Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

I will briefly explain the small amendments to this bill, the Australian National Registry of Emissions Units Bill 2011. The first is to clause 66. It is a technical correction which makes an amendment to replace the reference to 'Australian carbon credit' units with a reference to 'non-Kyoto international emissions' units. The second is a short amendment to clause 82 which ensures that decisions made under section 36 of the act are included in the list of renewable decisions.

It is very pleasing to have reached the end, it would appear, of consideration of these three bills. We would hope that, with the support of the House, this set of legislation is going to come into effect soon. It will provide very extensive opportunities to Australian landowners and landholders across the country to participate in the emissions reduction task that we have as a nation and, in doing so, to earn carbon credits which will provide a stream of income for those landholders who choose—it is voluntary—to embark on emissions reductions or sequestration projects on their land.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In relation to the Australian National Registry of Emissions Units Bill 2011, I also wish to place on the record our support for the general concept and our support in particular for the notion of capturing carbon in soil, in vegetation, in trees and on non-prime agricultural land. This has been our idea. I see the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities across the table who ridiculed the idea over the years at this very dispatch box. He denounced and derided the coalition's policy and then, not surprisingly, adopted it. We endorse the concept and we endorse the mechanism, but we do not believe that, as I have said elsewhere, it is fully ready. There is a reason: we have experience in relation to the Home Insulation Program, the Green Loans program and the warnings we gave in relation to the cash-for-clunkers program, which the government also realised was unsustainable, unjustifiable and unbelievable.

Having said that, I do want to put this statement, which I think is an important statement, on the record: we will not be abolishing the bill. It is important to give this message to potential actors and investors in the space. We will, if elected, simply seek to improve the bill, remedy the defects which we have identified and, in particular, seek a better and more workable agreement in relation to the concept of permanence. The 100-year rule will ultimately be self-defeating and destructive, and we want to make sure that there are adequate protections for prime agricultural land. Improvements have been made in the Senate, but we will maintain our right to further improve it and ensure that the legislation is fully functional.

So our position remains: support for the concept, acceptance of the amendments, but a belief and a judgment that the legislation is not ready yet. For that reason, we have not provided support for final passage of the bill. We acknowledge that it is a mechanism that we proposed, outlined and defended in the face of then opposition from the government of the day. We will not abolish or withdraw this legislation; we will seek to improve it if elected.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In closing, I again welcome the in-principle support of the opposition for this legislation but express our disappointment that the opposition has not seen it possible to support what is needed by Australian land managers, which is a lasting framework for assessing methodologies and rewarding land sector abatement. In this Carbon Farming Initiative we have the investment certainty that the land sector has been looking for and needs to be part of the solution to climate change.

No-one should be in any doubt about the depth and breadth of consultation that the government has engaged in, starting in October 2010 and going right up to the passage of the legislation through the House. The government has continued that consultation through the Land Sector Working Group. There was consultation with Indigenous groups. Up to February this year, some 350,000 organisations attended consultation meetings and some 280 formal submissions were received, and we have had further submissions on the draft regulations since they were published on 1 June.

With the Carbon Farming Initiative we have something that will provide new economic opportunities for farmers, forest growers and landholders—something that will help the environment by reducing carbon pollution. We have a scheme that will enable participants to generate Carbon Farming Initiative credits for reducing greenhouse gas emissions or increasing the carbon stored on their land. These are credits which can be sold to companies needing to offset their emissions.

The Carbon Farming Initiative will create demand for new skills and services, boosting rural and regional employment. It will be supported by the Carbon Farming Skills program that the government announced as part of the Clean Energy Future plan announced by the Prime Minister on 10 July. There will also be new employment and economic opportunities for Indigenous land managers who will be able to earn carbon credits by using their skills and knowledge of the land to reduce emissions or increase the carbon storage in trees and soils on their land. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.