Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am serious! My other rural colleague from Western Australia will endorse how difficult it is to measure a cow’s emissions, but our state government in Victoria was going to make a very valiant attempt, putting valuable research dollars into a box that you strapped on to the cow. That is how farcical it had become. Of course, such is the case.

What the rural sector fears from this government is not so much that it was ever going to be drawn into this scheme as it stands today but that down the track it would be easier just to place a levy or a tax on the rural sector to draw out some contribution from them. I am sure this is still in their minds. While the government may concede this point, what is still in their minds is that they are never going to let the farmers get away with anything. They are always looking for ways to tax, levy and hurt the farm gate income. While they make this concession because they have been mugged by reality, I also believe that down the track they will simply seek, should the bill pass, to place a direct levy or direct tax on the farm gate.

As my colleague rightly said, the rural sector still pays for this in a very big way. Research body after research body, report after report and Senate report after the Senate report has come to the same conclusion about the farm gate: they are going to get all of the knock-on effects from the increasing costs of food processing. The decrease in prices at the farm gate will compensate for the increasing costs of all of the energy that is used in food processing. Think of the abattoirs, Murray Goulburn milk producers and the dairy farmers and the energy they use day in day out. These increases in electricity costs are going to find their way right down to the farm gate. Research shows that for the dairy industry—and my state has the largest dairy industry in the country—costs will go up $10,000 a year permanently. I daresay that would be conservative as the years roll on under this scheme. That is unbearable. It is unsustainable for the dairy farmers that they take on an extra $10,000 a year in energy costs. They burn up energy with their plants, equipment and lighting.

The rural sector, the food processors, the farmers and the farm gate all have a great deal to fear with the structure of this legislation. The farming sector deal with climate change every day. They watch the climate every day. Those opposite have never conceded that. And have they ever factored in the natural change of climate? Has this been in any way factored into this scheme at all? Do they even believe there is natural change of climate, or is it just all man made in their eyes? They would not know; they are all just going along with the flow.

What the rural sector and farmers want to know is this: Australia has 1.4 per cent of world emissions and this scheme is calculated to reduce it by 0.2 per cent, but if there is no international agreement in place when this was to be introduced then what effect would it have on the overall reductions in emissions? Their own cabinet minister Martin Ferguson placed it in perspective when he talked about the fact that every four months from now until 2020 China will build new coal fired power stations, each possessing the same capacity as Australia’s entire coal fired power sector. What he was saying was: whatever reduction comes from this scheme, 0.2 per cent will be made up by China in a matter of months. That is what the rural sector wants to know about, and this is where the revolt started, by the way. Farmers are not idiots. The revolt started in the rural and regional areas which would be deeply affected by this scheme. It certainly got my attention.

If you do some polling in the rural and regional areas exclusively you will find they are against this scheme by the greater majority—whatever poll you want to produce, whatever seat you want to go by, marginal or safe. The rural and regional areas are where the National Party picked this up very early. And so did the Liberal Party rural representatives. Is that not right, Senator Back?