Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

In answer to the direct question, if you go back to the second reading speech, this bill is committed to action on climate change and the need to reduce our carbon pollution. What it does is unlock the abatement opportunities in the land sector and provide farmers, foresters, growers and landholders access to carbon markets. In doing so, it will begin to unlock the abatement opportunities in the land sector which currently makes up about 23 per cent of Australia's emissions.

That means that the Carbon Farming Initiative will create incentives to do two crucial things: protect our natural environment and adopt more sustainable farming practices as well as the benefit of mitigating climate change. So it does provide an income stream. All of these important co-benefits mean that the sooner we pass this legislation the sooner we ensure that landholders can have access to it and participate in carbon markets and establish income streams and lock up carbon through soil sequestration, through biochar—through all of the types of opportunities that are provided on the positive list—and develop more opportunities on the positive list. They are all what this bill is about in giving landholders in the agricultural sector a mechanism that values their contribution.