Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

This is a report into native vegetation laws, greenhouse gas abatement and climate change measures. It was a particularly interesting inquiry. The inquiry raised many issues that are not normally before this place, because most of this legislation is within the domain of the various states and territories—and this is a key fact about this report. These are state laws, and many of the issues raised by the hundreds of submissions we received related to enforcement of these laws and the behaviour and actions of state governments. The majority report of the committee reflects concerns that have arisen, in some cases decades ago, since the passage of these laws—these are not laws that are merely the product of the last decade—that regulated the management of native vegetation on private land.

I note that these laws have represented a significant change to many. The laws guaranteeing retention of native vegetation on private land represent a change because in past years a condition of title or a condition of lease was in fact the clearing of land. So there has been a substantial change for many involved in the agricultural and pastoral industries who are affected by these laws.

The inquiry highlighted many issues and I would like to outline a few this evening. I know that some of my colleagues—I assume on both sides of the house—will add to this later on. In my view, laws that were once about broad-scale land clearing have now become significantly more about the management of native vegetation on individual properties. We heard of many examples of effective micromanagement of individual properties. In particular, there was an absurd example where a farmer was not allowed to remove a single tree in the middle of a paddock, even if he guaranteed to plant native vegetation elsewhere, that would have allowed much more efficient and modern utilisation of that particular land for farming use. Situations like that are absurd. I think they reflect the change in what these laws originally were about, which was broad-scale land clearing, and how they now seem to have become more about the management of individual properties.

Similarly, many witnesses outlined to us numerous examples of problems with the enforcement of these laws. The committee report highlighted a couple of these. Landholders are in fact liable for the payment of rates on land they cannot use or land that has been locked up, which the committee felt was an issue that needed to be reconsidered. There was also potentially the clash of legal regimes. Laws that required the management of noxious weeds may clash with laws about the retention and management of native vegetation. In certain jurisdictions there is a lack of administrative appeal of certain decisions made on behalf of government officials. It was put to the committee that in the state of Western Australia these decisions were one of the very few decisions that were not able to be appealed through the administrative appeals process of that state. The committee highlighted that as well.

There was also some concern that the state-wide application of laws would not always take into account regional, environmental, economic, social or, indeed, other differences. Even as a federalist myself, the lines drawn as our state boundaries do not always take these differences into account, and there might be a case for more regional flexibility within states. In my view, and in the view of a number of members of the committee, there appears to be at least a partial breakdown in relationships between enforcement agents and property owners. What underpins this? It is difficult to determine this from a simple Senate inquiry at the Commonwealth level into state laws. It is clear that some property owners are bearing a burden on behalf of the wider community. I hasten to add that the committee did not determine it to be inappropriate for the state to regulate the use of private landholdings or how they are utilised, but the committee was of the view that when someone pays for a benefit desired by the broader community through a direct economic cost there is a legitimate claim to consider compensating the landholder in that case for the burden they are bearing.

On a more philosophical level, I think another cause of this is the lack of common ground between urban policy makers and those involved in primary production, be it agriculture or pastoral production, in regional areas. There is much less shared experience, in my view, across the community than there was several generations ago between those who live and are raised in the cities and those who live and are involved in primary production in our regional areas. This lack of understanding has led to a more blunt degree of regulation by the states and a high degree of frustration by those who are regulated. If I look at my own experience, I realise that it is limited itself in this regard, and this is one of the many reasons I found this inquiry particularly interesting.

I make a final comment regarding the additional comments from government senators. Despite the attempts of the government senators to constantly pin the blame for these laws on the Howard government, it is clear that these laws are state laws. They were passed by state parliaments. They are enforced by state enforcement agencies. There is no Commonwealth head of power with respect to land management other than through treaties we have ratified and legislated through this parliament. These issues, such as biodiversity, were not prominent in our hearings or in the submissions received by this committee. These problems are primarily ones of legislation, regulation and enforcement at the state level.

Finally, I express my thanks to my colleagues who participated in this inquiry. It was done under a particularly tight time line. I particularly thank the committee’s secretary, Christine McDonald, and the committee secretariat, who worked extremely long hours during a very tight time line dealing with hundreds of submissions. I also thank the hundreds of Australians who made submissions and the many who appeared at our committee into this inquiry.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Looking back on the inquiry of the Finance and Public Administration References Committee into native vegetation laws, greenhouse gas abatement and climate change measures, I think it is one of those good ideas that the opposition think they have but when they actually get into the nitty-gritty of the inquiry probably wish they had not sought to do so. The terms of reference of the committee encompass the rhetoric that was being used by the opposition to try to gain support amongst farmers and to try to share blame on anywhere but the coalition on this issue of native vegetation. The terms of reference go to the diminution of land asset value. They go to compensation arrangements for landholders. They go to the method of calculation of asset value and ‘any other related matter’. Yet if you look at the recommendations, which we as government members do not have great problems with, you will see they talk about anything but the terms of reference. Why is that? It is because this was a pure political position being put by the coalition to try to raise their position with farmers around the country. All they did was raise expectations through this inquiry and delivered on nothing. They delivered on nothing.

I have heard much about hypocrisy in the debates in this chamber this afternoon but, let me tell you, the hypocrisy from the opposition senators on this was huge. The hypocrisy was oozing from every pore in their bodies on this issue. They were up there arguing that there should be compensation when they were talking to farmers outside Parliament House at rallies but, as soon as they had to face some reality, they ran away from that position. I must say the coalition have got form on this whole issue and that form goes back a long way. It goes back to about 1995, when one of those coalition senators, Senator Ian Macdonald, was in the chamber, in opposition. In the Hansard of 22 March 1995, he says:

As opposed to that the coalition’s policy that Senator Kemp and Senator Brownhill have mentioned is a sensible policy. It was put out in our discussion paper and calls for an end to broadacre land clearing with compensation to owners to be negotiated between the Commonwealth and the states for the loss of further earnings, a no regrets approach to greenhouse reduction strategies, and a nationally coordinated reafforestation program.

So this was a ‘no regrets’ policy from the coalition. Well, as soon as they said it, they had regrets, because Senator Macdonald in the Hansard on 9 March 2000 changed his position. It was not that the Commonwealth should pay compensation because Labor were in government. Because the coalition were in government, it now became the coalition’s policy for an end to broadacre land clearing with compensation, but then they went on to say in 2002:

The Commonwealth reiterates—

This is the coalition government; this is Senator Macdonald—

that land clearing is primarily a land management issue and is the responsibility of state and territory governments.

And we heard that repeated again today. Senator Macdonald went on to say:

The Commonwealth has, however, indicated that it would be prepared to provide a financial contribution commensurate with the reduction in emissions from land clearing negotiated and implemented by the Queensland government. Achieving a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will involve a sizeable and sustained reduction in the ‘business as usual’ clearing rates over the past decade, beyond that flowing from the vegetation management regime in the national action plan.

When they were in opposition they were always saying to the farmers, ‘The Commonwealth should compensate you.’ When they were in government they ran away from that at a rate of knots. The coalition have got form on it and they are back again with the same form telling farmers that they should be compensated and it is a terrible thing that has happened to them—yet they were the federal government that pushed these laws on the farmers.

You were the ones that pushed it through the states and said the states had to deliver to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Then you go and grandstand to farmers, hypocrisy running out of you. Then, when you have an opportunity to actually stand up for what you were saying, you again run away from the issues. You did not deal with the issues and you must be absolutely clear with farmers; you should be honest with farmers. You should be honest with what you claim is your constituency because, when they find out what you have actually been up to, I do not think they are going to be your constituency for too long. They must realise that this was a con job, that you used this inquiry to give them false hope, that you used this inquiry to grandstand and when you had the opportunity to stand up for what you were saying you did not stand up for it. You ran away from it at a million miles an hour.

This has been going on for some time. There was evidence given by Mr Rheese, the executive director of an organisation that calls itself the Australian Environment Foundation. When I was questioning him I said: ‘Why is it an issue now? Why wasn’t it an issue when the coalition were in government?’ Mr Rheese said, ‘We addressed this at a public meeting in Dubbo in 2003. We tried very hard to get this on the national agenda.’ But Senator Macdonald could not get it on the national agenda for them because he was a minister at the time and he was not interested in getting it on the national agenda. He wants to grandstand now. He wants to say he is standing up for farmers, but the hypocrisy is so clear in relation to the performance of Senator Macdonald on this that the farmers will soon understand what he is about.

I asked whether there were any coalition government members at that meeting in Dubbo and the reply was: ‘Yes. Senator Nash was there.’ I said, ‘What did they put at the meeting?’ They said, ‘Senator Nash did not speak at the meeting.’ Here we have the National Party up ranting and raving about all these issues, but when they were in government there were as meek as lambs, as quiet as mice, not prepared to take the issue up. Now they are in opposition, they do exactly as they did when they were in opposition last time—hypocrisy is everywhere in relation to this.

To be fair to Senator Nash, she was not a senator at the time, but she was at the meeting. I suppose she was there in her employment at the time, which was as an adviser to the then Deputy Prime Minister, Mark Vaile. The coalition government were all over this issue but what they were doing was trying to keep it quiet—no ministers, no members, at a meeting of 300 farmers complaining about this in Dubbo. When they were in government there were no ministers there running the arguments about compensation, yet they have the hide and the hypocrisy now to be raising these issues but when they had an opportunity to actually put recommendations up on the terms of reference that were drafted by the coalition they ran away from it. There is nothing there that goes to the issues that they laid out as a promise to the farmers.

As I said, we do not have a problem with the broad generalities of the recommendations. We have put up a further 10 recommendations that strengthen the recommendations of the coalition senators on this committee. I think it is about time that the coalition senators were honest with farmers. When they are out there talking about compensation Senator Joyce goes back to the press saying, ‘No, no, we are not going to give compensation; it’s all too expensive.’ They are out there grandstanding to farmers at meetings and telling the press behind the scenes that there is no reason for compensation, that it is all too difficult and that it is all too expensive. Just be honest. (Time expired)

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also take note of the report currently being discussed, which is that of the Finance and Public Administration References Committee on native vegetation laws, greenhouse gas abatement and climate change measures. I understand the rhetoric about the retrospectivity of this report, but it is vitally important to remember that it gives three recommendations that are supported by all parties except the Greens. We negotiated those recommendations to deliver some hope that we are going to change things for farmers.

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, Mr Acting Deputy President: the Labor senators have been misrepresented by Senator Joyce. There were no negotiations to try and come to some agreement on these recommendations. The recommendations were the recommendations of the National and Liberal parties.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Cameron, that is not a point of order.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not a dissenting report. There are additional comments by the Labor Party. The recommendations were the recommendations of the committee. What we have here are the recommendations of the committee, which included senators from the Labor Party. But let us put this behind us and have a debate and try to concentrate on how we can bring about a better outcome for the farmers. The farmers do not want a rhetorical flourish; they want some hope that we can deliver a better outcome. I agree with you, Senator Cameron, that we do not have—and I will say this quite openly—the capacity to compensate every farmer for all the trees that have been taken from them. I say that on the record. We do not because the Labor Party have got us $140 billion in debt as we speak and they are heading towards about a quarter of a trillion dollars in debt.

If we cannot compensate the farmers, then we must change the legislation. In fact, we must go so far as to give the trees back to them. The trees were stolen from them. They were an asset of the farmers and we proved that through the inquiry. The title specifically said that these assets were assets of the farmers and they were taken from them without the farmers ever being paid for them. I believe both sides of the chamber find that abhorrent. You cannot just wander into someone’s life and take an asset from them without paying for it. We should not believe in that. Once we believe in that, we would not believe in the value of going to work. Why would you go to work to pay for something if there is a prospect that you would not own it?

I hope this report becomes part and parcel of a bipartisan approach to try to take this issue forward and put pressure on to bring about a fairer outcome. I think I heard from those on both sides of the argument say that when people drilled down into this issue—an issue that maybe a lot of people did not know about—they saw how irrational some of these laws had become and how completely arbitrary and ridiculous they were, where you had a person with a number of trees in a wheat paddock and they were not able to get rid of them. Why? We do not know. It was almost a Franz Kafka type of intrusion. This intrusion affects a minority group and we have to move away from thinking that if we do not see them as a minority group they are not a minority group.

Farmers make up less than one per cent of the population. They are generally poor, not rich, to dispel one myth, and they do not have the political power that they should have because people find it convenient to look past them. If this happened to another minority group, there would be a hue and cry about this. Imagine if we went to another group and said, ‘We are going to steal something from you without payment because we believe we are in a position where we can.’ As a social justice issue, surely that should strike a chord and we should be doing something about it now.

I hope that this report does not become a political football but becomes a seed from which we can start to seek and find justice. I am not here to talk about state or federal responsibility and waste the farmers’ time. I am here to talk about exactly what we can do from this point forward and to hear from other people how we can go forward and bring justice to these people who do not have justice at the moment. The people listening to this right now—yes, the history lesson is interesting—are far more interested in how we are going to fix it and what we are going to do about it to try and make their lives better. The reality is that there has been the theft of an asset of the individual by the government, whether or not it was in collusion with the federal government. The theft happened and these people were dispossessed. In some instances, this has without a shadow of a doubt put them in a position where their assets have diminished. In some instances, this asset is worthless, has become without worth and is unsaleable.

We also have the ridiculous situation where a person who owned the trees woke up one day and the trees had become the property of the government. However, they had to pay rates on the land where the trees were, they had to pay the insurance, they had to keep the weeds down and if somebody else’s tree fell on a neighbour or anybody else—a person coming off the road—walking through the place guess who would have been sued. Not the government but the farmer would have got sued. He would have been sued for an asset he did not actually own. How can this be justice? How can this be right? Surely, the focus of the chamber right now should be about trying to bring a remedy. The honourable thing is to seek a remedy, because that is the only way you provide a sense of hope.

These people were told that it was to be done on an environmental basis, and even that has been flawed in many instances. The reality—as we are seeing more and more—is that, if it is based on carbon sequestration, the amount of carbon being stored and quarantined is inferior to the amount of carbon stored by such things as summer pastures. This is just a fact of science. People might have a biodiversity argument, but that was not the argument put up at the time. That was an argument of carbon sequestration.

The issue is: why should you go to a minority group and persecute them for a solution for the wider community? If the wider community believe they need it then the wider community should pay for it, and if the wider community are not prepared to pay for it then the need for it cannot be that great. That is the essence. To describe a similar circumstance, it is like people going to suburban Australia and saying: ‘The need of the community is that we now quarantine the use of your third bedroom for a social good—we’ll probably give that to the homeless—but we’re not going to pay you for it. In fact, you’re still going to have to pay the rates and insurance on it. You have to deal with the impost if you ever try to sell that house now that that is there.’ Obviously, when people see it in that dynamic, they see that it is completely abhorrent.

I definitely want stronger views on compensation, but the issue was that we had a recommendation of a report with no dissent. There is no dissenting report in this. I repeat: there is no dissenting report in this. We have additional comments, but we have no dissent. So this report is without dissent. That means it is without dissent from either the Liberal Party, the National Party, the Labor Party or any other party.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Siewert interjecting—

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, yes; there is one by the Greens. The Greens dissented, but they are not actually trying to make things better; they are trying to make things worse. The Labor Party did not dissent; therefore they are in agreement with the recommendations. It is as simple as that. The reason that we have kept the recommendations where they were is to keep the Labor Party on board. That is why the recommendations are without dissent: because it is vitally important for this nation and for justice to this minority group that we bring about an outcome that is bipartisan. We now have a bipartisan report and recommendations. Let us not now revel in the rhetoric of history. Let us make sure, if we are people who are going to do something that is right and just, that we move forward from this point as if we were dealing with any other minority group and try to bring about some sense of justice for them. If we do not, then we make a mockery when we do it with other groups, because that means we have a form of partiality as to who deserves justice and who does not. I hope that is not where this chamber goes.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are only a couple of minutes left in this debate on the Finance and Public Administration References Committee report on native vegetation laws, greenhouse gas abatement and climate change measures, and I want to make a contribution. Fortunately, no-one listening would ever take any notice of Senator Doug Cameron. He is, after all, a member of the Labor Party, and with the promises they make and never keep you can understand that the people of Australia are now in a situation where they treat with a grain of salt anything Mr Rudd says and anything any of his minions, like Senator Doug Cameron, say, because they have been lied to so many times that they have given up taking any notice of or attributing any veracity to things said by Mr Rudd or by people like Senator Cameron.

Notwithstanding that, I am rather flattered that Senator Cameron has gone back 15 years to look up my words of wisdom in this place. I feel rather touched that Senator Cameron would do that, but perhaps it is worth while just to have a reality check. Back in those days that Senator Cameron was talking about, the Queensland Labor government was determined to stop tree clearing and, in fact, to destroy the value in most properties in Queensland. At the time, the then coalition government was trying to work with the Queensland government and say: ‘Look, don’t do this across the board. We understand the Queensland government’s desire to stop wide-scale tree clearing, but let’s talk about this. Let’s talk to the farmers about it. Let’s talk to the landowners. Let’s try to get a result that is good for the environment, good for farming communities and good for landowners.’ For a considerable amount of time, the Commonwealth government was talking with the Queensland government and urging it to work with landowners to come to a resolution. The Commonwealth government said: ‘Yes, let’s get a negotiated outcome so that everyone wins, and we might contribute some compensation. Provided the Queensland government is prepared to pay compensation to landowners, the Commonwealth will put in some compensation.’ This was how the negotiations were going, and then in the middle of it one morning, without any warning, we woke up and the Queensland government had just made this unilateral announcement that there would be no tree clearing whatsoever and very little compensation. At that stage the federal government, having been completely outflanked in these negotiations we were having with landowners and the Queensland government, simply withdrew from the whole question. That is the truth of the matter. I am not going to have time to finish this, so I seek leave to continue my remarks at a later time.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.