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

Okay. So what? 1989, 1990 or 2008—it really does not matter. If you leave country vacant, it will revegetate. It is the natural occurrence in Australia. It does that all the time in Australia. There are vast amounts of country in Australia. If you do not keep vegetation control in play, the country revegetates. It is just the way eucalyptus country works. I can show you an abundance of country that was cleared about 1920 or 1930, and when that country is left alone it revegetates with trees. So are we saying that you have to have made a decision to keep the stock off it or to keep off mechanisms of human induced timber control? That is what it is: human induced timber control. You go out there and Velpar it or, before that was available, Graslan it. If you want to completely clear it, you run a chain across it to keep the country clear—because if you do not then it just turns into a forest and therefore you lose all the value of your land because you cannot run stock on it—or you pack it up with sheep. You might pack it up with wethers, for instance, that flog the country out and keep the timber down.

If you stop that vegetation management practice, the country will go back under timber. If it goes back under timber by that process, it appears—I am trying to get to where you are—that that is not human induced. I read into it that you have to actually plant the trees. If I go into that country that has been cleared since 1920, 1930 or 1880 and plant exactly the same tree as would grow naturally then when I plant the tree I get a credit for it, but if I have just let nature take its course and revegetate it then I will not get a credit for it.