Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to say how pleased I am that the Carbon Farming Initiative is going to pass the Senate. I wish to convey to the Senate how much so many people in rural and regional Australia are looking forward to this initiative. Recently I was in Darwin speaking with Indigenous communities and they see this as the best hope for a very long time for longstanding, permanent jobs, particularly in remote communities. The methodology for the different savanna burning regime is already underway and those communities can see there is enormous opportunity. Already people are moving into the Northern Territory and changing the manner in which they manage large areas of land. That too will provide Indigenous communities with work.

I am very pleased that the government accepted the Greens amendment to extend the carbon rights beyond exclusive native title holders to non-exclusive native title holders so that we expand the number of Indigenous people who not only will be able to get work as part of the Carbon Farming Initiative but will actually benefit as part owners or full owners of the carbon rights associated with the development of some of these projects. I have been in other parts of Australia where for years farmers have lamented that they cannot get any support for stewardship programs that they want to undertake on their own land. They want to restore degraded forest on their land. They want to be supported to plant biodiverse plantings. They want to be able to deal with feral animals and weeds. This Carbon Farming Initiative will enable them to develop projects where they can actually do those things.

I have just heard the coalition talk about a litany of failure. I am glad that Senator Birmingham is now on the record opposing this bill. He says that he hopes there will not be perverse outcomes. If it had not been for those of us in this chamber supporting this legislation, the perverse outcomes would be everywhere because the coalition moved to remove the negative list so that there would not be anything on the negative list. If you want to avoid perverse outcomes with this bill then you need the negative list in order to do it. Furthermore, the coalition are out there in rural Australia saying, 'Let's go with soil carbon.' What is their proposal for actually getting the methodology work done? Where is their regulatory authority that will impose the methodology and work out how those carbon permits, or whatever they are going to call them, and how the tonnes of carbon in the soil are going to be measured and rewarded? Who is going to measure and monitor permanence?

The coalition do not want a climate change department. It does not want to have a regulatory authority. It has said it will abolish those. They will have no department, no regulatory authority, no monitoring and no assessment, just a lot of hot air with farmers saying: 'Look at us. We're coming to buy your soil carbon out of your landscape.' If you speak to Mr Greg Hunt from the lower house, he does not know what this is going to cost—but it will come out of the budget anyway. The coalition are going to raid the budget. Having abolished the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and having abolished the regulatory authority, they will take the money out of the budget to pay for the soil carbon so the polluters can keep on polluting. There will be no payments from the polluters; it will come out of the budget.

Once the coalition have abolished those public servants, the money will come out of the health and education funding because that is the majority area of the budget. Australians will realise that the coalition are not going to charge the polluters, that they are actually going to take it from taxpayers to pay for these things so the polluters can keep on polluting. And we have those people who stand in here and say, 'What a litany of failure.' For the last several months the Greens worked extremely hard with the government, the bureaucracy and a number of constituents from across Australia on the Carbon Farming Initiative because we wanted to make sure that we did not get perverse outcomes. That is why there is a negative list. That is why it precludes managed investment schemes. That is why it says that plantings for harvest cannot be included. I know Senator Colbeck wanted them included. Well, they are not, and for very good reason: we want to maintain permanence in the landscape. We do not want to have the next rush of managed investment schemes and people ripping off the system. What we want is long-term investment in carbon in the landscape. I can tell you that NRM groups across the country are delighted because they are now going to get money to bring their NRM plans up to a certain standard, and those NRM plans are going to be consulted when Carbon Farming Initiative projects are put into the scheme. Local communities will be able to say, 'Our NRM plan would preclude that; we need to have a discussion,' and so on.

For the last several months we have sat down and consulted with people to try to avoid the perverse outcomes. Meanwhile, the coalition have been out there saying nothing. There has been no policy development—not a policy that can stand up. There is no funding for a policy, no capacity to develop a methodology and no capacity to employ that methodology in rural and regional Australia. It is a lot of hot air. Telling people that 60 per cent of the coalition's effort in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is going to come from soil carbon when they have none of those things in place—not a methodology and not likely to have one in the foreseeable future—and the whole idea that they are going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by five per cent by 2020 is a joke. It is an absolute joke in carbon terms and people know it. That is why they cannot get out and defend it. That is why every time Mr Hunt gets up to try to defend it, he gets himself into trouble because he cannot actually identify how much they are going to pay for this 60 per cent of the effort coming from soil carbon, or where the money is going to come from.

This legislation is now internally consistent, it has addressed the issue of perverse outcomes and it recognises that there are at the moment simultaneous crises—a water crisis, a climate crisis, a food security crisis and an energy crisis. This legislation recognises all those things are happening at once, and it has built in a number of ways to address those tensions so that you do not have a disproportionate level of funding for one against the others and the perverse outcomes that happened under the coalition's pushed and promoted 2020 forest plantation plan and the managed investment schemes that went with it.

Who has put the work into policy development? Who has put the work into consulting rural and regional Australia? Who has given thought to improving Australia's biodiversity outcomes at the same time as creating jobs in the regions? Who has put the thought into long-term productivity in rural and regional Australia in terms of managing the landscape for productive outcomes? It is the people who have worked on this Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill and who are putting it through here today. The people who have opposed it at every turn are still opposing it. When we get to see this rolled out in rural and regional Australia, we are going to find people standing up and saying this is a good thing. Yet, this is another one of the things that the coalition will abolish and roll back, according to them, if they ever get into government. I will be very interested to see how many people in rural and regional Australia think it will be a good thing to abolish the Carbon Farming Initiative. It will be the only source of funding available to people in rural and regional Australia to give them long-term income from the stewardship of the landscape and the enhancement of carbon in the landscape that they have been asking for for so long.

I am really pleased to stand here today and support the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill and to make very clear to rural and regional Australia that they need to look at the detail and ask the coalition this: how are you going to deliver on your 60 per cent effort of the five per cent reduction coming from soil carbon in the absence of methodology or of monitoring or of any of the rigour that is associated with actually achieving it in the manner that you say you can? Further, it is time they went and told rural and regional Australia exactly how much is going to come out of the budget to pay for that 60 per cent effort on soil carbon, and where it is going to come from? Those are the questions that people really need to have answered.