Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

I think this chamber is well aware of the National Party’s position on carbon sink forests. Using the parlance of the chamber, we have crossed the floor twice on them. We acknowledge that each time a TLAB comes in this issue can be brought back in. We have made our position on that quite clear to the Australia people, but we are not on this occasion going through that ritual because the effect will be that there is no effect—there are not the numbers to support this. Maybe that issue will change.

We have made our statements in the past. We are coming from a completely different angle than what the Greens are coming from, but on some issues we are coming from the same angle. But unless we are going to evolve into a higher form of termite, it seems peculiar that we would be encouraging the removal of prime agricultural land to put a forest in perpetuity that, for all intents and purposes, is not even supposed to be milled. We think that would have huge economic ramifications in regional districts. This view has been well expressed and I am sure will be expressed again very soon by other senators here. It has huge effects in places such as Tully. We are very concerned and we have expressed that concern, but we do not intend today to provide numbers to a motion that is not going to get passed.