Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The committee is considering the Tax Laws Amendment (2008 Measures No. 1) Bill 2008 as amended and Australian Greens amendment (1) on sheet 5489—

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

I rise to make some more remarks, because I am still waiting for the government to answer my questions on this. I will keep asking them until I get the Minister for Climate Change and Water in here to answer them. We were told yesterday by Senator Conroy that this bill does not put environmental constraints around these tax deductions for so-called carbon sinks. That relies on the minister for climate change setting the guidelines. We are told: ‘Buy a pig in a poke. Just vote for this now, and you will get guidelines later which will tell you whether or not these trees can be cut down.’ It defies common sense to say that you get a tax deduction for planting a carbon sink, but there is no requirement for it to stay in the ground. It is clear to me that the wording has been done very carefully. All you have to do is say at the time you plant it, ‘I intend for it to be a carbon sink.’ After that, you can change your mind or sell it to somebody else who does not have the same intention.

There is a line in the explanatory memorandum which says that you do not have to have any connection with the land to be able to benefit from this. That is clearly for the coal industry, the aviation industry, the cement industry—everyone who wants to offset their carbon rather than reduce emissions at the source. But it was also very clear to me that this is a rort for the forest industry. This is MIS on steroids. I have done some more research on that, and I have found that to be true. I have looked at what the Australian Greenhouse Office now accredits as a carbon sink. I can harvest a forest and still generate greenhouse-friendly abatement. You might think, ‘How could it be that, if you cut it down, you still get carbon credits?’ This is somewhat confusing to someone who is trying to reduce emissions. The answer is that you pool your forests and you manage them for a certain volume of carbon. You might plant a thousand hectares of forest. You say, ‘I am managing that for the equivalent of 700 hectares of equivalent carbon.’ Then you go through your forest rotations so that you still get the money for your woodchips, your product, and you get the money for the carbon abatement while those forests are growing. You get to double dip here, and you get the Commonwealth to help you out doing it. They even specifically say that decisions on when to sell carbon could be based on considerations around wood product and carbon prices.

As I said yesterday, you will work out, ‘Wow, the woodchip price is $90 a tonne and carbon is so much a tonne on carbon market, so at the moment it is better to reduce my volume of carbon and go with the chips,’ or it may go the other way. If you are allowed to pool all the managed forests under your control—if you are Gunns, Great Southern or any other company—you have now got a scheme which gives you double the money for nothing, essentially. This is outrageous and it will drive people off the land. Senator Conroy told us yesterday, and I will just read it out from the explanatory memorandum:

The Climate Change Minister must, by legislative instrument, make guidelines about environmental and resource management in relation to carbon sink forests.

So the minister has to make these guidelines for the management of these forests. I just want a simple answer from the government to this question: do you intend to make the guidelines the same guidelines as those currently in this greenhouse abatement accreditation scheme? If you do, it is nonsense. We are not going to get an increased take-up of carbon; we are just going to get a double whammy for the forest industry—a double whammy in the sense of a double bonus for the forest industry because it is money for jam for them.

I would also like to put on the record a letter from the Mayor of King Island. I draw this particularly to the attention of Senators Abetz, Barnett, Polley, Carol Brown, Sherry, Watson, Bushby, Parry, O’Brien and Colbeck. You are the 10 Tasmanian senators apart from Senator Bob Brown and I. The Mayor of King Island has written this:

I am the Mayor of King Island. We were able to fend off the planting of forest trees on our grazing lands some two years ago. We realised that the risk of having plantation forests for harvesting as chips or logs would be low due to the heavy infrastructure costs and the remoteness of our island. The matter of MIS schemes for the planting of trees as carbon rebates is another matter. The experience of Kangaroo Island causes us to take up the cudgel to protect our island. The King Island brand is very dependent on the maintenance of the areas of agricultural land available at this time. We are unable to replace any lands lost to forests as we have a very finite boundary to our island. To lose the King Island product due to the inability of the population to support itself is not a tenable idea and would be stupid. We only exist because of the quality of our product, which allows an adequate return to compensate for our remoteness and the added costs of transporting these products to market. All of our products are value added by industries on the island which will be lost.

Kind regards,

Charles Arnold.

That is the Mayor of King Island putting it absolutely on the record specifically for those 10 senators to listen to. If you do this, you will destroy the King Island brand because there will not be a critical mass of people left on the island to sustain the industries. I do not want any of you standing up in Tasmania and putting out press releases saying how bad this is, that it should not have happened, that you did not know it was going to happen and so on. I am telling you now. The Mayor of King Island is telling you now. In this Senate, I am showing you now that the guidelines are not in place and there is nothing to stop these trees being cut down and managed as a pool by the forest industry, the coal industry, the airlines or anybody else. You know what you are doing.

I also want to say that people have stood up in here and said it is a rort. Senator Heffernan in particular described it as bottom-of-the-harbour scheme and as a rort. He knows full well that it is a rort. The Nationals know it is a rort; they have stood up and said so. We have the numbers in this Senate today to stop this rort, if the people who recognise it is a rort get rid of it. But no, that is not going to happen because those for the forest industry—Senator Abetz; Malcolm Turnbull; the member for Wentworth, and others; Senator Minchin is no doubt amongst them—are in there saying the Liberal Party will vote for this rort. That is what is going on. They will vote for it today. They will knock out my amendments which require mixed species and require the trees to be in the ground, even though the government has not said, and will not say, you cannot cut down the trees, because they intend the trees to be cut down through managed investment schemes. There will be pooling of trees by the forest industry under your very own greenhouse abatement program scheme to manage pooled forests.

As I have said time and time again, there is nothing here at all—and I would like to know from Senator Wong why there is not—about a rebate for protecting standing carbon stores. If the government is serious, why don’t we have that in there? All we have got is a tax bill and another rort for the forest industry. It is a rort for people who just want to put in the trees, get the tax deduction and sell or lease them to somebody else who can then decide what they want to do with them—whether they want to manage them for carbon or logging or both. It is not putting any pressure on the coal industry or the airlines to reduce their emissions to just say, ‘Let’s plant the trees and offset them over time.’ You think about the volume of emissions we are talking about that need to be offset. If those coal-fired power stations cannot get their emissions down at the source—carbon capture and storage is nowhere to be seen and will not be here for 20 years—they will have to take up hundreds of thousands of hectares of land to go anywhere near it because, when these trees are planted, they have got virtually no carbon in them. It is going to take years to get any kind of volume of carbon. To get anything like it, you need hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land, and that will be agricultural land with water. They will buy water rights and land.

I think it is disgraceful that the minister for climate change is not here confirming for this Senate that these trees can be cut down, that there is no requirement for them not to be cut down and that they will allow them to be managed by forest companies in conjunction with their plantations for fibre. I want to put very clearly on the record that I have no confidence whatsoever in the minister for climate change setting guidelines that will guarantee these are carbon sinks into the future, nor do I have any confidence whatsoever that we are going to see permanent carbon reductions because of this. There will be no plantings on marginal land because the trees will not grow on marginal land. The only land these plantations are going to go on is land with water, where the trees will grow, and that will take it out of agricultural production.

Let us be very clear: the contempt of the Senate being shown by the government is real. Senator Conroy has not answered the questions. Senator Wong, the Minister for Climate Change and Water, even though she is the one who will set the guidelines, has not come here and said anything about it. I bet she does not even know herself what the guidelines are going to be, and what she will revert to will be these foolhardy guidelines in this Greenhouse Friendly Forest Sink Abatement Projects Scheme they have going. And if anybody thinks that people around the country are going to take this scheme seriously as being a reduction in carbon emissions, they have another think coming. It is not worth the paper it is written on, to be frank, as an abatement scheme. Get real and have an abatement scheme for protecting standing vegetation, standing native forests. Then we will start talking about real carbon sinks.

I would like to have an explanation from the government on those matters. Are the guidelines that the government is talking about the guidelines that are in this current scheme? Yes or no, Minister Wong? Where are you, Minister Wong? Are these the guidelines? Because they allow for them to be cut down. That is all there is to it. A rort is going through this parliament. The Liberal and Labor parties know it is a rort going through this parliament, and they are going to sit and let it go through. And if anyone is stupid enough to think that we are going to be pacified by the promise of some sort of inquiry after the event, don’t insult our intelligence. Once it is law, it is law. The opportunity is here today to knock it off, to kill it, to end this rort. If you do not do that then you do not have the courage of your convictions and it is your intention to drive people off the land, to take land out of agricultural production—and there is nothing else that can be said for it. I would like someone from the government—there is not even anyone in the chamber; there is only Senator Webber sitting on the government benches.

Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, Senator Conroy is over there.

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

Oh, Senator Conroy has just wandered back into the chamber. Could Senator Conroy please tell me now: can these trees be cut down? Can they?

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think it is appalling that the minister who is responsible for this is outside the chamber when this highly contentious piece of legislation is coming forward. I acknowledge what Senator Milne has said. I also acknowledge that the reality here today is that we do not have the numbers to stop it; we have to come up with—

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

Well, we do—

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, we don’t. We have to come up with a solution that keeps this issue ventilated, with a process that actually takes it forward. I would be only too happy to cross the floor—but to what effect? There would be me and, I imagine, a couple of others and the Greens, and the issue would be lost. I believe there is a genuine sense of concern as we go forward. I am hoping that Senator Ronaldson in due course will talk to an inquiry to deal with this issue. In dealing with this issue we will get a chance to further ventilate this issue and to flesh this issue out further so that we can change the law—because the law has already passed, unfortunately.

I acknowledge also that we have the capacity today to reach back into that law if it were the wish of the majority of the chamber—that is very important: if it were the wish of the majority of the chamber—to change the law. But it is quite evident that the wish of the majority of the chamber is not there. So you have to be honest and practical and, in trying to deal with the farmers who have a concern with this, come up with a solution that actually takes them forward in some way, shape or form. To do anything else may be a pious amendment; it may be a Pyrrhic victory. I am only too prepared to do that, if it were not for the chance out there that you do have the potential to go forward and deal with this issue in another way. That is what my responsibility is here today. And I imagine it is the same for the responsibility of others.

It is self-evident. Why on earth are we going to give a tax deduction to coal companies, who are receiving record prices and record returns, to go out there, buy agricultural land that is currently supplying the Australian supermarkets with cheap product, so that they can get a tax deduction and the Australian consumer can pay more for food? It is an absolute no-brainier. How on earth can this have come forward? There is an amendment I have tabled, which I will have to withdraw, to hold an inquiry. That talks about strengthening the guidelines specifically for that. I acknowledge fully that, even if I did go forward with the amendment, it would not get up because it does not have the numbers.

So how do we progress the issue in such a manner so that we have an inquiry, so that we have a proper ventilation of this issue, so that we have the capacity to clearly explain to the Australian community and get away from the technicalities of talking about a TLAB bill to a situation where we are talking about the price of food in the supermarket, the economies of local towns, the capacity for certain mills to stay viable, and the problems that MISs are causing from the Murray River up to Tully? To try to properly deal with it, these issues have to be further ventilated. If there were a move today against the numbers then the issue would die today. But we must continue to pursue the issue.

When the amendment comes forward I propose to withdraw my amendment on the premise that an inquiry will come forward. I am hoping to hear about a foreshadowed inquiry. That is extremely important. There are issues. I think that, as people become genuinely and further engaged with this issue—we have only had about three days of good oxygen on this—and we get a further inquiry into this, over a period of time, we have a better chance to do something about it. However, I also clearly put on the record that, if this inquiry turns into a farce, if it turns into something that is not taken seriously, if it turns into a tick-and-flick show, then, if other instances occur in the future where people need our support, it might be a little harder to come by.

Government Senators:

Government senators interjecting—

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Conroy, what I want to know from you is: why on earth isn’t Senator Wong here today? It is her piece of legislation. What is going on? As you are here, we need to have some of these issues explained. Yesterday you said that land was not going to be part of the deductible expenses; however, the legislation clearly states in section 40-10: ‘capital expenditure for the establishment of trees in carbon sink forests’. There are two forms of account: capital account and income account. Income account relates to recurring expenses; capital account is for such things as land. If I read this legislation in its purest form, I would say: ‘Capital expenditure is the purchase of land. I purchase the land for establishing the trees; it must be deductible.’ If it is not, the government is going to have say so in the legislation. It is no good saying that land is not capital—because land is capital. These are the sorts of issues that have great consequence in this legislation.

We are receiving calls from all around the place from people who have serious concerns about this legislation. I imagine that, with those calls coming in, the people who have made them will want their time at an inquiry to ventilate their opinions as to why this issue is important. I look forward to hearing about the foreshadowed inquiry. If it occurs, it will provide the best opportunity for us to look at this issue. The numbers are not with us in the chamber; quite evidently the numbers are against us today. We have to come up with a better alternative to take this issue forward.

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to have an answer to the question on capital. The young fellows in the box, near the minister, might be able to provide that to him. As I said yesterday, it is regrettable that, last week, a piece of seriously flawed legislation slipped under the radar of this parliament. We are in a difficult position, but I am confident that the government, the opposition and the other parties in the Senate are aware of the flaws in the bill. I am hopeful that, with some goodwill and in the interests of a better Australia, we can fix this legislation by giving oxygen to the issues of concern. There are fundamental issues to be dealt with here. This is a classic example: the idea of a carbon sink rings the bell. We have rung the bell before we have sorted out how to implement it. The legislation in its present form is, without a doubt, putting the cart before the horse. We do not know the price at which carbon will be traded in the offset market. Also, the higher the price for carbon, the better the class of land that will be used for it. As a practising farmer, I am not going to bother growing a crop of wheat when I can get as much as I would from that from leasing my land to someone who will get a carbon offset from the gross emissions of a power station somewhere; I will go off to the Gold Coast and lie on the beach. That would be the attitude of farmers. You try and make the most out of your land, and, if it is not growing food, why worry about food?

This is just crazy. The legislation in its present form is a raid on the prime agricultural lands of Australia. I remind the chamber that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in black and white that, in 50 years time, 50 per cent of the world’s population is going to be short of water; one billion people will be unable to feed themselves; and—note—30 per cent of the productive land of Asia will go out of production due to climate change. Also, 1.6 billion—not million but billion—people could be displaced on this planet, including a large slab of central Africa and northern Asia, and the food task will double. For many years the world has modelled energy but it has not been modelling the food task. The world population is growing from 6.2 billion people to nine billion people. Everyone has been focusing on energy. No-one has been focusing on how you feed them. It is an interesting price signal in the market that in the United States, where everyone expects to fill their Hummer and go down to the supermarket and get the tucker, Wal-Mart have put a restriction on what rice is available. In the future, you will not be worrying about filling the Hummer; you will be worrying about what is in the fridge. Today we are flying in the face of understanding that problem.

This legislation is an attack on farming land—but it can be fixed. This is very distressing for me and for people out there. I have had phone calls about this from people all over Australia. To the people in this chamber, we are pleading with the government to use the democratic process in this parliament to fix this legislation. This legislation is an attack on farming land. We cannot afford to do that. The legislation is full of flaws. I will not bother going through the technical questions—and I see that the minister is tied up in another discussion with his advisers. There are a whole lot of basic questions, and I do not know why they have not been asked. This legislation went to a lot committees and was given the flick because it was considered non-controversial. No-one really looked at it until it turned up here.

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

I did. I said it was controversial.

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have not even been told what the definition of a contract is between the lease owner or the landowner and the person who is looking for a carbon offset. What is the definition of the carbon sink? How long do the trees have to stay in the ground? The land use will relate to the market in carbon offsets. Everyone ought to listen to this: at $17 a tonne—and people are talking about $80 a tonne—every irrigated dairy farmer will be insolvent if we have to participate in such a market. This is serious.

There are a lot of academics out there in academia who would listen to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and I believe there would be some vagary in the science of its predictions. But, even if those predictions are only 10 per cent right, and 160 million people, not 1.6 billion, are displaced, it is still serious. I note that is starting to hit the news now, Senator Milne. The news this morning reported that people are worried about displacement on the planet. Mick Kelty said nine months ago that one of the greatest threats to Australia’s sovereignty is climate change, and that is about displacement. I said something about it and it was misconstrued in the press, ‘Heffernan: Asian invasion’. This is not about some lunatic; it is about reality, and this is an attack on the capacity of Australia to provide for the food task.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are dealing with a crucial piece of legislation, and the Greens stand absolutely 100 per cent on the need for this legislation to be put in the rubbish bin where it deserves to go. We have heard arguments from Senators Heffernan and Joyce, and from some other senators, agreeing with that.

The argument we are now getting is that, because the numbers are not with us, we should change our mind, drop the argument and let the legislation go through, and we will have an inquiry afterwards. As all of us from the bush know, closing the stable door after the horse has bolted is not a very effective way of working. I think the good senators from the National Party, and Senator Heffernan, who have argued so cogently against this legislation ought not to allow the sop of an inquiry after the event to alter the fact that this legislation should be voted down.

An amendment is mooted asking for an inquiry and, because this debate will obviously come back this afternoon, I want to give notice that I will be moving that the further consideration of the bill be made an order of the day for the day on which the committee reports. If we are going to have an inquiry, let’s be sensible about this. Let the stakeholders be heard over the winter months, and particularly the farmers of Australia, on the sheer unfairness of legislation which will mean corporations can buy up their land, with massive tax deductions, and use it under a shonky proposal for plantations as carbon sinks, which has no assurance at all, but not get similar tax deductions for keeping that land going and growing food on it.

The arguments that we have heard on this legislation hold 100 per cent: it will displace communities, it will degrade remote and regional communities and it will inevitably end in ownership by city based corporations, through a massive tax lurk, of what would otherwise be productive family owned farms. There is no doubt about that. If there is going to be an inquiry into it, let us hear from rural Australia. Let us hear from the Mayor of King Island who says this will be—I hope I am not misrepresenting him—devastating for that fantastic producer of good foods for Australia. Let us hear from them before we allow this opportunity to change this legislation to pass.

The argument is there that, even if this amendment gets through the Senate to withdraw this schedule, it still has to get through the House. But let us have the authority of a Senate inquiry to convince the government that that should happen. We should have an inquiry and then finally have a vote on this bill. That is the logical, sensible and people-serving way to go in this democracy; otherwise an inquiry becomes a sop and becomes hollow. If we do not take this opportunity, we all know that, with the new Senate further down the line, the government will not entertain this matter in the way it is now doing. If you have an inquiry afterwards, it takes a lot of power from the Senate to fix up this very important matter.

I want to reiterate the argument against this legislation and encapsulate it again. I am grateful to Senator Milne for having alerted the chamber to this matter and, in fact, alerting everybody to it a long time ago. She is another senator from the bush and is very aware of the ramifications of this legislation. Here it is. It is called ‘carbon sink’ legislation, but it is not. It says it will withhold carbon from the atmosphere and that big investors will get huge tax deductions, but it has no guarantees at all attached to it. Senator Milne has moved an amendment which states, ‘If you put the trees in, you’re going to have them there for a bare minimum of 100 years.’ Anybody who knows about the threat of global warming and the massive impact that it will have on farmlands—and, as Senator Heffernan said, on society and the economy—understands that, if you are going to have a carbon sink, it will be beyond our lifetimes. The government and opposition will not support the amendment. That is a deliberated and well thought out admission that this legislation is a shonk. It is feather bedding big, polluting interests in this country who want a greenwash and to get paid for it. It is a false scheme, a sham. They get paid for it out of public money, because that tax is not collected. It is incredible that this legislation has the support of the government and the coalition. I am full of admiration for those senators in the opposition ranks who have pulled up on this and said: ‘This is not right. It is a sham, it is a rort and it is doing the wrong thing by the people in the bush.’

But it is doing the wrong thing by everybody in Australia because it is clearly a well thought out deception to assist already big, wealthy corporations firstly to window-dress and falsely claim they are investing in the world’s future by having guaranteed carbon sinks and secondly to get massive amounts of tax deductions they simply do not deserve. Put those millions of dollars of tax deductions, if you want, into rural health centres, rural schools, rural amenity and helping people stay on their farms.

I read another thing in the international press this week, and I am sure it will hold true in Australia. Everywhere, the impact of corporate takeover of farmlands—of this ‘get big or get out’ thing—is found to be that the food production of the big industrial farmers never matches the food production of the family farm. It simply does not match it in terms of productivity—productivity for the world. As everybody knows in this place, we are facing a global food crisis, and here we are going to compound that. People are going to be paid to take food-producing Australian lands out of production. That is very wrong; it should not be entertained. The opposition has the numbers here now; it is not going to after the winter break. If its leaders are serious about an inquiry, let’s have that inquiry over winter and come back here informed with this option still open to us so that this Senate can deal with it in the most powerful way still available to us.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have absolute sympathy for and am in complete agreement with Senator Brown, Senator Milne, Senator Joyce and Senator Heffernan.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And Family First. Don’t forget Family First!

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And Family First. Take a bit of advice from me, Senator Conroy: we have five minutes to go and this bill will not come to conclusion. If I were you, I would go over and see the Prime Minister during the lunch break and say, ‘Listen, we are on the verge of a tragedy here.’ There is nothing political about this. We are marching down to one of the greatest disasters we are ever going to see. It can be stopped. I suspect it is not being stopped because of some sort of fear among the coalition and the Labor Party—‘If we pull out of here our credentials on climate change will be damaged, so we’ve gotta both march over the cliff like a pack of lemmings’—that there will be a disaster.

Let me address something that Senator Brown said. He said that this is in law; the law is operating as now. Collectively, it went under our radar. It was taken out of T1 and put into another tax package and it slipped under the radar and got through. So it does not matter what we do in this place, we cannot change the law unless the law is changed in the House of Representatives. That is the reality of life. I have seen the Clerk on a number of occasions and have tried to think of ways through this. But, unless you can get support for your amendment in the lower house, then it is not going to work. You can do anything you like—you can scream, you can shout, you can shout it from the hilltops—but it is not going to work.

What we have left is to have a Senate inquiry. It will be up to Barnaby Joyce, Senator Heffernan and me to invite the sugar industry and the banana industry down and to talk to the dairy industry. It will go further than an inquiry, and the inquiry will be as good or as bad as we let it be. I am not a member of that particular committee but I will certainly be a participating member. Senator Joyce and I will go around Queensland saying: ‘Hey, there’s a Senate inquiry. This is your opportunity, your big chance, to stop these managed investment schemes and carbon sinks.’

Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For God’s sake get on with the bill!

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was the Labor Party’s previous representative for primary industries interjecting. No wonder they dumped you like a hot potato! You were sent to the back bench and that is where you deserve to rot if those are your comments on these issues. In Queensland you cannot cut down native vegetation. It is just not allowed. It is banned by state legislation. So where do you have to go to put these carbon sinks? There is only one place to go. You cannot go to Queensland and take down native vegetation; it is all covered by legislation. So you can only go onto prime agricultural land. From a practical point of view, that is where the trees grow fastest and where the water and rainfall are. That is why people are going to go onto prime agricultural land.

Government Senators:

Government senators interjecting—

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you want to scream and shout, I suggest you go to the Prime Minister at lunchtime and start screaming and shouting at him!

Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Boswell, resume your seat please. There is too much interruption and interjection across the chamber. Senator Boswell should be heard in silence.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have a crisis on our hands. The Greens are right; they are coming at it from a different angle from Senator Joyce, Senator Heffernan and me, but we all arrive at the same point—that it is going to be a disaster. You can prevent that disaster, if you have any feeling for rural and regional Australia. You have heard the debate. You have gone up there and promised various things to the people and then reneged on them when you got into government—you know that. This inquiry will have to be a big inquiry. It will be up to us to make sure this proposition is thoroughly investigated, along with MISs.

I am very sympathetic to the amendment but it will not achieve anything, Senator Brown, because the bill is on foot. It is law now. The only way for your amendment to work would be to carry the Liberal and the Labor parties in a vote—which we are not going to do; we have not got the numbers—and take it over there and get the vote taken in the other place. Practically, that is not going to happen. The next practical thing, and the best thing, we can do is—

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To mobilise the nation.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

to mobilise the people. I can tell you there will not be too many people from North Queensland that will be coming—

Progress reported.