Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I accept that, but you will give the permits if the conditions you apply regarding water entitlements and planning have been fulfilled and yet we do not have a clue what the planning requirements are going to be that you might require in order that the permits be issued. That is my point. Putting planning approvals in is completely meaningless because we do not know at any level what it is you are intending. So I am asking you: what sorts of planning approvals are we talking about that would need to apply before a person was eligible for a Commonwealth credit?

Secondly, in terms of water entitlements, the point I was particularly making was that managed investment schemes allowed for people to get a 100 per cent tax deduction for planting a forest in a place where they knew it would never grow, and it did not matter, because the people who were making the investment and the people who were setting up the investment were making mega profits out of it, and they did not have to worry whether the trees ever grew or not because it was never their intention to be bothered about that end of process.

When you talk here about including conditions that forest credits have water entitlements, I want to be sure that it is not just having a water entitlement in terms of purchasing an entitlement but that there will be some kind of restriction which says, ‘You can’t be included in this unless you are growing these trees in an area above a certain level of rainfall,’ or whatever will guarantee that they actually grow there. I also asked you about assessing the carbon in these. I have not read the provision you just quoted on page 243 or whatever it is. What is the review process for determining the volume of carbon in these carbon sink forests and at what interval is that assessment going to be made?