since the start of settlement in Australia Van Diemen's Land Corporation had always been foreign owned, Mr Joyce told ABC TV.
"So it's hard to have an argument about foreign ownership when it's already foreign owned," Mr Joyce said.
The company milks about 19,000 cows on 25 farms in northwest Tasmania, supplying Fonterra - the world's largest exporter of dairy products.
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Van Diemen's Land Co is one of Australia's oldest companies and was established in London in 1824 and granted 350,000 hectares of land in Tasmania the following year.
It has been majority owned by the New Plymouth District Council, based in the Taranaki region of NZ.
Mr Joyce said his preference will always be for Australians to own Australian agricultural assets.
"I'm not going to stand back idly and let any bid go through. If people call me xenophobic because of that, then so be it," he said.
The federal government needed to find a balance on foreign agriculture ownership.
"If we let them all through, people would be screaming at me that I was too weak and never stood up for them," Mr Joyce said.
"If I block them all, they'd rightly say I was parochial and xenophobic."
He insisted the federal government was "trying to find a happy medium."
