Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to ask for further clarification from the government on the financial implications of the Tax Laws Amendment (2008 Measures No. 1) Bill 2008. It says that in 2008-09 we will have forgone $4.7 million in revenue, in 2009-10 the figure is $8.5 million and in 2010-11 it is $11.1 million—making a total of $24.3 million forgone from the government revenue by virtue of the cost of this tax deduction. So I would like to know from the government how many hectares they expect to be planted out under this tax deduction scheme if this is the amount of money that is in the estimates for it. I would appreciate that.

I am still waiting to find out, and will keep on asking, whether the trees can be cut down. If you are going to have a carbon sink forest, it must be in the ground to accumulate carbon. We supposedly have a whole-of-government approach to climate change and we supposedly have a Prime Minister’s department with a climate change unit in it which is determining government policy. Given that the Minister for Climate Change and Water has to, by legislative instrument, make guidelines about the environment and resource management that will pertain to the plantations planted under this legislation, will the government please tell me whether the guidelines are going to be the same as those that exist already in the Greenhouse Friendly Forest Sink Abatement Projects? If that is the case then it is rubbish and it is not worth anything because all it is doing is giving forestry companies who want to plant a plantation and get the money from the fibre in the end an additional income stream along the way. If they are intending to plant those plantations for fibre then why should they be given additional double-dipping, if you like? Their intention would have to be to have a carbon sink, but they could soon change that along the way. Under these rules they do not even have to do that. They can say they want it as a carbon sink and then they can manage the area for both forestry production and carbon.

The government have been utterly remiss. They do not understand just how controversial and how bad this legislation is. They just picked it up straight from former Treasurer Costello and brought it in here because NAFI wants it, the coal industry wants it and the aviation industry wants it. They happily brought it in here knowing that, because the member for Wentworth had drawn it up previously with the former Treasurer, Peter Costello, the member for Higgins, they will get it through for the big end of town. They do not care about the consequences for small rural communities. We have seen it. It is not just happening in North Queensland. My colleague Senator Siewert was telling me about south-west Western Australia, where it has also had really bad impacts. There have been particularly bad impacts in terms of hydrological implications. You come in and fill up a district with these plantations and they take water out of the catchment, so it has huge implications.

My amendments say that these trees must be mixed species and of a local variety, that an easement must be put over the property so that they are there for 100 years and that there must be an ecological evaluation which looks at hydrological impacts, plus surrounding conflicts in land use. What is wrong with that? Why will the government, the opposition and the Nationals not support that? If you are serious about carbon sinks, why would you not actually want them to be carbon sinks if that is your genuine reason?

In my view, this is a complete rort by companies in order to undermine the integrity of an emissions trading system. They know they are going to get a cap. They know they are going to have to reduce their emissions. So instead of reducing their emissions at the power station, at the cement company and in aviation, what they can do is try to offset those emissions by taking up massive areas of land and planting them out as plantations. They have the option then to flog them off to somebody else as fibre if the pulpwood price is high. Alternatively, they can sell them in the carbon market if the carbon price is high. So they have a double option. They even have the option under the government’s existing rules for a forest company to manage the area for both fibre and climate. This is a complete and utter rort: a managed investment scheme on steroids.

As I have said, I want to know why the government will not tell the Senate whether these trees can be cut down. It is a very simple question. Why can we not be told now? Since they have calculated a cost, they must be calculating a hectarage. Where is that? Instead of being given that, we get treated with complete contempt. They have the numbers and they do not care. I know that Senator Abetz has been there in the back row supporting this for the forest industry because it is yet another rort for them on top of what they got from the grants schemes over which he presided in the last period of government. He is there supporting it. In the background, Senator Minchin and Malcolm Turnbull, again, are there supporting it, just as they supported it last year. The only reason it did not go through on the last day before the last federal election was that I pointed out at the time that if you go and tell rural Australia what you are up to they will be absolutely horrified. It was essential legislation at that point and was then changed to non-essential. So that is the context in which we are debating this legislation.

Since Senator Wong is now in the chamber, I think that as the Minister for Climate Change and Water she should be prepared to tell the Senate what the guidelines are that she, by legislative instrument, as it says in this legislation, will be putting out for these carbon sink plantations. If we do not know that, we are buying a pig in a poke. That is what is happening here. Rural and regional Australia do not like it and do not want it, and they have said quite clearly they do not. It is no use saying, ‘We’ve been caught out.’ We have not been caught out. It is clear what this means. There are a lot of people sitting in this chamber who support it.

I do not want any bleeding hearts around rural Australia saying, when the disaster sets in, that we could not have known what the ramifications were. The Senate knows what the ramifications are and, frankly, does not care enough to repeal the legislation. Therefore, senators should be prepared to stand up and say, ‘We actively did it because we wanted to have offsets and not put too much pressure on the industries to reduce their carbon emissions.’ So that is the context in which we are dealing with this. I think it is incumbent on the government to provide those answers. It is also incumbent on the government to explain why the schedule from this bill was put into another bill as well, so it was live in two bills, and why it came up to the Senate live in two bills when one of those bills had been deemed noncontroversial. That is how it got through here, and then they moved to take it out. It is an absolutely cynical move from the government.

Progress reported.