John Watson (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to take part in this debate on the Tax Laws Amendment (2008 Measures No. 1) Bill 2008 very briefly in relation to the difficulties of carbon sinks. Carbon sinks will cause competition problems for managed investment in forests because there will be another competitor forcing up the price of a scarce resource—that is, the land. Carbon sinks will put challenges before primary producers because a lot of pastoral land, in particular, will go under carbon sinks. In my state, we are becoming increasingly conscious that good, arable land suitable for prime crops is going under trees. Anybody who is a botanist must surely be worried about an increasing lack of diversity in our forests, which is a problem. In a few years time, nature being what it is, there will be a huge risk of fires and disease outbreak problems.

Tonight I was talking to an actuary in Parliament House. His focus is increasingly being directed towards risk assessment in terms of fires wiping out huge areas in not only Tasmania but also other parts of Australia, as a result of the perhaps inappropriate manner in which plantations have been put in in terms of their density, proximity to buildings, roads and so on. We all know, particularly in Tasmania, the climatic conditions are such that, in the months of February and March, a dry understorey and huge winds can cause the sorts of problems that we saw here in Canberra a few years ago, when plantations were just the other side of the road from residential allotments.

I am very concerned because the people who are going to seek the benefits from this legislation are those with very, very deep pockets—pockets far deeper than those we have had with MIS and pockets far deeper than the farmers’. This is a difficult issue for the farmers because older farmers, upon their retirement, naturally regard obtaining a high price for their land as their superannuation. On the other hand, young farmers who want to come into the industry are finding that the cost of competing with the MIS and the new carbon sinks is making it so much more difficult for them to have a place in agriculture.

In my state of Tasmania, agriculture is certainly facing some very severe challenges. We used to be called the horticultural food bowl of Australia, but I can see us losing that title over the years. This comes at a time when the world is getting short of food. We need as much agricultural land as we can get to put in sustainable crops et cetera. We have got the water and the land. Although we may not have the scale of operation, we have got the factories to produce and further add value to the crops. Organisations such as the CSIRO and other far-sighted scientists should be brought in to this whole issue to see what impact carbon sinks will have on food, food prices, sustainability, the problems with monoculture and the difficulties that we are likely to face with fire. There are certainly challenges.

I will not be voting against the legislation, but I think it is time we woke up and acknowledged that agriculture does have some challenges—challenges that very few people have foreseen. In my closing days of being here in the Senate I draw to the attention of the chamber that I think we have to look very carefully at the nature of the legislation and the entitlements in it because, as my colleague Senator Heffernan and others indicated, there are flaws to this legislation; it is not fail-safe. Look at the ecological issues, the food issues and the risk of what it could be doing to our state. I thank the Senate.