Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We are dealing with a crucial piece of legislation, and the Greens stand absolutely 100 per cent on the need for this legislation to be put in the rubbish bin where it deserves to go. We have heard arguments from Senators Heffernan and Joyce, and from some other senators, agreeing with that.

The argument we are now getting is that, because the numbers are not with us, we should change our mind, drop the argument and let the legislation go through, and we will have an inquiry afterwards. As all of us from the bush know, closing the stable door after the horse has bolted is not a very effective way of working. I think the good senators from the National Party, and Senator Heffernan, who have argued so cogently against this legislation ought not to allow the sop of an inquiry after the event to alter the fact that this legislation should be voted down.

An amendment is mooted asking for an inquiry and, because this debate will obviously come back this afternoon, I want to give notice that I will be moving that the further consideration of the bill be made an order of the day for the day on which the committee reports. If we are going to have an inquiry, let’s be sensible about this. Let the stakeholders be heard over the winter months, and particularly the farmers of Australia, on the sheer unfairness of legislation which will mean corporations can buy up their land, with massive tax deductions, and use it under a shonky proposal for plantations as carbon sinks, which has no assurance at all, but not get similar tax deductions for keeping that land going and growing food on it.

The arguments that we have heard on this legislation hold 100 per cent: it will displace communities, it will degrade remote and regional communities and it will inevitably end in ownership by city based corporations, through a massive tax lurk, of what would otherwise be productive family owned farms. There is no doubt about that. If there is going to be an inquiry into it, let us hear from rural Australia. Let us hear from the Mayor of King Island who says this will be—I hope I am not misrepresenting him—devastating for that fantastic producer of good foods for Australia. Let us hear from them before we allow this opportunity to change this legislation to pass.

The argument is there that, even if this amendment gets through the Senate to withdraw this schedule, it still has to get through the House. But let us have the authority of a Senate inquiry to convince the government that that should happen. We should have an inquiry and then finally have a vote on this bill. That is the logical, sensible and people-serving way to go in this democracy; otherwise an inquiry becomes a sop and becomes hollow. If we do not take this opportunity, we all know that, with the new Senate further down the line, the government will not entertain this matter in the way it is now doing. If you have an inquiry afterwards, it takes a lot of power from the Senate to fix up this very important matter.

I want to reiterate the argument against this legislation and encapsulate it again. I am grateful to Senator Milne for having alerted the chamber to this matter and, in fact, alerting everybody to it a long time ago. She is another senator from the bush and is very aware of the ramifications of this legislation. Here it is. It is called ‘carbon sink’ legislation, but it is not. It says it will withhold carbon from the atmosphere and that big investors will get huge tax deductions, but it has no guarantees at all attached to it. Senator Milne has moved an amendment which states, ‘If you put the trees in, you’re going to have them there for a bare minimum of 100 years.’ Anybody who knows about the threat of global warming and the massive impact that it will have on farmlands—and, as Senator Heffernan said, on society and the economy—understands that, if you are going to have a carbon sink, it will be beyond our lifetimes. The government and opposition will not support the amendment. That is a deliberated and well thought out admission that this legislation is a shonk. It is feather bedding big, polluting interests in this country who want a greenwash and to get paid for it. It is a false scheme, a sham. They get paid for it out of public money, because that tax is not collected. It is incredible that this legislation has the support of the government and the coalition. I am full of admiration for those senators in the opposition ranks who have pulled up on this and said: ‘This is not right. It is a sham, it is a rort and it is doing the wrong thing by the people in the bush.’

But it is doing the wrong thing by everybody in Australia because it is clearly a well thought out deception to assist already big, wealthy corporations firstly to window-dress and falsely claim they are investing in the world’s future by having guaranteed carbon sinks and secondly to get massive amounts of tax deductions they simply do not deserve. Put those millions of dollars of tax deductions, if you want, into rural health centres, rural schools, rural amenity and helping people stay on their farms.

I read another thing in the international press this week, and I am sure it will hold true in Australia. Everywhere, the impact of corporate takeover of farmlands—of this ‘get big or get out’ thing—is found to be that the food production of the big industrial farmers never matches the food production of the family farm. It simply does not match it in terms of productivity—productivity for the world. As everybody knows in this place, we are facing a global food crisis, and here we are going to compound that. People are going to be paid to take food-producing Australian lands out of production. That is very wrong; it should not be entertained. The opposition has the numbers here now; it is not going to after the winter break. If its leaders are serious about an inquiry, let’s have that inquiry over winter and come back here informed with this option still open to us so that this Senate can deal with it in the most powerful way still available to us.