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

I just want to come back to the National Carbon Accounting System and the maps. The minister said she had tabled an answer to my question about the maps, and the answer is always: ‘Give us more time. We need more time to produce these maps.’ Yet in the global negotiations on the reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation Australia is arguing strongly for NCAS. The government are spruiking NCAS all the time. Yet there are a lot of people in Australia who have real doubts about the accuracy of the National Carbon Accounting System. For example, the Queensland government says its maps show a larger level of deforestation than is reflected in the NCAS figures et cetera. I would like to know why we cannot have the maps before Copenhagen so that people in Australia who are very familiar with what is happening on the ground—state governments especially—can actually look at their maps and figures compared with the national map and figures and get some understanding of why there is a discrepancy between what state governments believe to be the case and what is reflected by the National Carbon Accounting System. That is why we want the high-resolution maps as soon as possible.