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

It seems that on this issue both Senator Milne and I are unable to be answered. We prefer not to wait. The whole idea of waiting for a court interpretation shows the litigious nature of what can happen if things are not clearly spelt out. The farmers listening to this do not want to have, if this goes through, to wander off to court to get their credits. What they want to do is to know that the process that they believe that they are following to get a credit is applicable. They do not want to then find that their land is all revegetated and they cannot touch it—they cannot take it back to grazing land—yet they cannot get the credits for what is there. That leaves them in a real quandary. Obviously, therefore, the safest way for farmers to go about it—seeing that, as you state, the interpretation would be that of the courts—is to not let it revegetate.