Senate debates
Monday, 30 November 2009
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges — Customs) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges — Excise) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges — General) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS Fuel Credits) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS Fuel Credits) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Excise Tariff Amendment (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Customs Tariff Amendment (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Amendment (Household Assistance) Bill 2009 [No. 2]
In Committee
2:08 pm
Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source
I just wanted to follow up on this. I recognise it goes to the line in this document which says:
- include conditions for forests earning forest credits to have adequate water entitlements and planning approvals …
One of the issues which accounted for the failure of managed investment schemes was that people got a 100 per cent tax deduction for planting trees in areas where they would never grow. They never, ever had sufficient water to be able to grow a forest, but it did not matter to them because it was not for the investors in the end. So the way this is written can actually be read two ways. One way is that in order to get abatement you have to demonstrate that you already have a water entitlement. The other way it could be read is that it is including conditions so that, if you plant a forest, you get adequate water entitlements. But I also want to know if you are going to revisit the issue that you cannot get it unless you are in a rainfall zone or else have water entitlements such that the trees will actually grow. I also want to know if you will be ground-truthing this, however many years down the track, to ensure that the abatement is there. Can you just tell me how, in two, three, five or 10 years down the track, you will get a forest credit for planting a forest? Are they the same provisions as the reforestation provisions in terms of accounting for it?
The second thing I want to ask about is planning approvals. Again, this is something that the Commonwealth does not have control over. It is local government that controls planning, and most local governments do not have in their planning schemes anything pertaining to plantation forests, carbon sink forests or any other kind of forest. If you get the ability to declare an area a carbon sink forest or whatever, in the Tasmanian case you just have to get it approved as a forest and local planning laws do not cover it. I want to know what this planning approval is. How is the Commonwealth going to guarantee that the planning approval will be at the local level and not at the state or the Commonwealth level in terms of giving planning approval for these forests?
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