John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about the emissions trading scheme. I had a lot to say about it yesterday, but I am really concerned about the proposal and I would like to go on and talk about sequestration of carbon in soil. What worries enormously is that the target set by the government in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is between five and 25 per cent, depending on the decisions the rest of the world make at Copenhagen. I know it is off to a bad start and expecting an agreement from the rest of the countries in the world at the Copenhagen meeting, which commences on 7 December, would be very optimistic indeed. I would just like to paint a picture of what will happen if the rest of the world does not do anything, by which I mean if the emissions from all the other countries in the world remain the same and we reduce Australia’s by five per cent, which would cost somewhere between $120 billion to $200 billion by the year 2020, depending on the price of carbon, the Australian dollar and the dealers on the stock market where they trade that price. If we have a reduction of five per cent, that will mean that we will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 380 parts per million to 379.75 parts per million. In other words, we will reduce the levels of carbon dioxide by just a quarter of one part at a cost of some $200 billion.

This is of great concern, but the point I would like to make is about storing carbon in the soil. Every tonne of carbon in the soil is roughly equivalent to four tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. People say, ‘How do you store the carbon in the soil?’ Good question. In actual fact, there is a very simple answer to it. The problem we have is that the Kyoto agreement does not recognise soil carbon. Any soil nutritionist will tell you that carbon is the cycle of life and the more carbon in the soil the less fertiliser required, the better the food we grow, the less moisture required and the more the soil holds moisture. If you do not have healthy soil, then you do not grow healthy food, and if you do not have healthy food you simply do not have healthy people. This is a health issue. The condition of the soil that grows our food in this nation must be healthy.

How do you sequester carbon in the soil? It is simple: balance the nutrition in your soil. You might have a situation where the calcium levels are low, so the farmers simply spread lime on their country. That brings the soil back up into balance. What that does is make the microbes in the soil multiply by a huge factor. It is those microbes in the soil that convert the humus into carbon, and 60 per cent of humus is carbon. We have seen the carbon levels reduced enormously around Australia over many years, mainly from putting nitrogen on the soil, because nitrogen makes the microbes hungry and they then consume a lot of carbon and the balance is not there. I have seen good black-soil country in the Moree area—magnificent basalt self-mulching soil—that was once four or five per cent carbon but now is down to just 0.5 per cent carbon.

The point I make is this: if we increased the carbon in our soil by three per cent over the 450 million hectares of agricultural land in Australia we would 100 per cent neutralise Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions for the next 125 years—not just five percent through a $120 billion to $200 billion cost from 1 July 2011 through to 30 June 2020. We would 100 per cent neutralise carbon dioxide emissions for the next 125 years.

I know it is a wish that will never come true, but I would like to take the people of this place out to the Northparkes Mine near Parkes in the central west of New South Wales. The mine was owned by North Mining, and now it is owned by Rio Tinto. Around the mine they have 10,000 acres of land, which they farm every year. Geoff McCallum is the farm manager. When they farm that country a tractor goes over that ground once a year—tram-tracked; Scottie Goodsell is the contractor there. The increase in carbon in that soil is absolutely amazing. A lot of that red country out there has been farmed for many years and the soil structure has actually broken down. When you farm that country and you have rain on it after you sow the crop and you have a frost, the country actually crusts; it sets like concrete on top and often the crop does not come up. It is a constant problem. But when you build up the carbon in the soil, no longer does that soil actually crust. Going out there in the middle of summer for many years—it is mainly a winter rainfall area of the state—when it was hot and dry as we carted weeds out of the paddocks, and that was only a few years ago for me, you could just scrape the soil with your boot and you would dig down four or five inches. It was like loam. And this is a mining company that is managing this soil. They have done a magnificent job with it.

The point I make is that this is what we could do right around Australia. It is win-win all the way through. Increase the carbon in the soil and that dramatically reduces the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and makes the soil better and healthier. You will grow more food, which is going to have to be the No. 1 priority as the world’s population continues to increase, and you will grow better food. What I am saying is that this is a win-win situation. You do not need $120 billion or $200 billion of costs placed on industries and households, with the truckies and the fuel and everything else, over the years. We can do much, much better by good environmental management.

Hence, I think that caring for our soil is what people on all sides of the parliament should be looking at. I believe our soil is our most valuable asset in this nation: it is our soil that grows our food and it is our soil that grows the trees, the pastures and everything else. The healthier the pastures, the healthier the stock that eats those pastures and, hence, the healthier the food from that stock. This is what I have been saying for some time now. And I want to thank people like Dr Christine Jones, from the University of New England, and my colleague Rick Colless, a member of the Legislative Council in the New South Wales parliament who spent 30 years of his life caring for soil.

The problem we have is that it is very hard for our farmers to be green when so many are so far in the red. The debts are huge and the costs of farming are huge. In two years the price they paid for MOP fertiliser has gone to $1,500, $1,600 or $1,700 a tonne—only to find they had a drought and a failed crop. This is the problem: when they have a failed year, a failed harvest, they still lump the cost, and the costs are huge. That means that they have to borrow more to continue and many are simply living off the equity in their land.

I believe we need to have a situation where the government is involved with our soil, putting dollars into it, sequestering carbon in it—far, far more than you will ever get from any emissions trading scheme. It would improve the soil, which will grow more and better food on better land with less rain. That to me is the most vital issue that we face in the future. If we are going to leave our land to future generations in better shape than we inherited it then we must address the quality of our soil and we must look after it correctly.

I know that it is frustrating when we see the dust storms of recent months blowing in from the centre of Australia, dry as all can be with no grass cover and no pasture cover to protect the soil. There is only one way we are going to fix that at the moment and that is with rain so that we get a cover of pasture over the land to hold the topsoil together. It has of course been happening for thousands of years. That is why there are big red sand dunes out in many areas of Central Australia.

The point I make is that if we are going to go down the road of reducing the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere we can do it far better than with an emissions trading scheme and we can make things much better for future generations. That to me is one of the most important issues that we should address in this parliament. I thank the Senate for the opportunity to speak.