John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to comment on carbon sinks, after those amazing comments from Senator Cameron. What Senator Cameron needs to realise is that the more of our countryside we plant down to trees, the more we will have to ask where we can grow our food. We know through the recent Senate inquiry how the National Party opposed carbon sinks, which are simply a turbocharged managed investment scheme. For those people who are not familiar with carbon sinks, it is a situation where a company can purchase land, get tax deductions for the purchase of the land, establish a forest and then obtain the carbon credits. When a farmer buys land, they cannot get a tax deduction for the price of the land when they purchase it.

Carbon sinks will force the price of land up, squeezing the genuine farmer out and converting agricultural food producing land into forests. Where do we grow the food in that situation? We are talking about a population in 2050 in Australia of 35 million—and I certainly hope it does not get to that level—and more than nine billion people in the world. Perhaps when Senator Cameron goes to the UK next time, he might get the scientists there to invent a digestive system for human beings so they can consume bark and limbs from trees and actually survive on it, because that is the situation we are facing. If we encourage people to plant their country down to trees, we are looking at the loss of land for food production.

Senator Cameron mentioned our carbon footprint. I find it quite amazing that we are looking at a $115 billion to $200 billion tax on the Australian people to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by a mere five per cent or 30 million tonnes come 2020, while at the same time China will have increased their emissions by three billion tonnes a year and India will have increased their production of carbon dioxide emissions by two billion tonnes a year. This is the problem with this legislation. It will cost so much and it will do so little.

People need to realise some things about soil sequestration. Look at what happened at Northparkes mine with Rio Tinto—managed by Geoff McCallum and farmed by Scotty Goodsell—and the carbon in the soil where they grow more food and more crops, year in year out, with less fertiliser and less farming. They are conserving the carbon in the soil. If we increase the carbon in our soil over the 450 million hectares around Australia, a three per cent increase in carbon will 100 per cent neutralise Australia’s emissions for the next 100 years—not five per cent at a cost of some $200 billion but a 100 per cent reduction for the next 100 years. These are the policies that the coalition will look at because we know the government’s emissions trading scheme is flawed, wrong and expensive, and will achieve nothing. Please wait and see—the correct policy will be brought forward prior to the next election.