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

I am using the example of why the model is currently flawed and the Kyoto accounting system is currently flawed. As everybody would be aware, under the current accounting you do not have to account for the emissions from logging the forests and that is the problem we have had all along: you can get the benefit of afforestation but you do not pay the penalty for logging a forest if there is no change of land use. That has been our big issue and that is something we have argued for years and years. I understood from our discussion the other night that the government intends to argue for full carbon accounting. Can the minister clarify whether or not the government is going to start asking, campaigning or negotiating for full carbon accounting in the international negotiations? How is that going to change the methodology as it pertains to this CPRS permit system that is currently being talked about? Who will pick up the ‘disbenefit’ if all this is included in the future under a full carbon accounting regime?