Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is an interesting day when people such as Senator McGauran, Senator Heffernan, Senator Boswell, Senator Nash, Senator Williams, Senator Milne and Senator Bob Brown start agreeing on something. There was an agreement today that this legislation, as it stands, and more importantly the regulatory guidelines, as they stand, are a very bad outcome. I want to concentrate on one area—that is, the effect on regional communities. What these regulations allow, as they stand, is for the wholesale change of the economic conditions of certain regional towns and communities to be foisted on them by reason of a tax break given by the government. Let us start with market principles. If you believe that these forests should follow market principles then why give them an advantage? Why give this carbon sink an advantage which the cane farmer, the horticulturalist or the cattle grazier do not get? Why do we concentrate on this form of outcome?

We have to look at the ramifications of this, to show the Australian people a clear example. In an area such as Tully or one of the other areas where there are sugar mills, the sugar mills require a certain quantity of cane to turn up to them for the mill to remain viable. When you start giving an impetus for the cane land to be removed and turned into so-called carbon sinks, then the mills will go below critical capacity. They need a certain tonnage. Once a mill goes below a certain tonnage, the whole mill has to be closed down. Once the mill is closed down, that means not half the people lose their job; it means everybody loses their job and the houses surrounding the mill are affected. It means you lose the doctor and the nurse and the whole structure of the community starts to be affected because of the undue impost created by a piece of government legislation.

The other day I was in Bundaberg talking to some very successful horticulturalists at their diamond jubilee. These people buy and sell on the world stage. They are very astute business people and they find this anachronistic. They have had problems with similar areas where there has been an overproduction of avocados and other fruits by MISs, fruit which has come into their market and caused all sorts of turmoil. There is one thing that is worse than that and that is the production of trees for no real purpose whatsoever. People might say, ‘It’s to sequester carbon.’ If we want to be completely honest, we have found out through such people as Dr Christine Jones that we will sequester more carbon through summer perennial grasses than through dry sclerophyll forests. This evidence was delivered to the Senate inquiry. Dr Christine Jones is not a fool. She is at the top of her field. She is saying that summer perennial grasses with deep root systems—such as Flinders grass, buffel grass or cane—have the capacity to put into the ground far more carbon because 90 per cent of the vegetable matter is below the ground and 10 per cent above, as opposed to dry sclerophyll forests, where 90 per cent is above the ground and 10 per cent is below. If your object is to put carbon back into the ground, grasses will do a far better job than carbon sink forests.

So on a scientific premise, this legislation is also flawed or not encompassing for the outcome you wish to achieve. We have a whole range of premises coming on board here. Why are we so specific when we talk about carbon sink forests? Where did the word ‘forests’ come from? Why are we being so specific? If there is a potential income stream, as there will be from the sequestration of carbon by the sale of carbon credits, that means it is there for potential future revenue, so let it stand alone. If people want to put carbon sink forests in and collect an income stream, let them do it, but why should the government be giving an upfront capital expenditure deduction which the farmer over the next fence cannot get? These are the sorts of things which not only cause dysfunctionality in the economy—because of the undue concentration and impetus on a certain outcome that is not given to another, which does not reflect the economic dynamics of the area—but also cause a great sense of aggravation between people as they feel isolated from a certain process.

A lot of discussion has been going on since this issue was initially raised by such people as Senator Heffernan, Senator Boswell, Senator Nash and Senator Milne. We are calling on the government to have another think about this, to put their obstinacy behind them and look at the recommendations of changing the guidelines. If you want to go forward with what I think is a pretty ridiculous piece of legislation, so be it, but for goodness sake do it in such a way that we do not create this unreasonable outcome. If we do not preclude prime agricultural land, that is where carbon forests will go. The name of the game will be to have an auditable amount of carbon, which is obviously auditable from what you can see, as fast as you can possibly get it there. So you would be looking at areas with high rainfall and great soil types with the propensity to grow a heavy-forming timber. What becomes peculiar about this idea is that no-one has any intention of ever harvesting the timber. So you are not supporting a future timber mill. You are just supporting the demise of the area. These are the sorts of things which bring the issue together.

We look forward to the government, in all reasonableness, going forward over the next period of time. I hear Senator Milne is moving the disallowance. I imagine we have a period of time of 10 to 15 parliamentary sitting days—that will take us out to the end of November, early December. We want them to show that they have the capacity to respect the Senate on this one, to go away and say, ‘We are really in, on this issue, for a flogging to nothing, so why don’t we just do the reasonable thing and start amending some of these guidelines.’ It is the Labor Party that have always had the mantra ‘respect for the Senate’, even though we know that if any of them ever break ranks in the Labor Party, they are immediately expelled. But then they say that it refers to them as a group. I put it back to them as a group, and I think I might have some of the Independents, who are also going to support us on this. So it is looking like you are there, as a group and all by yourself on this one, to read the tea leaves and to respect the process of this chamber and to say: ‘Let’s look at these guidelines. They are causing problems. We do have the capacity to fix them.’ Then they can go forward and make some structured decisions that look at such things as whether there has been a history of a commercially successful crop grown on the area. If there is a history of a commercially successful crop, look at the wider socioeconomic dynamics of the income stream of the area and accept that there are other people this affects apart from the people whose land it is on. It is in the whole community where this area derives from that this has to be dealt with.

If they are honest, if they truly respect the Senate, then they will go back and they will start to write some changes down and say, ‘Look, we’ve got something here for you, have a look at this,’ and we will see what we can do. But at this point in time all we have is this objectionable obstinacy: ‘We’re not going to change because we are the Labor Party and we refuse to listen to people and this is all about the Labor Party showing everybody how big our muscles are on this one.’ There is something that can be done. There are other issues that I note Senator Heffernan has brought up, and I am sure he will speak to them and I am sure Senator Nash and Senator Boswell will speak to them as well. But my appeal is really one of a collegiate sense of bipartisanship: please look at these regulations that you have put forward, think of the impacts on regional towns and change them.