Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

Aside from the backhanded swipe at me and the process, I think the minister's answer there was: no, it is not reflected in the draft regulations, it is not something we have given any consideration to over the five weeks since we have known that we would be making this amendment to the bill, and so it is just not in here. But that is of course quite typical of the whole process as to how this legislation has been developed. The minister even came in here yesterday and proudly produced his draft regulations and sort of said, 'Okay, there you go: you've being saying you want these, you've being saying that because so much of the operation of this bill hinges on the regulations, we're now going to give you the regulations.' But what we find is that the regulations have not fully considered all that is going to be in the bill, that the regulations are still, in that sense, very much a draft rather than something that has been developed in tandem with the bill, in a manner such that the entire operation of this legislation can be seen in a transparent way.

It is just so typical of the ad hoc manner in which this government chooses to develop all of its policies, frankly, in this area. We have seen the many different policy disasters in the ways in which this government has attempted to go about emissions reductions or carbon abatement activities—many different policy disasters, all of them because things are so poorly thought through, so poorly structured, that the process applied by this government is just so very terrible with regard to all of these areas. And yet here we go again.

The reason that the opposition are subjecting this to close scrutiny, the reason we have called from day one to have all the complementary regulations that sit alongside this legislation in place, is that we do not want to see the same mistakes happen again. We do not want to see these types of errors happen again, because the implications of that with regard to this legislation are very serious. They are very serious to Australia's farm base, our agricultural productive base, and all of these issues should be thoroughly sorted and determined before we get to the point of finalising this legislation.

The government seems to be all too happy to continue to take an ad hoc approach to all of the different bills, policies and pieces of legislation it applies with regard to emissions reduction and carbon abatement. We have seen an ad hoc approach from the govern­ment on its alleged big-picture policy, its on-again off-again support for carbon taxes or an ETS. We have seen the government, as we have extensively debated—and will continue to extensively debate—run away from its crystal clear election commitments on not pricing carbon, on not having a tax on carbon. We have seen the government, when it has attempted to apply other policies, be they in the home insulation sphere, be they in the renewable energy sphere, create all sorts of conse­quences along the way.

If we look at the renewable energy target as a classic example, another major piece of legislation—a piece of legislation that attempts to provide a pathway for Australia to develop a stronger renewable energy sector in this country—what do we have from that at present? We have had a roller-coaster ride for the price of renewable energy certificates. We have a clearing house that is just dysfunctional and not working, because of course the clearing-house price is set way above the price that is in operation in the market for renewable energy certificates at present. As a result, many people who expected that the clearing-house price would be a floor price, not a ceiling price, as it is basically operating, are finding that their investments in this space are under enormous pressure. All of this is, of course, because the government cannot manage to get its sums right to start with, cannot manage to approach these policy areas having done all of the necessary work in advance and made sure that it all stacks up.

So, with this legislation, and the complementary regulations, we have genuine concerns that, if we simply sit back and allow the legislation to pass through as the government intends it to pass through, what are we going to have at the end of that? The risk is that we are going to still have too much of a blank cheque, too much of an open slather that depends on how these regulations are finalised. In this regard we have an amendment, an amendment that enjoys bipartisan support, an amendment that everybody agrees is very serious and an amendment that the minister himself concedes had widespread stakeholder support during their consultation process. It is an amendment that they chose to adopt nearly a couple of months ago and that we have supported all along to ensure that when projects are put on the negative list, so when excluded offsets projects are considered, that one of the adverse impact factors that is considered is whether there is a risk of an adverse impact on land access for agri­cultural production. We all support that but, of course, they are just words in the bill. How that applies under the bill that the government is putting forward depends entirely on the regulations: how they are developed and how they operate. So it is not at all unreasonable to expect, if the govern­ment is going to wander in here and present us with some draft regulations, that surely there should be some consideration in these draft regulations of how this clause operates, otherwise these draft regulations are simply and only a temporary holding pattern measure that will have to be replaced by not a new final version but by a further draft version at some later stage that actually takes this into account. Or is the government proposing to simply put this in the legislation but ignore it in the regulations? Is that what we are looking at here? Is this simply a case of putting an extra five words into the legislation but ignoring it when it comes to the regulations? Do the government think this is actually a tokenistic, meaningless amendment and is that why they have not bothered to consider it in their draft regs?

What is the status of this amendment for the government if they have been supporting it for so long? It is their amendment. They are the ones who have brought it before us. They knew they would enjoy our support all along. If they are serious about having this as a serious amendment to reflect the concerns of the NFF and others, why is it not reflected in any way in the regulations? The minister cannot draw our attention to anywhere where it is reflected, so why can't we manage to see proper, thoroughly drafted regulations that actually take into account this aspect as well? Yesterday I posed some other questions about these regs which the minister took on notice until we return to some amendments that Senator Xenophon has deferred for the time being. But in regard to this one there is a very simple issue of how the government, in its regulations, is going to enact this new clause that would see adverse impact on land access for agricultural production be one of the factors that could see a particular kind of project put on the negative list. How is that going to be reflected in these regulations? Minister, can you tell us what we should expect to see, what the high-jump bar will be and what in fact this clause will actually mean when it is applied to the regs that are so fundamental to the actual operation of this legislation?