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

They are all interlinked, as you well know, Minister. They are all part of the plausibility or otherwise of this scheme. We have now found that so much of this scheme is completely implausible. The suggestion that somehow the only mechanism that is available to the Australian people to reduce carbon emissions is an omnipotent belief that, from the Prime Minister’s office and your office, we can change the climate is obviously verging on the perverse. You have given great recommendations of peer-reviewed science, so we pose for you peer-reviewed science in the other direction. We note that there is now peer-reviewed science that clearly states that there is far more carbon sequestrated through such things as summer grasses—such as buffel grass or Mitchell grass—than there is through dry sclerophyll forests. The government has also endorsed policies such as carbon sinks, which would replace a better form of carbon sequestration with a lesser form of carbon sequestration. Is the government now going to abide by the science and move towards a more effective form of carbon sequestration such as would be seen in such things as the establishment of summer grasses where there were formerly dry sclerophyll forests?

I keep hearing about the National Farmers Federation. We also are here to honour a commitment. We are here to honour a commitment to the Australian people that we in this chamber will review and amend legislation and represent the rights and aspirations of the people of our states and of our nation. The overwhelming aspirations of the people of our states and our nation have changed, and they have clearly stated to us that they now have moved excessively in their desire to deal with climate issues via a massive new tax of the Australian Labor Party. They have moved instead to more viable mechanisms that will continue to support our economy. The paucity in things such as modelling that has been delivered by the Labor Party has shown almost a contempt of the science in some areas and certainly a contempt of the updating of modelling to clearly spell out exactly where the nation is in its economic commitments that we also must carry.

The National Farmers Federation are a genuine and decent group of people, but they are not representatives at a political level in this chamber. This chamber includes representatives of the National Party. We acknowledge that we have had a continual dialogue with the Australian people, not just with farmers but also with small business people, pensioners and most certainly with working families, who are furious about the onerous aspects of this scheme. They will have money taken out of their pockets to be placed in Treasury’s pocket for no change to the global climatic position.

Throughout this committee process, the minister has avoided any direct scientific and decisive statement about what the effect of the Australian scheme will be on the climate. We have had soaring rhetoric and fear mongering about all of the calamities that will approach us if we do not abide by the fact that the only solution to any global climatic issue is an Australian Labor Party tax. That Labor Party tax has been put up as some sort of panacea, but when we drill down this panacea lacks all detail, lacks acumen and has a paucity of capacity in its modelling. It is an absolute fact that summer grasses sequester more carbon than dry sclerophyll forests. If the issue is about sequestering carbon then do you acknowledge that you should take the superior form of carbon sequestration through summer grasses or do you intend to remain with what is obviously an inferior way of sequestering carbon—that is, the Labor Party endorsed program of replacing summer grasses with such things as carbon sink forests in order to promote dry sclerophyll forests, which are an inherently inferior form of sequestering carbon?