Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

First, I just want to note the assertion of inferior sequestration because I do not want the senator to believe that, if I do not note it, I agree with it. That is his view. That is a view subject to some dispute. Second, what I went through explaining on Wednesday or Thursday night was that, under the agreement with the opposition, we have said that we will include in the CPRS, subject to appropriate methodologies, sources which we know will count towards Australia’s international commitment.

Let us step back a bit. The current belief in terms of developing an international agreement says nations such as Australia, the US and others come forward and we make a commitment to the international community that we will reduce our emissions. That is our contribution to the global agreement. Similarly, actions are committed to. We are seeking actions from developing nations; they would be of a different type. Obviously developed countries have already achieved a certain level of development; what we have to do is to have a net reduction. That is what Europe has committed to, what New Zealand has committed to, what Japan has committed to, and what the US has committed to provisionally, subject to its congress passing the legislation.

Once you make a commitment, you are signed up to it. Therefore, if the CPRS is, as the government wants it to be, the scheme that gets us reducing those emissions and reducing our target then obviously we only want included in it the things that help us meet that target. Otherwise, we sign up to a target as the government and, if we include things in our scheme that do not count towards that target, the government is going to have to make up the difference somehow. That would be a risk to taxpayers, so we do not want to go down that path.

What we have retained here is this: whilst the international carbon accounting rules remain as they are we will include the things that count towards our target. For the things that do not count towards our target but which are valuable anyway—because we know they may be of benefit, we know they can sequester carbon or we know that we want to learn about them by doing—we will create a voluntary market. The non-forestry-vegetation vegetation management currently does not count towards the international commitments. What we are saying is: let’s create a voluntary market where people can buy a green credit that is not in the CPRS if they wish. In the voluntary market they can purchase it for whatever reason. We learn by doing. Then, if and when the international accounting rules enable us to count that, we have a solid base of action and evidence which enables us to bring it into the scheme.

What the senator is asking about is a type of vegetation which as I understand it is not currently in the international accounting rules, so we are saying that that and other forms can be part of the voluntary market. That enables us to work with the sector and with landholders to develop methodologies for the voluntary market, which places us in a much better position when the international community decides that this is a sufficiently proven method that it should be included internationally. Remember: this is also about proving up sequestration opportunities. We cannot just pretend something sequesters carbon; we have to be able to demonstrate it and prove it, and proving it up is an important part of what we are doing.

I should clarify one thing. As I understand, currently, the grasses would not count towards Australia’s target, because we have not elected, for a range of other reasons, to include cropland management in our national inventory.