Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have not even been told what the definition of a contract is between the lease owner or the landowner and the person who is looking for a carbon offset. What is the definition of the carbon sink? How long do the trees have to stay in the ground? The land use will relate to the market in carbon offsets. Everyone ought to listen to this: at $17 a tonne—and people are talking about $80 a tonne—every irrigated dairy farmer will be insolvent if we have to participate in such a market. This is serious.

There are a lot of academics out there in academia who would listen to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and I believe there would be some vagary in the science of its predictions. But, even if those predictions are only 10 per cent right, and 160 million people, not 1.6 billion, are displaced, it is still serious. I note that is starting to hit the news now, Senator Milne. The news this morning reported that people are worried about displacement on the planet. Mick Kelty said nine months ago that one of the greatest threats to Australia’s sovereignty is climate change, and that is about displacement. I said something about it and it was misconstrued in the press, ‘Heffernan: Asian invasion’. This is not about some lunatic; it is about reality, and this is an attack on the capacity of Australia to provide for the food task.