Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Will the minister outline how the government's Clean Energy Future plan and the Carbon Farming Initiative will cut pollution and benefit the land sector? What obstacles are there to the government's plans? What is the government's response?

Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Petrie for her question. An important piece of legislation passed the parliament this week: the government's carbon-farming legislation. The Carbon Farming Initiative will open up very important economic opportunities for farmers, for foresters, and for other land managers, to earn revenue from cutting pollution and storing carbon in the landscape. The CFI, the Carbon Farming Initiative, is a market mechanism and it is expected to generate investment of an estimated 460 million carbon credits to the year 2050, a very significant economic opportunity.

The government also recognises that the CFI needs to be complemented by other significant investments in our land sector so that farmers and others can realise the full benefits. That is why the government announced a commitment to a further $1.7 billion of revenue from the carbon pricing mechanism to support the Carbon Farming Initiative and reward important co-benefits to biodiversity and enhance the resilience of the landscape.

The coalition's position on the Carbon Farming Initiative has, I think, betrayed farmers and demonstrated what a costly shambles their policy-making process is and how they appear to have lost interest in anything constructive to do with policy.

At first, the coalition responded very positively to the Carbon Farming Initiative. The shadow minister was quite optimistic and positive and supportive about it. But then when it came to a vote in the House of Representatives, the opposition voted against it. The legislation found its way to the Senate, of course, where the opposition then filibustered for no fewer than 16 hours and ultimately voted against the legislation. It is a very curious position for the National Party in particular to be adopting. But after all of that, when the carbon-farming legislation came back to the House of Representatives this week, the shadow minister declared that any future coalition government would not in fact repeal the legislation. It did not call a division and, having voted against it twice, they are now happy to let it go, and he said:

We will not be abolishing the bill. It is important to give this message to potential actors and investors in the space.

This capitulation was apparently driven by a recognition that it is important to give farmers and other stakeholders certainty. That is a welcome recognition.

But the trouble for the coalition is that the Carbon Farming Initiative, and certainty for farmers and other stakeholders, is inextricably linked to the passage of carbon-pricing legislation. Very importantly, in the carbon-pricing legislation that will come before the House in coming weeks, there is $1.7 billion worth of assistance to support the CFI and people in the land sector, no less than $420 million for the Carbon Farming Futures Program, which will deliver research and methods for crediting carbon in the landscape, and a number of other important measures. If they do genuinely support these things but not the carbon price, this would mean another $1.7 billion hole in the policy that the average Australian household is going to have to fund. Already, of course, households are going to have to fund $1,300 more in taxes to pay for their silly policy position that will achieve nothing. Their policy-making in this area has all the same credibility as the claim of the Leader of the Opposition that a tonne of carbon dioxide is weightless. Their policy is a joke. (Time expired)