David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow Treasurer, the member for Hume, for his amendment and wholeheartedly support the commonsense, back-to-basics solutions to what is a draconian bill that's going to have a significant impact on every Australian. This is going to drive up your cost of living. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, this government is going to add an extra $2.3 billion worth of red tape costs to those people in particular who are producing the food that you enjoy every day. This mandatory reporting around scope 3 emissions means that farmers in my electorate, little old Maranoa, such as a beef producer in Roma selling their beef to Woolworths, will have to be able to disclose to Woolworths and to their bank their emissions profile. That's an enormous cost. There's not even the science for these farmers to do that at a reasonable cost, so that cost is going to have to be borne by you, the Australian taxpayer, because you're going to have to pay more at the checkout.

Why would you impose an extra cost on farmers when there are families today that are making real decisions at supermarkets? They're putting fresh produce back on the shelf because they can't afford it. They can't afford a meal. They're actually feeding the kids rather than themselves because they don't have the money to go to the supermarket to have three meals a day. In a country of 27 million people, we produce enough food and fibre for 80 million people, and we have a cost-of-living crisis where people are making those decisions in this country today.

We as legislators have an opportunity to do something about that, to reduce the costs, not increase the costs. We had the Minister for Climate Change and Energy and the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry turn up to Toowoomba about a week and a half ago for a sustainability conference with the agricultural industry, telling them that we would never impose mandatory reporting of scope 3 emissions of farmers—'We wouldn't impose that on you.' Well, in this bill they're not, but they're doing it by stealth. They didn't have the courage to look those farmers and those industry people in the eye and tell them, 'Well, actually, we are, because, when you go to the bank, they're not going to be able to lend you a cent unless you can give us your emissions profile.' They are doing it by stealth. If you believe so passionately in this ideology, then have the courage to look Australians in the eye and tell them the truth: that you are going to ask little old farmers out there that are producing the food and fibre that you want. You're going to hit them with another cost. 2.3 billion dollars a year—that is what's going to be added to everything we do in this country.

Now, no-one's against us trying to reduce our emissions, but there is a uniquely Australian way of achieving it. Part of that should be common sense. Unfortunately, what this bill fails to achieve in any way is common sense. To actually impose this on primary producers when you've already had 16,000 small businesses go into liquidation since Anthony Albanese came to government—you've got to ask: why would you continue to put pressure on those that employ people in our country? Governments don't create jobs; small businesses do. The only jobs that are created here the poor old taxpayer pays for. So you should be creating an environment for our small businesses—and that includes farmers—to be able to employ people. If you impose this type of ideology on our primary producers, then it has to get passed on to taxpayers. I say to this government, when you go and look people in the eye and you give them a promise that you wouldn't be mandating around climate disclosures, and you do that publicly, then you should follow through. What this means is it's not just the banks; is also the Elders agent and the Nutrien agent who sells them chemicals or cattle, because they get caught up on this. They have to report the scope 3 emissions of their customers. That's the little old farmer in Roma and the little old farmer in Wagga sitting there producing your food and fibre. The ideology doesn't meet the practical reality of what it's going to cost the Australian taxpayer.

You can have all this grandiose ideology but, ultimately, there's one simple principle in life: someone's got to pay. That's what this mob is forgetting—someone's got to pay. There's also a little chestnut in the top drawer of this government that they've been in consultation with the agricultural industry around. It's around the safeguard mechanism and methane and the fact that they signed up to an international pledge of a 30 per cent reduction in methane by 2030. The agriculture and meat industries are all for trying to reduce emissions, but the safeguard mechanism was put in place to allow technology to be created and then adopted over time by 2050 to allow industry to reduce their emissions. There is no technology, no scientific way to reduce methane from cattle. We can't do it yet. Instead, the consultations with this government—and on their past record of what they did in Toowoomba a couple of weeks ago, saying, 'No way in the world will we mandate this,'—have been telling them that the big beef producers in this country will fall into the safeguard mechanism. They must reduce their methane emissions by 4.95 per cent every year between now and 2030. There's no technological solution to do that, so the only way to do that is to reduce your herd numbers, and if you reduce supply, prices go up. If you think it's tough buying meat at the checkout at the moment, wait until that little chestnut hits you.

This is the insanity of it. Our 20 biggest beef producers are now being threatened with effectively being put under a safeguard mechanism that will actually drive up the cost of food. At some point, the ideology has to get to the practical reality about food security for every Australian. They should be able to go to a butcher or a supermarket in this country and not have to miss out on a meal. I would have thought this place, this great institution that we have been given the privilege to stand in, would have thought primarily that that is one of the core responsibilities that we have been given—to ease that burden on our fellow Australians so that they can have three meals a day. I think it's a shame on all of us that there are families making those heart-wrenching decisions at supermarkets every day today. So why would you make it worse? Why would you add $2.3 billion of extra costs onto farmers in this reckless race to try to achieve a goal by 2030?

There is a human toll to this. That human toll is those young families and those young people who are at university or in low-paying jobs who are making those decisions today. I would have thought it was up to every one of us to make sure the decisions they make at that supermarket is about making healthy choices, about having the freshest and best-produced food in the world—from Australian farmers. Unfortunately, this government is going to put that continually out of the reach of those people. That's the human toll the decision this government is going to make today will have. That's why Australians need to understand the ideology of this government. While I respect they have a different view to me, and I respect their ideology is different, I just believe there's a different way we can achieve this. There is a uniquely Australian way. We can use some common sense. We can use the sovereignty of the resources that we have been blessed with in this country to achieve all our international commitments without the human toll—without the heart-wrenching human toll that people right around this country are making every day. But if this government is hell-bent on this ideology, understand that human toll will grow.

That's not what we should be about in this place. That's not what we've been given the privilege to come and do. We've been given the privilege to come here and make Australians' lives better and easier. But, instead, an ideology has got in the way of the practical reality. So I commend the amendment that the shadow Treasurer has made, because that is the basic common sense that we've got to get back to. You can't keep spending Australian taxpayers' money to solve the nation's problems and you can't keep taxing them into submission, because there is a human toll and that human toll will be squarely at the feet of the Albanese government.

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