Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I anxiously await the answer to Senator Nash’s question. But I will give you a tip, Senator Nash: I bet you do not get an answer, because we have been trying to get an answer for a long time. It is a question that cannot be answered. It is all well and good for President Obama to go out and issue a press release and say, ‘This is what America is going to do.’ Sorry, but he has a congress that has to pass his legislation before that is what happens in America. Those who are more expert on American politics than I tell me it will be at least 12 months before the American congress gets around to adopting some form of emissions trading scheme. But this government, this minister and this Prime Minister want us to adopt a legislative position in the next three days before Copenhagen commences. Why wouldn’t you wait until you saw what the rest of the world was doing before you committed Australia to a scheme which could well be irretrievable and which could well destroy the jobs of so many of our fellow Australians?

I am anxious for Senator Nash to get the answer to her question, but I have some questions as well on the amendments before the chair on agriculture. I think they are very important. The minister was giving her view on our policies, quite inappropriately. But our position is that we would like to see this legislation sent to a committee to investigate these very comprehensive amendments—in one of which, I pointed out yesterday, there has been a glaring error in the drawing up of the document. I am sure it was an unintended error, but that is what you find when you start scrutinising these things.

The amendments that the Labor Party have brought forward are good amendments. They are amendments that have come to light because we on this side insisted that this legislation, bad though it was, could be improved with these amendments. Things continue to happen in the political arena, but it is not for me to anticipate what this Senate might do when the vote comes. Whilst we say this is bad and rushed legislation, we are saying that these amendments will substantially improve a bad piece of legislation. They make the existing legislation less bad. That is why, in looking at these agricultural amendments in particular, we decided that, if for some reason the government was going to try and slam through this legislation before Copenhagen in two or three days time when we will know what the rest of the world is doing, we wanted to make sure that the legislation was as ‘least bad’ as possible.

We cannot imagine why anyone would want to commit Australia before all of our major trading partners commit themselves and why you would put Australian industries at a disadvantage against our trading partners by acting and legislating before the rest of the world and the rest of our trading partners do. Our major trading partners, as we all know, are China, India, Japan and the United States. Regrettably, we do not do as much trade with the European Union as we used to. So none of our major trading partners have a legislated scheme. They have aspirational schemes. The presidents, prime ministers and chairmen have all issued press releases saying what they hope to do, the same as Mr Rudd has done. But none of them are insisting that their parliaments sit into Christmas time to pass legislation before Copenhagen. They are all saying, ‘We’ll go to Copenhagen with our view and we’ll see what we can arrange,’ as I understand Mr Rudd is doing. Why do we need it legislated in the next couple of days, rushed through in a way that will give us a conclusion that may well be irretrievable?

I am pleased to say that these amendments do at least start to treat our farmers and our rural families in the same way as other countries. If you had gone ahead with Mr Rudd’s scheme, our farmers would have had a piece of legislation that was bad for them and penalised them, one which no other country was going to have. Any other country that is having an emissions trading scheme had specific provisions for their farmers which allowed them to take advantage of the allowable offsets but did not penalise them directly as this legislation in its original form would have done. In that capacity, our farmers would have been at a severe disadvantage with the European Union, at a severe disadvantage with the United States and at a disadvantage against almost every other nation. The New Zealand position is unique and a little different. But why would you penalise Australia’s farmers in a different way, taking from them advantages that farmers in other countries have got?

With that preamble and an understanding that there are questions from my colleagues that also need answering, I put these questions to the minister as well. Can you tell me how many and which countries currently hold agricultural scope 1 emissions liable under their emissions trading scheme? The looks from the minister’s advisers tell me that they have heard and have understood my question. Also, is the minister aware of any schemes in the world apart from New Zealand that intend to have scope 1 agricultural emissions liable?