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

With due respect, what was discussed in that answer, Minister, was what happens from this point forward. You referred to the offsets that you are now discussing but you did not give a clear answer as to whether you are going to review the legislation pertaining to carbon sink forests, brought in by the current government and currently in place, which quite clearly and evidently brings about an inferior sequestration of carbon to what was there prior to that. It is a clear question I am asking. We have a piece of legislation in place now dealing with carbon sink forests which is completely oxymoronic, because we are actually storing less carbon than was originally there. You are going to have to amend the legislation to go back to what it was so that if you really want to store carbon you are going to store it in the form of summer grasses as opposed to dry sclerophyll forests. The question is: are you going to review that piece of legislation? The answer you gave the other night was in relation to what happens from this point forward with regard to carbon offsets for farmers. You said that people can apply for carbon offsets but you did not address the issue of what happens with the current piece of legislation pertaining to carbon sink forests.