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

What we have heard from the minister is that the only basis that he can provide for a claim that we will achieve a five per cent emissions reduction target, as pathetic as that is, is that he is 'extremely confident'. And he is the finance minister for this nation? What we have just heard is voodoo economics. Just because the finance minister is confident does not mean that anybody actually thinks that that is going to happen. In fact, there are more of us who think that some men just want to watch the world burn, and I would suggest that we are dealing with one of them here this evening.

I wanted to follow on from Senator Singh in relation to the costs. We had many Senate inquiries, and we had lots of evidence from people who are already involved in Carbon Farming Initiative projects. They have said that they need a price of at least $15, if not more, a tonne in order to be viable with those projects. The Carbon Farming Initiative, as I see it here under the Emissions Reduction Fund, is not going to go anywhere near that. What evidence do you have that you are going to pay a reasonable price to these Carbon Farming Initiative existing projects such that they can remain viable? Secondly, for new proponents, one of the issues is the costs of participating. One of the requests that has been made relates to how there are going to be mechanisms to help individual farmers or groups to aggregate so that they can actually bid in once with a project of a reasonable scale.