Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are dealing with government amendment (1).

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I spoke to government amendment (1) yesterday and indicated the coalition's support for it. It is, as I indicated at that time, similar or almost identical to an amendment the coalition was also proposing. This is an amendment strongly advocated by the National Farmers Federation that we have championed and that we are very pleased that the government has agreed to pick up and include. Our support for this amendment is clear and strong.

I equally highlighted yesterday that the government tabled this amendment back when the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill 2011 and related bills were being debated in the first week of July sittings, so the government's intention to make this amendment has been known for some time. The government, of course, has known that this amendment would pass, because it is the same amendment as the one the opposition was proposing. The govern­ment has known that the numbers were always here for this amendment to pass and therefore has known for quite a few weeks that this addition to clause 56 of the additional part (e), 'land access for agricultural production', as a consideration for the so-called negative list would pass and would become part of this bill.

Given that, I asked the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, noting the draft regulations for the so-called negative list that he tabled in this place yesterday—and he did not have a chance to respond at that time—what steps the government has taken to ensure that this new section for the development of these regulations has been taken into account and how and where such protection of farmland, as proposed by this new part (e), is reflected in the draft regulations the minister has tabled. I would appreciate it if he were able to inform the Senate accordingly.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Clearly the obvious answer is that once the bill passes it will be able to be used as part of the positive list. The simple answer is that as soon as we can pass the bill—as soon as we can get the Carbon Farming Initiative up and running, out there in the public domain—then people can access the positive list, people can bring forward their methodologies and provide opportunities for sequestered carbon, and an income stream can be given to farmers.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These regulations, which were tabled yesterday, do set out the terms for the eligible offsets projects, the additionality test and the types of projects. Within that, they provide for what has become known as the negative list. However, the amendment we are considering is to clause 56—to the excluded offsets projects—and will add another term of reference as such for how we might consider what the negative risks or negative impacts of certain kinds of projects would be. As I see it, these draft regulations have been developed looking at the terms of clause 56(2) as it exists in this bill to date, with part (a) being the availability of water, (b) being the conservation of biodiversity, (c) being employment factors and (d) being the impact on the local community. Those four things are, to varying degrees, considered and captured in the draft regulations as to how excluded offsets projects would be taken into account. This part (e), of course, is not in the printed bill, but the government has known for a long period of time now that it would become part of the bill and, should the bill pass into law, become part of the act. So, whilst I understand the minister saying that it becomes a factor, in a sense, for the reverse consideration of eligible projects on the positive list, this of course is a section detailing the excluded projects and the process by which the negative list is constructed. So I again ask the minister: for the purposes of these regulations—which, presumably, your departmental officers have been working on throughout the last five weeks of the recess period; we presume that because we only got to see them yesterday morning—what consideration has been given in their development to this proposed new section (e) around land access for agricultural production? And, if you can point me to it in these draft regulations, how is that reflected in the draft that is before us? Because, frankly, I cannot see that any consideration has been given to date.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is the purpose of the draft regulations—they can raise them. I am sure you can have an input into it as well, and maybe use your opportunity here more constructively.

This is about ensuring that we can consult with the community and include their views in the process. It is always open to view it as an additional criterion which will impact on matters listed, so it is an opportunity. We have already had 59 submissions on the discussion paper that strongly supported this position. The provision will be there, if we pass this—and the sooner we can get it passed, the sooner we can provide the landholders out there with an opportunity, and of course they can consult on the draft regulations.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Aside from the backhanded swipe at me and the process, I think the minister's answer there was: no, it is not reflected in the draft regulations, it is not something we have given any consideration to over the five weeks since we have known that we would be making this amendment to the bill, and so it is just not in here. But that is of course quite typical of the whole process as to how this legislation has been developed. The minister even came in here yesterday and proudly produced his draft regulations and sort of said, 'Okay, there you go: you've being saying you want these, you've being saying that because so much of the operation of this bill hinges on the regulations, we're now going to give you the regulations.' But what we find is that the regulations have not fully considered all that is going to be in the bill, that the regulations are still, in that sense, very much a draft rather than something that has been developed in tandem with the bill, in a manner such that the entire operation of this legislation can be seen in a transparent way.

It is just so typical of the ad hoc manner in which this government chooses to develop all of its policies, frankly, in this area. We have seen the many different policy disasters in the ways in which this government has attempted to go about emissions reductions or carbon abatement activities—many different policy disasters, all of them because things are so poorly thought through, so poorly structured, that the process applied by this government is just so very terrible with regard to all of these areas. And yet here we go again.

The reason that the opposition are subjecting this to close scrutiny, the reason we have called from day one to have all the complementary regulations that sit alongside this legislation in place, is that we do not want to see the same mistakes happen again. We do not want to see these types of errors happen again, because the implications of that with regard to this legislation are very serious. They are very serious to Australia's farm base, our agricultural productive base, and all of these issues should be thoroughly sorted and determined before we get to the point of finalising this legislation.

The government seems to be all too happy to continue to take an ad hoc approach to all of the different bills, policies and pieces of legislation it applies with regard to emissions reduction and carbon abatement. We have seen an ad hoc approach from the govern­ment on its alleged big-picture policy, its on-again off-again support for carbon taxes or an ETS. We have seen the government, as we have extensively debated—and will continue to extensively debate—run away from its crystal clear election commitments on not pricing carbon, on not having a tax on carbon. We have seen the government, when it has attempted to apply other policies, be they in the home insulation sphere, be they in the renewable energy sphere, create all sorts of conse­quences along the way.

If we look at the renewable energy target as a classic example, another major piece of legislation—a piece of legislation that attempts to provide a pathway for Australia to develop a stronger renewable energy sector in this country—what do we have from that at present? We have had a roller-coaster ride for the price of renewable energy certificates. We have a clearing house that is just dysfunctional and not working, because of course the clearing-house price is set way above the price that is in operation in the market for renewable energy certificates at present. As a result, many people who expected that the clearing-house price would be a floor price, not a ceiling price, as it is basically operating, are finding that their investments in this space are under enormous pressure. All of this is, of course, because the government cannot manage to get its sums right to start with, cannot manage to approach these policy areas having done all of the necessary work in advance and made sure that it all stacks up.

So, with this legislation, and the complementary regulations, we have genuine concerns that, if we simply sit back and allow the legislation to pass through as the government intends it to pass through, what are we going to have at the end of that? The risk is that we are going to still have too much of a blank cheque, too much of an open slather that depends on how these regulations are finalised. In this regard we have an amendment, an amendment that enjoys bipartisan support, an amendment that everybody agrees is very serious and an amendment that the minister himself concedes had widespread stakeholder support during their consultation process. It is an amendment that they chose to adopt nearly a couple of months ago and that we have supported all along to ensure that when projects are put on the negative list, so when excluded offsets projects are considered, that one of the adverse impact factors that is considered is whether there is a risk of an adverse impact on land access for agri­cultural production. We all support that but, of course, they are just words in the bill. How that applies under the bill that the government is putting forward depends entirely on the regulations: how they are developed and how they operate. So it is not at all unreasonable to expect, if the govern­ment is going to wander in here and present us with some draft regulations, that surely there should be some consideration in these draft regulations of how this clause operates, otherwise these draft regulations are simply and only a temporary holding pattern measure that will have to be replaced by not a new final version but by a further draft version at some later stage that actually takes this into account. Or is the government proposing to simply put this in the legislation but ignore it in the regulations? Is that what we are looking at here? Is this simply a case of putting an extra five words into the legislation but ignoring it when it comes to the regulations? Do the government think this is actually a tokenistic, meaningless amendment and is that why they have not bothered to consider it in their draft regs?

What is the status of this amendment for the government if they have been supporting it for so long? It is their amendment. They are the ones who have brought it before us. They knew they would enjoy our support all along. If they are serious about having this as a serious amendment to reflect the concerns of the NFF and others, why is it not reflected in any way in the regulations? The minister cannot draw our attention to anywhere where it is reflected, so why can't we manage to see proper, thoroughly drafted regulations that actually take into account this aspect as well? Yesterday I posed some other questions about these regs which the minister took on notice until we return to some amendments that Senator Xenophon has deferred for the time being. But in regard to this one there is a very simple issue of how the government, in its regulations, is going to enact this new clause that would see adverse impact on land access for agricultural production be one of the factors that could see a particular kind of project put on the negative list. How is that going to be reflected in these regulations? Minister, can you tell us what we should expect to see, what the high-jump bar will be and what in fact this clause will actually mean when it is applied to the regs that are so fundamental to the actual operation of this legislation?

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can see that the minister was resisting getting up and answering the very legitimate questions that were put by Senator Birmingham.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought you'd jumped up.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, we were sitting back waiting for you to jump up and you seemed very reluctant to get yourself out of your chair, Minister.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thought you'd jumped.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to endorse Senator Birmingham's comments. Senator Birmingham hit the nail on the head. This is a government that does not think things through. This is a government that has to pursue policy on the run because it does not think things through and it chops and changes, breaks promises and does not know what it is doing. This is a sensible amend­ment, but why is it an amendment? Why did the government not include this provision in the bill right upfront? Senator Birmingham very eloquently made the point that this is not a new issue as this is an issue that was raised by stakeholders all the way through. This government is so blinded by ideology, is so incompetent and is so incapable of actually properly considering the issues that are raised with it legitimately by stake­holders that on occasions it has to mop up. To give the government credit, at least here it is trying to mop up its mistakes and it is trying to sort something out given that clearly there is a major deficiency in the legislation as introduced by the government.

Of course, land access for agricultural production should be one of the criteria that are considered and Senator Birmingham is quite right to be suspicious of this govern­ment given that it is pursuing this policy on the run and so there is no detail in the regulations that have been put forward by the minister. Clearly, it still does not quite know how to deal with this. And this is not an isolated incident. This is not an isolated case. Again and again this government does not think things through, is driven by ideology and is cutting corners and, ultimately, is forced to chop and change and pursue policy on the run when the error of its ways become too obvious. If only the government were prepared to see the error of its ways in relation to the carbon tax, which is part of the broader policy agenda that the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill 2011 is part of.

We are here looking at the excluded offsets projects and what criteria should be considered in deciding whether to recommend to the Governor-General that regulations should be made to specify a particular kind of project 'that the minister must have regard to', as I am reading in the bill, and whether there is a significant risk that kind of project will have a significant adverse impact 'on one or more of the following'. One of the criteria to be part of the excluded offsets projects, according to this amendment, will be land access for agricultural production. But there was another process that the government went through in the context of the carbon tax whereby they made decisions on the run to exclude certain things—or so we were told. You might remember that there was a thing called the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee. Before the last election we were promised that there would be a citizens assembly with 150 people—which we all thought was the House of Representatives! But, no, the Prime Minister had a different view. The Prime Minister thought there was going to be a citizens assembly which was going to build a consensus around the nation on climate change. The Prime Minister was not going to pursue a price on carbon until and unless there was a consensus across the Australian community to put a price on carbon. Chair, I put it to you that this country is more divided than it ever has been. This Prime Minister is a divisive Prime Minister. The way this Prime Minister has pursued this process through this so-called Multi-Party Climate Change Committee has divided our nation. We have got the broken promise, the promise given five days before the last election, that there will be 'no carbon tax under the government I lead'. There was a promise that she would do what she could as the leader of this nation to build a community consensus. Of course, none of this has happened. What we have had though—and I am looking at it now—is a press release put out by one of the members of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee on, the federal member for New England, Tony Windsor. I will quote from the press release that he put out on 10 July 2011. He said that fuel would be 'excluded from the carbon tax'. So there is another exclusion. There are a couple of other quotes that I think are quite worthwhile sharing with the chamber, such as:

The decision to exclude fuel from the carbon tax has been welcomed by the Independent member for New England, Tony Windsor.

Further:

Several months ago I stated publicly that I wouldn't support a carbon tax if it allied applied to transport fuels.

And then:

A price of $23 per tonne of carbon, if applied to fuel, would equate to a price rise of around 6 cents a litre.

That is right. It is actually 6.21c a litre. And this is the absolutely critical one:

That's why I decided I wouldn't support a carbon tax if it applied to fuel.

The news flash is: the carbon tax does apply to fuel. And it does not only apply to fuel from 1 July 2014, the carbon tax will also apply to fuel from 1 July 2012. Don't take my word for it. That is the evidence that the Secretary of the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency put to the Senate Select Committee on the Scrutiny of New Taxes last Wednesday.

Again, it is worthwhile going through some of the Hansard record in relation to that. I asked the secretary:

I would like to refer you to the exposure draft of the Fuel Tax Legislation Amendment (Clean Energy) Bill 2011—

which is another one of these bills that relates to the broader action on climate change agenda put forward by this government, in a very bad way in our view—

and specifically clause 43(8). This is a clause to impose a carbon price on fuel through a reduction in the fuel tax credit, correct?

Mr Comley: This is on page 5?

CHAIR: That is right.

Then he said he had the bill in front of him, which is good.

CHAIR: I am looking at the exposure draft, page 5, 43(8), 'working out the amount of carbon reduction'. This clause effectively imposes a carbon price on fuel through a reduction in the fuel tax credit, does it not?

Mr Comley : That is correct.

So the government is actually imposing a price on carbon, what we would call a carbon tax, from 1 July 2012 on fuel. When Mr Windsor in his press release on 10 July said that he has decided he would not support a carbon tax if it applied to fuel, the coalition calls on him to be true to his word, because there will be carbon tax on fuel from 1 July 2012. Who knows? This might be another occasion, as with this amendment that we are discussing now, where the government might make policy on the run and might decide that, yes, it did make a commitment to the member for New England to exclude the carbon tax on fuel. If that is so, then that particular provision is no doubt going to disappear from that legislation as well—the same way the government is adding an amendment here to the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill 2011. No doubt there will be an amendment to the carbon tax. I certainly, along with Senator Williams, who is on the scrutiny of new taxes committee, am very keen to see Tony Windsor, the member for New England, call on the government to amend its carbon tax legislation to ensure that all fuel is excluded, because he said he would not vote for it unless all fuel was excluded. So we will see whether that is happening.

Just to conclude the evidence that was quite relevant from Mr Comley, the Secretary of the Department Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. I asked him:

Doesn't this mean that recipients of the fuel tax rebate are paying a carbon price from the word go by the wording of your own legislation?

Mr Comley: It certainly means that they are having a reduction in their credit linked to the carbon price, yes.

CHAIR: From day 1, as of 1 July 2012 under your exposure draft?

Mr Comley: Yes, that is correct.

So there are no ifs, no buts, no question marks: the government is planning to impose a carbon tax on fuel from 1 July 2012 and on all transport fuels from 1 July 2014. However much anybody wants to wriggle around it and say, 'By then the government will have lost the election and a new Abbott coalition government won't allow that to happen anyway,' the current government has $510 million in their forward estimates, courtesy of revenue to be collected from truckies around Australia.

The government's whole approach to climate change is a farce. It is a complete fraud. They are wanting to make people believe that they can actually do something about reducing global greenhouse gas emissions when they are not even trying. Before the government's most recent modelling came out, I actually thought that they would be able to reduce emissions domestically but I thought they were reducing emissions domestically in a way that would then increase emissions by more in other parts of the world. What has turned out to be the case is that they are not even trying to reduce emissions domestically. This government is not even in a position through their carbon tax, which will push up the cost of everything, which will make Australia less competitive internationally, which will cost jobs, which will hurt small business, to reduce emissions domestically, with emissions, according to the government's own figures, expected to go up from about 578 million tonnes of CO2 in 2009-10 to about 621 million tonnes of CO2 in 2020.

The government then says: 'You can't look at it that way. Emissions are going to go up, sure, but you have got to compare them to the business-as-usual scenario. They're going to be lower than what they would have been.' Okay. So, even though they are going up, you are saying they are going down because they are going to be lower than what they would have been. What about jobs? Jobs are going up but, hang on, jobs are going to be lower than they would have been. So, according to your logic, jobs are going down. If you say emissions are going down because they are lower than they would have been, then, if jobs are going to be lower than they would have been, presumably jobs are going down. But no, jobs are going up. So why are jobs going up? Because if you compare where we are today to where we are going to be in 2020, there are going to be more jobs in 2020 than there are in 2011. Sure, the population will continue to grow so it will be very sad if we did not have more people in employment in 2020. But, here you are, you have a government that wants to have it both ways.

It wants us to look at what the situation would have been in relation to emissions, but it wants us to compare where we start now and where we will be in 2020 in the job situation. The truth of the matter is that the carbon tax will cost jobs and it will put downward pressure on wages. It will result in lower real wages.

I talked about China yesterday and I did not quite get to the end of what I was trying to get across. Just in the last three years, Treasury's expectations as to what would happen—

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

Mr Chair, I rise on point of order and refer to standing order 144(5):

In committee senators may speak more than once to the same question, and, when a question has been proposed from the chair, shall confine themselves to that question.

The question before the chair is the government's amendment. Unless Senator Cormann is referring to the Chinese buying up land in Australia and wants to take action on that, I cannot see how it is relevant to the government's amendment.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Milne. Senator Cormann, I draw your attention to the question before the chair and ask you to continue.

Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Chair. It is very much related because all of these measures are completely about Australia's efforts to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. They are about what we do in Australia in deciding whether or not land access for agricultural production is part of the criteria to pursue carbon farming initiatives under this legislation and whether these will have an impact on our contribution as part of the global community to try to address global greenhouse gas emissions. We have to put our efforts under this legislation, and under the carbon tax, into the context of what our trade partners and competitors in other parts of the world do. I draw your attention, Chair, to the fact that in China emissions will go up from about 10.3 billion tonnes now to about 17.9 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2020 according to the government's own Clean Energy Future modelling. That is an increase of 7.6 billion tonnes, which is more than 10 times the amount of annual emissions that we put out here in Australia.

The figure that really struck me was that back in 2008, when the government did this really comprehensive modelling on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, Treasury thought that China by 2020 would put out 16.1 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions. Just in the last three years, the government's expectations of how much CO2 emissions will be put out by China have gone up by 1.8 billion tonnes. Just the variation is more than three times as much as Australia puts out in a year.

Amendments like this one that we are talking about now are quite important, but we always have to put in context what our efforts here in Australia can do and put those into the context of what is happening currently in China. The government often talks about emissions intensity. I make the point very quickly in the short time that I have remaining: emissions intensity in Australia is lower than it is in China. It was 0.8 kilograms of CO2 per year per US$ of production in 2005 when it was 1.38 in China. In 2010 it was 0.66 in Australia and it was 1.06 in China. (Time expired)

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As has been indicated by previous speakers on this motion, the coalition is proposing a very similar amendment in relation to the protection of agricultural land. I have to say I am quite confused as to where the government really sits on this matter. We have seen a decision made by government in the last fortnight which places enormous pressure on the availability of agricultural land in Tasmania from forestry.

When the Prime Minister and the Premier of Tasmania signed the intergovernmental agreement on forests in Tasmania, based on the statement of principles processes that have been negotiated between the forest industry and environmental groups over the last 12 months or so, one of the elements of that process was effectively to move the industry out of native forests—out of our forest estate—and into a plantation regime. That plantation regime does not exist at the moment and the calculation that has been made, and widely accepted as part of that process, is that you will need an extra 100,000 hectares of plantations in Tasmania to replace the lost forests that are proposed to be locked up, or claimed for lockup, by the environmental groups.

I am trying to get a sense of consistency of policy from a government perspective. It does one thing under this initiative, and the coalition agrees with that. As Senator Birmingham has said, we had an amendment to the bill to do exactly the same things with slightly different wording but the same effect. But here we have the government making an agreement with the Tasmanian government that, if it is put into effect, is effectively going to take up to 10 per cent of Tasmania's prime agricultural land for forestry.

Where is the consistency in the approach that the government is taking in these matters? It says it wants to protect agricultural land, yet its actual policy actions, the decisions that it makes, are completely contrary to that. As I said, these plantations do not exist. There are some in the environmental movement who claim that we can just magically change the manage­ment regime in our existing plantations and suddenly make them usable for solid timber. That is patently absurd. I do not know whether they are just being mischievous, whether they do not understand forestry or whether they are just trying to push a barrow. I do not know the answer to that. Let us be charitable and say, 'They just don't understand it.' But those who do understand it have said quite clearly, 'The lockup of these Tasmanian forests will require up to 100,000 hectares of Tasmanian agricultural land if the industry is to have some form of equivalence.' Of course, we know that there are some who want to go further; they want to lock up all of Tasmania's agricultural land.

If we are going to do that, we need to transition to a sawlog product that comes from a plantation base. We all understand that that will be required, but the reality is that that estate does not exist. The foundation research work for that has not been done. The species in Tasmania have not been properly identified. The methodologies are still being worked on. Some research is occurring but not enough has occurred yet. Where is the consistency in the government's policy? On the one hand they say, 'Yes, we would like to look after agricultural land; we would like to support prime agricultural land,' as they are saying through this amendment. The reality of what they are doing is the inverse.

Through the intergovernmental agreement that the Prime Minister signed a week and a half ago, the government are in effect condemning 10 per cent of Tasmania's agricultural land to plantation use. I really struggle to understand where the consistency is in all that. The minister has completely vacated the ground on this. The Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities has taken over the negotiations in Tasmania, with the Prime Minister. The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is playing no part in this that I can see, not visibly anyway. All of the work that is occurring is being done through the minister for the environment. Even then, there is no consistency. I would like to see consistent policy developed here.

For all the reasons colleagues discussed this morning, we all know that there is a strong basis for a managed regime in our native forests. It will provide for the long-term storage of carbon. If it is scaled at the right scale, it will have an absolutely negligible impact on our carbon stocks over time. And you need to recognise the carbon that is stored in solid timber products. I have referred before in this place to our magnificent surroundings here. The desk at the centre of this chamber is in fact a carbon sink. The carbon locked up in that stays there for the life of that product. I spoke to Gerry Harvey a couple of weeks ago and he had bought the propaganda peddled by some in the environmental movement that when you cut down a tree all its carbon expires to the atmosphere. He did not know that every piece of timber furniture that he sells is in fact a carbon sink. He has been put under enormous pressure from people in the environmental movement who are running a direct campaign against our forest industries—a dishonest campaign, I have to say—to not use native forests and to not use any native forest timbers out of Tasmania. That very campaign provides a direct threat to this amendment, to this legislation.

A number of forest scientists that I have spoken to have confirmed that the require­ment is 100,000 hectares. We are talking about a lonely tree concept in this circum­stance. We are not talking about a plantation that might have 1,400 or 1,500 stems to the hectare; we are talking about a plantation in Tasmania that will have about 100 stems to the hectare so that you can get the right size over time. Those sorts of things will take up to 35 years to develop. Some in the environ­mental movement think that we can magic­ally transform from a native forest regime in three to five years. I am not sure what sort of management regime they are talking about.

This direct action of the government is directly opposed to the intent of this particular government amendment. I would really like the minister to explain to me how that works. The coalition put up an amendment to do a very similar thing: to provide protection for prime agricultural land. There is enormous scope for putting native vegetation back into the landscape. The coalition have said that all along. We have supported the concept of enabling farmers to put vegetation back onto their farms, and, to a reasonable extent, without having a negative impact on their product­ivity. There is enormous capacity to do that.

Through this government's actions, it is placing 10 per cent of Tasmania's agricultur­al land at risk—and it is highly productive land—because it wants to appease its Green partners. It wants to stay in government both at a state level and at a federal level. So much of the policy that we are now seeing is being dictated by that arrangement and there is complete inconsistency in the govern­ment's approach. I would sincerely like the minister to explain that to me and explain how we are magically going to change the management regimes in forestry in Tasmania. I heard Dr Pullinger say on the radio last week that there are 300,000 hectares of plantations in Tasmania and that we need to change the management regime of those so that we can use them for timber. That is just complete garbage. That is patently wrong. We have done tests on the plantation estate in Tasmania. They have been grown for fibre. A species called Eucalyptusnitens was put in the ground and those trees have largely been managed for the production of fibre for woodchips. That is a specific purpose and we know that there is a market for that. There is a proposal, which I know both the government and the coalition support, for the development of a pulp mill in Tasmania to utilise that resource. So we both have the same objective in respect of that. Dr Pullinger completely forgets that a large proportion of those 300,000 hectares is owned by the proponent of the pulp mill to go into the pulp mill. He does not tell that to the community when he says that we should just magically change our regime of forest management into a sawn timber process. But what do we find when we have do the scientific work and test that product? Can we use it for a sawn product? We find that it has a 35 to 40 per cent internal checking rate. That means that it is not commercially viable as a sawn timber product. It has not been managed for that and it is not suitable for that. So you just cannot switch over in three to five years, as some have suggested, to a plantation estate through some magical change in management practices.

When you are going to grow trees in a plantation estate for the purposes of solid timber you plan that process from before the time you start. You plan your regime, you plant your trees to that regime, you manage them to that regime and then, over the cycle, you will get the results. There is a lot of work to be done on that at the moment and yet here we have a government that is acting in a completely and utterly contradictory manner. It says that it wants to protect agricultural land through this amendment to the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill but its real actions on the ground are doing exactly the opposite. I think that the government should be prepared to reconcile why it is doing that—although in the funding arrangement that the government has put together with the Tasmanian government there is absolutely nothing to encourage that shift to plantation, so I am not sure whether the government is just accepting that it will let the forest industry fall over in Tasmania. I am not sure if the government is accepting that or not. Where is this plantation resource going to come from and how is it going to be developed? If it is going to be developed it is going to take up to 100,000 hectares of agricultural land in Tasmania.

We have heard the government say a number of times, 'We are talking about developing evidence based policy.' My contention is that they are not even doing that. They say 'this is what we are going to do' but when they act they do something completely contradictory. We have heard a lot of times that you should watch what people do and not what they say, and here we have a government that have acted in a completely contradictory manner. They have devastated people in Tasmania with the concept that their fine timbers will be lost and that our craftspeople will lose access to the timbers. If you go to Salamanca market in Hobart on a Saturday morning there are stalls everywhere that use our fine Tasmanian timbers that come from our native forests. It is a huge tourist attraction. We are told that the tourist industry is going to be a substitute for our native forest sector, but here we are taking away a huge chunk of that. So the attitude of the government on this really needs to be considered very carefully.

As I have said, the coalition support the concept of protecting agricultural land, but we remain extremely concerned that the government are acting in an absolutely opposite fashion by threatening 10 per cent of Tasmania's agricultural land. In conjunc­tion with the Greens, they want to lock away up to 572,000 hectares of our native forests which can be sustainably harvested and should be managed through a sustainable and properly scaled regime to produce those fine products. It will be very interesting to hear what the minister's response to that is.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note that Senator Colbeck concluded his remarks with an invitation for the minister to respond—

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was not relevant to the bill.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If the minister felt that, he could have stood up and said that rather than simply quietly ignoring what Senator Colbeck had to say.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Colbeck should know it for himself. It is not my place to educate him.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister, if you want your bills to pass smoothly through the parliament it is your place to educate us, I am sorry to say. That is part of the process. You bring the proposal here to the chamber—

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a Greens amendment.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is your amendment; it is a government amendment.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And you agreed to it. In fact, you put the same amendment up.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, except that you are now trying to tell me that it is a Greens amendment. It is certainly not a Greens amendment. When Senator Cormann took the call earlier, you suggested that you were going to respond to some of the issues that I had raised. I again invite you to respond to those, Minister—that is, how do you functionally and practically see this amendment operating in the regulations that you have put forward? The explanatory memorandum to the bill talks about how the excluded projects or the negative list system will work. It highlights the four original adverse impact areas. We are now planning to include a fifth, and that has been planned to be done for some time. Part 1.27 of the explanatory memorandum says:

These impacts may be in, or in the vicinity of, the project area, or any of the project areas, for that kind of project … The intention is that vicinity may be interpreted broadly, including water resource availability in associated catchments.

So how are 'vicinity' and 'adverse impact on land access for agricultural production' going to be defined? In the regulations we have been presented with some definitions for 'adverse impact on the availability of water', and there is a threshold level of 600 millilitres of annual rainfall and a whole lot of terms about how that operates and waivers and so on. They are all there for good debate, good analysis and good consideration by interested stakeholders. The question is, how will this new paragraph (e) in clause 56 of the bill, about land access for agricultural production, work? What will the thresholds for that be? How will that be defined in the regulations? Yes we think it should be done, but we want to have confidence that it is done well, that it is done right, that it is done effectively. If it is worth doing, it is worth making sure it is an effective amendment to the bill.

Minister, can you explain for the record how you expect these regulations to reflect this amendment? What will the threshold considerations for land access for agricultural production be for inclusion on the negative list of projects or kinds of projects? What will be taken into account? What will be the tipping point? How can Senator Williams for his constituency or Senator Nash, who has raised these issues before, for her constituency know with confidence that this new paragraph is going to protect prime agricultural land and ensure that it is not subject to projects that would see it taken out of agricultural production?

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have waited because I just wanted to make sure that Senator Birmingham's filibustering attempts were exhausted as far as they could be before I responded to the two questions that he asked some hour ago, as I understand it. Everyone in the chamber agrees with this amendment. Why? It is a clarifying amendment. It is as simple as that. It makes plain the matters to be taken into account. Clearly, it is supported, and we should pass it as soon as possible.

I will cover this first question in a little more detail so that Senator Birmingham does not get up for another 15 minutes and filibuster on an agreed amendment that he also has a proposal for. Because it is a clarifying amendment in relation to the substantive legislation, the regulations will not change. That is plain—it is plain from your side, it is plain from our side and it is plain from the Greens' perspective. He has made much of that but I suspect it is just a case of filibustering. Senator Birmingham knows the answer; I have provided it to him. The reason he put up the amendment, the reason we put up the amendment, was to clarify it. It is as simple as that and he knows it.

The regulations are out there for consultation and community engagement. If Senator Birmingham wants to add his voice to that he certainly can, but I ask him to save some of his breath for the legislation currently before us. Some of the other speakers seem to have ranged quite widely outside the amendment. As the person responsible for the passage of the legislation, Senator Birmingham may have enjoyed listening to them and I am sure he may even have agreed with some of their filibustering attempts. Notwithstanding that, let us focus on the legislation and the amendment before us. By filibustering he is now preventing his own farming communities, his own supporters, from accessing the Carbon Farming Initiative. Let us look at the bigger picture. This is about ensuring that we do sequester carbon. I know he is fundamentally opposed to that but, notwithstanding that, he might be able to consider that some of those on his side do actually want this to pass so that farmers can sequester carbon and obtain an income stream.

In relation to Senator Birmingham's second question, the government is not saying through this amendment that there can be no revegetation. In many areas revegetation will have no or limited impact on land for agricultural production, as he well knows.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I cannot allow the minister's suggestion that we oppose carbon abatement to stand. The minister well knows that the coalition has long talked about—longer than the government, in fact—the great potential for soil carbon and for abatement through advances in soil carbon farming technologies. The minister well knows that they are issues that are being highlighted and that have stood consistently in the coalition's policy since it was released at the beginning of last year. They were also highlighted prior to that not just by our current leader but also by our former leader. Our consistency in supporting this concept is strong. Our consistency is shown in a policy document that has stood from the beginning of last year.

During that time the government has moved all over the place in relation to how it wants to tackle climate change issues. At the time we released our policy document outlining our support for the concept of soil carbon—this is like a trip down memory lane—Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister of this country, the government was arguing for an emissions trading scheme and we outlined an alternative way forward. As the weeks turned into months, at some stage Ms Gillard managed to roll Mr Rudd on the emissions trading scheme and knock that out, and so you no longer had a policy supporting an emissions trading scheme.

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

On a point of order, Mr Temporary Chairman: again, I draw the chair's attention to standing order 144(5). There is a question before the chair. It is the government's amendment agreed by the coalition and the Greens. I would ask that the current contributor confine himself to the question before the chair.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the point of order, Mr Temporary Chairman: Senator Birmingham is clearly being relevant to this debate. He is actually responding to a point made by the minister and is contributing to what is generally accepted, during the committee stage, as a wide-ranging debate. Senator Birmingham has been quite specific in responding to some points made by the minister. So I submit that there is no point of order.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I draw Senator Birmingham's remarks back to the amendment before the chair.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Chair. I think the arguments around consistency of approach and how these matters are handled are reasonable ones to be explored during these debates. In the end, the minister stood there and made a statement that the coalition did not support abatement through soil sequestration of carbon. I have been attempting to refute that claim, as is perfectly relevant within this debate. I have been attempting to refute that claim by highlighting that we have a consistent position of support. That position has stood the test of time, unlike the government which has flip-flopped on policy and leaders on this issue over the last year and, of course, has lied outright to the electorate over the carbon tax. Those outright lies and the flaws in the policies that the government adopted before are entirely relevant to the issues we are considering.

Let us look at the policies which the government took to the election. They took policies not for a carbon tax and not for an ETS; instead, they took policies for a cash-for-clunkers scheme and a citizen's assembly on climate change. Remember those two beauties? They were ideas of this government. Whatever happened to them? We worked out that the only citizen's assembly Ms Gillard needs is her weekly meeting with Senator Milne's leader, Senator Bob Brown, and we worked out that cash-for-clunkers was likely to be as disastrous a public policy as the home insulation scheme or the green loans scheme, both of which were other flawed policies in this area of climate change policy. So why is it that we are spending a long period debating this issue?

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Because you won't sit down!

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are spending a long period debating it because everything else you touch you get wrong, Minister. Everything this government has touched in this space has just gone wrong. We want to make sure, so far as we possibly can, that what you do here, first principle, does no harm. That is a key part of the amendment before us.

The minister in his response described this as a clarifying amendment—I am sure the minister will correct me if I am misinterpreting him—and said that this amendment does not necessitate in and of itself any change to the regulations which were presented in draft form to the chamber yesterday; that adding a fifth area of consideration for what adverse impacts there could be does not change what the regulations outlining those adverse impacts may be. I find it quite remarkable that each of the five areas of consideration—the availability of water, the conservation of biodiversity, employment, the local community and land access for agricultural production—should be considered equal factors, that each of them would have equal relevance under law, that each of them would have equal relevance in the drafting of these regulations. If we are adding in a fifth area but the minister now says it has no bearing, relevance or interact on these regulations, I find that quite astounding.

It seems to me that the government is utterly ignoring what would be the will of this chamber and the will of this parliament in inserting an extra criterion for consideration here. This list of excluded offsets projects is important because it is critical to the do no harm principle of this legislation. It is critical to making sure that in pursuing projects that allow for carbon abatement they do not negatively impact on the availability of water—the flow of our rivers, our watercourses, our groundwater supplies and all of those critical areas—that they do not negatively impact on the conservation of biodiversity and on maintaining critical wildlife corridors within our communities; that they do not negatively impact on employment prospects by closing down industries; that they do not negatively impact on local communities by causing harm to those communities, be it economic harm or social harm of some kind; and lastly, for the amendment we are debating now, that they do not negatively impact on land access for agricultural production, because we genuinely think that food security issues and Australia's agricultural output are vital and critical for the nation's future. They are things which should be taken into consideration.

We see a burgeoning world population, a burgeoning middle class in the growing superpowers of China and India. They are leading to dramatically increased world demand for food production and food capability, and quite reasonably so. We think Australia should continue to play a key role in that. We think that this country, which has such a proud history of agricultural production and which has done so much not just to feed Australians but to feed parts of the rest of the world, should continue to do that. Nothing should stand in the way of that absolute imperative.

Few issues generate the kind of public emotion, support and response as does the issue of food security and food production—and quite understandably so, because in the end the core, basic principles of life are that we as a species need food, water and shelter. Everything else you can debate, but food, water and shelter are the key ingredients. This country has not just an opportunity but a responsibility to make sure that we are at the absolute forefront of the production of food into the future.

That is why this amendment is so critical and that is why this amendment should be more than tokenistic. It should be more than a clarification; it should mean something. Seeing that this clause of the bill is entirely about setting up a framework by which regulations for the creation of the negative list are drafted, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that, if you were inserting a fifth criterion—a serious fifth criterion, not a meaningless one—relating to agricultural production, it would have some bearing on what is in the regulations. It would be reasonable to expect that it would impact on the regulations and that there would be some level of protection in those regulations for land access for agricultural production.

If the minister says that it is a clarification and that it does not create the need for any further amendment to these regulations, I would invite the minister to show the chamber and to demonstrate to the Australian people how it is—in these regulations or elsewhere in this bill—that there is protection for those key areas of agricultural production. How and where do we find that protection? Where, in black and white, do we find it in the regulations or in the bill? We are putting this statement in here and it is meant to provide that protection, but what areas of Australia's farm production base will actually be excluded? What areas will be protected? Show us, tell us and give some reassurance to those who come back and look at the Hansard records of these debates. Give some reassurance that this is not just a meaningless amendment, that it addresses the concerns of many people—many of my colleagues and many of the farmers groups who want to do the right thing wherever possible. Those farmers groups want to increase the carbon content of soils because they know that that will provide, potentially, not just global benefits but practical benefits for the farmers themselves through enhanced water retention in their soils and therefore enhanced production capabilities.

There is an opportunity there for them, but what is in this amendment to make sure that those farming areas, particularly those of high value, are clearly protected from being taken out of agricultural production? What is in this amendment to ensure that we do not see the loss of the potential to fulfil our responsibility, and to take our opportunity, to be and continue to be a part of feeding the growing demands of the world?

How, Minister, are you going to effect this amendment in the regulations? How is the intent of this amendment effected in the existing regulations or elsewhere in the bill? If it is just a clarification, show us, demonstrate to us, that it is, in fact, just a clarification by showing us that the concerns which have led to this amendment being put forward have already been addressed elsewhere. Show us where that is the case.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will start by addressing your first question, which was put some 15 minutes ago when you first started. As an aside, I know that you are struggling in your filibuster to remain focused on the amendment. Notwithstanding that, why I come to the conclusion that you oppose any action on climate change is clear. You have no department, no legislation and no rigour around the model you propose. Plus, if you look at your direct action policy, you do not have any rigour around that either, nor do you have protections for agricultural land.

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

No regulatory body; no negative list.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have nothing—thank you, Senator Milne. All of that is why I come to the conclusion that you oppose any action on climate change. It highlights that all you are now doing is filibustering the legislation.

I go now to the only question you have asked all morning, which I have answered three times now, just to make sure that it is plain to you. This is an amendment everyone agrees to. It provides in clause 56 those matters, those criteria, that can be taken into account. That is, clearly, the protection that is provided. That is why you proposed it, that is why you agreed to it and that is why we also concede that it is reasonable to include it. It provides the list of matters for the case where, as the bill reads:

In deciding whether to recommend to the Governor-General that regulations should be made for the purposes of subsection (1) specifying a particular kind of project, the Minister must have regard to whether there is a significant risk—

that will now read 'material risk'—

that that kind of project will have a significant adverse impact on one or more of the following: …

And that list will now include the item we are now debating.

In addition to all of that, what you fail to appreciate—or maybe you do—is that you are now focusing on excluded offset projects. If this bill eventually passes—I would hope today, although that seems to be skating away—it will mean that we will have positive lists. In other words, we can focus on the positives rather than the negatives. You have remained focused on the negatives not the positives. I understand why you continue to the focus on the negatives. You do not want this bill to pass. You do not agree that this bill will provide the types of benefits to landholders and the farming community that they can participate in. You want your direct action policy to win so that you can share the confetti that it might have, but it does nothing for the environment, it does nothing to reduce carbon pollution, it does nothing with any rigour, and with no department it cannot have much legislative support.

I will not take up the whole 15 minutes, as this is an important amendment. We agree to it and it should pass. It would be in the best interests of all of us that we do not filibuster. You have been filibustering all morning on this. We have ranged quite widely in this debate, which has been an opportunity for you to get it all off your chest, so now let's get on with it.

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

Minister, I would appreciate your advice on a question I have. You will be aware that the northern beef industry was a very important part of Australia's agricultural activities. It provided food for Australians but, perhaps more importantly, also for our nearest neighbour, Indonesia, a country of 200 million-plus people who live closer to me than I do to Canberra or Melbourne. Indonesia is a very important neighbour of ours and one which we have assisted over many, many years. Part of that assistance has been to provide Indonesians with the protein that red meat provides and that was through, of course, exporting live cattle from Australia to Indonesia and then having those cattle slaughtered in Indonesia, in many cases by smaller abattoirs because of the lack of refrigeration in Indonesia. I say this by way of preamble to my question.

The minister would be aware that his decision in, first of all, banning from export those abattoirs that had a proven cruel record was appropriate, and the northern beef industry would have coped with that. By way of background, I simply relate that the minister was then spooked by the left wing of his party, by the Greens, by GetUp! and by all those other fringe groups who have little interest in Australia but who have a lot of interest in maintaining the Labor-Greens alliance in the federal parliament. The minister, completely spooked by those people and by the left wing of his own party, changed his decision overnight and invoked a total ban.

The biggest impact on the beef industry, which of course was the main supplier to the Indonesian protein market, was in Northern Australia. Clearly they are people whom I have a lot of association with and I try to help them as much as I can in a wide range of areas. My office and the office of any other politician in Northern Australia, state or federal, has been overwhelmed by the response from family farmers in the north whose livelihoods and indeed, in some cases, lives have been shattered by yet another stupid decision of the Gillard government.

My question in relation to this bill before us is this, Minister: is the Carbon Farming Initiative and this amendment likely in some way to benefit the northern beef industry that is now struggling to maintain its presence? The minister will be aware—

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

The answer is 'yes' because you are supporting the amendment. You are actually supporting it.

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

I am asking—

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

So, why are you asking the question?

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

Thank you.

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

You are supporting this amendment.

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

Thank you, Senator. I have some particular interest in this issue. The minister is putting—

Senator Milne interjecting—

I know you are not interested, Senator Milne. You want to stop cattle—in fact, you want to stop people eating red meat in Australia, continuously.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Macdonald, could you address the senator through the chair, and I ask you to draw your remarks back to the amendment before the chamber.

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

Thank you, Mr Temporary Chairman, your protection against these outrageous interjections, these attacks on me, these unparliamentary interjections would be appreciated. In that way I will not be distracted in responding to those unparliamentary interjections by the Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens. Suffice it to say, I am well aware that the Greens would like to stop all red meat eating in Australia and shut down the beef cattle industry in its entirety.

Minister, back to the question I was asking you. Senator Milne rightly points out that we are supporting the amendment in principle but, Minister, could you explain to me how northern beef producers might be able to take advantage of this amendment and, indeed, this whole bill? The northern beef producers are absolutely decimated by your government's decision. The minister will be aware of course that many of the beef cattle producers in Northern Australia are indeed Indigenous cattle producers. They, like every other cattle producer, will be struggling to make ends meet. I am just hoping that the minister can assure me that there is something in this bill and in this amendment which will allow some small relief to the northern beef cattle industry that the minister almost single-handedly destroyed. Minister, I give you the opportunity, of course, to redeem your decision that has just about, as I say, destroyed the northern beef cattle industry. Perhaps your response could give some hope to the northern beef cattle industry that there is something in this bill and its amendments that will enable industry players in the north to get some assistance. The best assistance the minister could give would be to say that the whole carbon tax policy was off the table. You recall, Mr Chairman, that just a year ago the leader of the Labor Party—the current Prime Minister—promised hand on heart that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led and here we are one year later dealing with legislation surrounding the introduction of the tax she promised would never be introduced in a government she led. She was not on her own, of course. We all know that the Treasurer, Mr Swan, was equally vociferous in assuring Australians that if they voted for the Labor Party—

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They were hysterical allegations.

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

Absolutely. He accused Tony Abbott of making hysterical allegations when Tony Abbott said, 'As sure as night follows day, the Greens-Labor alliance will introduce a carbon tax.' Wayne Swan was out there assuring everybody that Mr Abbott was simply being hysterical, but we know one year later that the promises of Ms Gillard and Mr Swan mean nothing. One wonders about the promises that the minister, on behalf of Ms Gillard, is making in this bill and the promises he is making on regulations under this bill. Will they be kept or will they suffer the same fate as the promise of Ms Gillard that, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead'?

What can you believe of anything the minister tells us? He is telling us what might be in the regulations; he is making certain commitments and promises. We have done that before. We as the Australian public actually believed Ms Gillard and Mr Swan a year ago when they said, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' We have now worked out to Australia's absolute detriment that you simply cannot believe anything a government led by Ms Gillard says. I guess all of these debates are a little academic. We have the history of the Labor-Greens alliance. We know the leader, Ms Gillard, will promise you something to get a personal and political advantage and, as soon as it suits her, she will completely renege on that solemn promise.

Minister, your decision on the live cattle trade was about as well thought through as the carbon tax proposal. Perhaps that is not right. Perhaps you did give a bit more thought to the carbon tax proposal because you desperately need money from any source and this is one way you can get it. I guess you did give a bit of thought to how you could get more money into the coffers to make up for Labor's profligate, wasteful spending on a range of projects. The decision you made on the live cattle exports was made obviously without thought. Once you gave it a bit of thought you realised the huge mistake you had made. You have tried to ameliorate that.

I hear that the first shipment of live cattle is either on the way or being prepared for export to Indonesia now, but it is only a fraction of what was a very prominent industry that kept many beef producers, many Indigenous families and communities in productive, full-time work in the north, which you have almost destroyed with that ill-thought-through decision. In the context of this bill and this amendment, I am wondering whether there is some message of hope that you can give the northern beef cattle industry for something they might be able to gain from this to help them through the awful financial, business and personal situation many of them find themselves in at this time.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In answer to the direct question, if you go back to the second reading speech, this bill is committed to action on climate change and the need to reduce our carbon pollution. What it does is unlock the abatement opportunities in the land sector and provide farmers, foresters, growers and landholders access to carbon markets. In doing so, it will begin to unlock the abatement opportunities in the land sector which currently makes up about 23 per cent of Australia's emissions.

That means that the Carbon Farming Initiative will create incentives to do two crucial things: protect our natural environment and adopt more sustainable farming practices as well as the benefit of mitigating climate change. So it does provide an income stream. All of these important co-benefits mean that the sooner we pass this legislation the sooner we ensure that landholders can have access to it and participate in carbon markets and establish income streams and lock up carbon through soil sequestration, through biochar—through all of the types of opportunities that are provided on the positive list—and develop more opportunities on the positive list. They are all what this bill is about in giving landholders in the agricultural sector a mechanism that values their contribution.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note that the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry indicated that the issues I spoke of in my previous contribution were not relevant. I have to say I completely disagree with that. We are specifically talking about protection of agricultural land, yet the direct actions of the government—they are not indirect by any sense of the imagination—put at threat 100,000 hectares of Tasmania's agricultural land. So 10 per cent of Tasmania's agricultural land is directly put at threat by the Prime Minister and the Tasmanian Premier agreeing to lock up to 572,000 hectares of Tasmania's native forests. It was something that was discussed during the statement of principles process, and it goes directly to the government's credibility in the discussion of this piece of legislation—the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill 2011. The government says it is looking, through its amendment (1), to protect agricultural land, yet its direct action—what it really does on the ground—indicates that it is not. Under what circumstance can anyone have any real confidence in what the government says it intends to do when its direct action—its real activity—actually indicates the opposite?

Minister Ludwig is correct that we both have the same aspirations in what we are proposing here, but it would have been nice if the minister had been prepared to actually address the issue of the direct threat to 10 per cent of Tasmania's agricultural land rather than just passing it off as completely irrelevant—because it is not. We know he has vacated the field completely to the environment minister in the forestry negotiations in Tasmania. He is no longer a part of it; he has been pushed aside. That is disappointing, because I think he might be prepared to stand up a bit more for the forestry industry than is the environment minister—who, amusingly, is a former forestry minister. It would be very nice if the minister were to address the reality of what is occurring in Tasmania and the direct impact on Tasmania's agricultural land.

I want to put a few more details on the record in relation to what has been proposed by the environmental groups and the discussion they are trying to pass off as a simple way to deal with this, saying: 'We're not really threatening agricultural land. You can use the existing plantation estate to take up the lockup of these forests'—the disgraceful lockup of these forests. As I said before, there are about 300,000 hectares of plantations in Tasmania. About 216,000 hectares of the 300,000 are actually in private hands. So here we have the ENGOs out there happily talking about property that is not even in government hands; it is held by private individuals. As I have said, a lot of that is actually owned by the proponent of the proposed pulp mill in Tasmania, and it has been grown specifically for that purpose. You cannot just magically waltz off and say, 'We can put that into a first-class timber supply.' That is absolutely, patently absurd. Yet that is what the ENGOs are implying in their discussion.

It is no wonder that there was huge frustration even from Mr Kelty, in his negotiations with the activities of the ENGOs throughout this process. The ENGOs have been quite disingenuous, saying one thing inside the negotiations and another thing outside the negotiations. Mr Pullinger, in particular, got to the stage where his credibility in this whole process was quite suspect, quite frankly. In fact, I think he has even deceived some of his own people in what he was agreeing to in the negotiations versus what he was telling them outside.

I will just take this a little bit further. We have 216,000 hectares of Tasmania's 300,000 hectares of plantation in private ownership. They do not belong to the ENGOs. They are not public property to be negotiated as part of this agreement. As I said, they have been grown for something else. There are 32,700 hectares in private ownership, and they are there for a number of reasons. Some of it is pine plantation, and that obviously has a specific market, but you are not going to get magnificent native forest veneer out of a pine plantation—it is absurd to suggest that you can transition in three to five years out of native forest into, say, a pine plantation. You certainly cannot transition into a eucalypt plantation, which has a life cycle design of about 12 to 13 years. You certainly are not going to get a long-life veneer out of that.

The government's policy, through this amendment, is to protect agricultural land, yet the action resulting from the govern­ment's decision in Tasmania is to push forestry out onto agricultural land. In fact, we are seeing it more broadly than that. I was in Orbost last week talking to the forest sector down there, and they are being slowly squeezed out of the forests by the Greens and the environmental groups, in conjunction with the Labor Party. They are a bit more encouraged, with the change of government in Victoria, that that might slow down a little bit, but you see this squeezing out of native forests and into plantations, and there is only one place to plant that: it has to be on agricultural land. We do not like to see conversion of native forests to plantation anymore. I support that process. Let us regrow native forest as native forest and have a long-term rotation, which the forest scientists tell me is the best way to store carbon, the best way to look after water quality and the best way to look after biodiversity.

All the values that the ENGOs and the Greens claim they want to achieve are best achieved by a long-term rotation regime in a native forest. Yet here we have a government decision that is directly threatening that, pushing agriculture out of the way and pushing us into a plantation regime. There is only one place for that to go. Whether it is in Tasmania or in any other state, it has to be pushed out onto agricultural land. As I said, we do not like to see conversion of native forests to plantations. We have seen that in Tasmania, and I am happy to admit that from my perspective that was one of the mistakes we did make in Tasmania in relation to our forestry practices: the large-scale conversion of native forests to plantations. We actually have a plantation estate there now and, as I have said, two-thirds of it is in private hands. But, I have to say well-managed, sustainable long-term rotation of a native forest regime—properly utilising all the product streams that come out of that—is the best way to manage this, not pushing our forest sector out onto our agricultural land. We see the government consistently making decisions that do not support what it says it is doing in this particular circumstance. It did exactly the same thing with its prohibition on utilising biomass for renewable energy. It was a completely ridiculous decision that was driven by the Greens. There is no other explanation for that. It is driven by the Greens; it is Greens policy. Senator Milne asked one of the ministers at question time yesterday a question about the life cycle of coal seam gas versus coal. She asked for a life cycle comparison. I will give her the life cycle comparison of utilising biomass from native forest waste to coal. It is 4 per cent. So how do you reduce your carbon emissions in energy generation by 96 per cent? You utilise biomass. In Australia, we could generate 8,000 gigawatts of energy from native forest biomass waste without touching another twig or tree.

Think about the carbon emissions that will reduce. The government bangs on about wanting to have a comprehensive carbon reduction scheme and process. If we recognise biomass we can reduce the life cycle emissions over coal by 96 per cent, but because of ideology we cannot do that. The government is not prepared to stand up and say: here is a way that we can do that. You can do it cheaper than wind. It is a low-cost technology compared with, say, wind. It can be done at the regional level. It can be appropriately scaled. I am prepared to accept that in some places we have let the wrong drivers get into our forestry systems. Woodchips did that for a period of time in Tasmania, and that has now obviously changed with some changes in the markets. But a properly scaled biomass industry, set up on a regional basis and with access to the grid, could provide a well-costed, low-carbon-emission energy source which could be quite cost competitive. Yet, because of ideology, because the Greens tail is wagging the Labor dog, we cannot go down that track, so we miss out on the opportunity to produce up to 8,000 gigawatt hours of energy from wood waste that lies on the forest floor, which quite often gets burnt in regeneration burns, which of course the Greens then come out and complain about, saying that we are putting all this particulate matter into the atmosphere. We could actually put that into a biomass plant and generate renewable energy and reduce the emissions from coal in comparison by 96 per cent. Yet ideology drives us away from that.

So all these things we could have if the government were prepared to make sensible and consistent decisions. All we are asking for is a consistent decision-making regime. The government have an amendment on the table that says, 'Look after agricultural land,' yet their decision-making processes, with the forestry agreement in Tasmania and the exclusion of biomass, act in an opposing manner to the intent of this amendment.

We have stated that we have a similar amendment on the Notice Paper. We support the protection of agricultural land. Because of the government's actions in concert with those of the Greens, the Greens tail wagging happily away when they get their way, running the Labor dog, we cannot get sensible decisions out of the government. We would be more than happy to work with the government in relation to these things if the government were prepared to make sensible decisions, not say they are going to do one thing and do something else, which is what we see time and time again. We saw it with the forest agreement and with the biomass in Tasmania.

We see attempts to make claims about the plantation estate in Tasmania that just do not stack up. ENGOs are getting on the radio, telling the community that there are 300,000 hectares of plantation estate in Tasmania that will be available to transition into in three to five years. They are privately owned and they have not been planted and managed for that purpose, yet the government makes a decision at the behest of the Greens at the state level—Nick McKim, running for Premier in Tasmania. And in the federal parliament we have the Greens running the Labor agenda. They are not prepared to stick up for the industry and not prepared to take the actions that we support, which is to provide that level of protection for agricultural land.

I will be very interested to hear the minister's response to that. It is disappointing that he has been pushed aside as part of this process, as I said before. I would much prefer to have him driving this than the minister for the environment. He was a complete failure as agriculture and forestry minister in the previous government. I have much higher hopes for the current minister, and having spoken to him a couple of times I know that he has a sense of feeling towards the forestry sector. But it would be really nice if the government in its actions were prepared to demonstrate that.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just to reiterate, we are dealing with an agreed amendment under the Carbon Farming Initiative. I know that, for those following this debate, we have certainly ranged quite widely. The reason for that is that the opposition do not agree with this legislation and they are using every opportunity to filibuster. Filibustering is the course that oppositions can occasionally take to delay the passage of legislation. It is unfortunate that they are doing it in such a poor way. Sometimes, though, they do it in a much more entertaining way, one which is perhaps even more relevant to the actual amendment that is currently before the chamber. Unfortunately, here they are not.

Can I say again that, broadly, in combina­tion with measures announced in the govern­ment's Clean Energy Future plan, the CFI is likely to improve the productivity and sustainability of Australian agriculture. The Carbon Farming Initiative projects will be most cost effective where they enhance agricultural productivity and deliver environ­mental co-benefits, such as reducing erosion and salinity or protecting biodiversity. The Carbon Farming Initiative is unlikely to promote what the opposition are now effectively trying to hold onto as their last, single thread of opposition to this bill, which is the conversion of agricultural land to other uses. In all but the most marginal of farming areas it will not be cost effective to undertake revegetation of productive agricultural land, unlike their own policy of direct action where—with no department, no rigour and no modelling—direct action could, in fact, have adverse impacts. It is are far better opportunity for the opposition to agree to the Carbon Farming Initiative, pass the legislation and ensure that farming communities can benefit from what is environmentally and sustain­ably productive while getting the co-benefits of reducing erosion and salinity and protect­ing biodiversity and getting the co-benefit of an income stream.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are a couple of questions that I would like to ask in relation to the draft regulations tabled yesterday. They relate to issues around water and water interception. I am genuinely interested in knowing what the baselines for those calculations might be. There is a table on page 6 that talks about the level of interception, long-term average rainfall and the volume of water offsets that have been claimed as part of that. But in relation to what the interceptions might be, in respect of the baselines for calculation of those given the general character of the landscape that they are in, in many circumstances revegetating—and I use that term quite deliberately—the local landscape is actually taking that landscape back to what it might have been before it was cleared. I use a very personal example of the farm that my parents farmed on, which was all forested land. I think there were four or five sawmills in the valley in the early 1900s when that land was cleared. Obviously, that has a material impact on the water flows and the water tables in those areas, so when you take forest cover away the natural impact of the native forest there is changed. It is obviously considerably changed in the development of the agricultural land. If you actually regenerate that country—and a lot of that is now about growing trees, although not in a native forest format unfortunately—you are actually taking that back much more closely to what it was like before. So I am interested in the justification of saying that you have to have that high-security water title, that water right, to that land, because this is a very new concept and it is not something that we have seen in any format that I have come across before. So the concept of saying that we now need to have a water licence to put trees back into the landscape is a new concept and I am interested to see how that might perhaps bleed off into some other areas. I am very interested to know what the government's baselines for these are, whether they are as to what was the natural state or whether they are as to what is now the altered state, and how those calculations have been determined.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The table was based on CSIRO's research and has been developed in consultation with SEWPaC as to water. It is also out for consultation. There has been a significant use of water over the longer period but we need to start looking at what that provides proponents who hold water access entitlements. That, as it reads, 'provides high security for at least the volume of water likely to be intercepted by the forest annually, calculated in accordance with table 1' and averaged across the life of the project. It 'is only used to offset the water intercepted by the forest'. The table is based on the research that is available and developed in consultation. As I said earlier, after some two hours or more dealing with this one agreed amendment, we have got the regulations out for consultation and industry stakeholders can provide valuable input into all that.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think the minister is genuinely trying to provide some advice in respect of that. I am genuinely interested in this and I am getting a good sense of the bases and the baselines for these. As I said, it is a new concept and it does have the capacity to be a precedent for other land uses. So in that context alone it is important that we make sure that this is put together properly. It actually does vindicate the opposition's concern at the time that this bill was first tabled when we said we wanted to see the final passing of this legislation deferred until after we had the capacity, as an opposition and as a parliament, to actively consider these regulations. There was some indicative work provided to us, I accept, but that was not until the day we reported on the legislation, which significantly inhibited our capacity to deal with it. Now here we are, with the government pushing to try to get the legislation finalised, receiving draft regulations and there are some very important concepts contained in these. This, as I have said, is something that I have not seen before in any legislation where someone wanting to have an agricultural land use is required, just to undertake that agricultural land use, to have a high-quality water entitlement. I think it is important to know what the baselines are for this. I understand that the water uptake by a forest plantation varies significantly over its life. It is very, very low in the early stages, obviously, when there is less density in the forest. It ramps up as the forest grows and then it evens off as the forest matures. I would like to know the basis for the calculation—whether it is an average across the life cycle of a forest. How are these figures calculated?

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I indicated earlier, while revegetation may be taking the landscape back to its natural state, high-security water licences are required because other land uses, such as agriculture, also need water. It will use more water than was the case before human settlement. It is one of those areas where the CSIRO has put together a table. It provides a range whereby you can see a long-term average annual rainfall. It is only used to provide the high security for at least the volume of water likely to be intercepted by the forest annually. It is calculated in accordance with table 1. It provides a calculation. The object is to get to a point where we can use table 1 in a meaningful way. In using it in a meaningful way, it is of course open for consultation. If stakeholders disagree with the long-term average annual rainfall volumes of water offset entitlements required per hectare over the life of a plantation forest then they are entitled to have input into that process.

While dealing with the baseline, we have also dealt with the overall table itself. I think I have sufficiently answered questions for this area. It is again outside the amendment which we are currently dealing with. I am happy to provide answers to it, but we are still dealing with filibustering from those opposite. I know they do not want to pass this legislation. I am happy to answer questions about it and to provide clarity in relation to it. I am sure the community at large, with its 59 submissions, has been able to provide input. The regulations are out for further comment. All of that means that this area will be beneficial to farmers and to the environment the sooner we pass it and put the framework in place.

Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendment be agreed to. Senator Birmingham.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a delight to see you in the chair. Congratulations on your ascendancy to that office. I do note that the minister has drawn to our attention that we have been debating this amendment for some time, and I acknowledge that—

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You haven't been debating the amendment. You've been talking about a whole range of things.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister, I think you will find that my contributions have often come to the point of the amendment with great—

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Your nose is growing.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You do not want to invite me to take that one, do you? You do not want me to take 'the nose is growing' interjection, because that will only lead to discussing one thing in this place at present. If you want to talk about great big liars in this place, we all know where that leads to. It leads of course to talking about the Prime Minister and yesterday's anniversary of her great big lie to the Australian people.

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You should not use the Pinocchio defence.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, I am not sure what defence the Prime Minister has at her disposal in relation to the lies that she told in campaigning to the people at the last election, particularly on the carbon tax. This amendment is one that, as you have rightly highlighted, we all support. I am disappointed, Minister, that you have attempted in this debate to downplay the significance or the import of this amendment. You have essentially cast it aside to the extent that the amendment is little more than a point of clarification rather than an amendment that should be treated with a semblance of seriousness and that should be recognised as an important issue in how this legislation will ultimately operate. This does not change the opposition's support for the amendment.

Obviously, we will engage with stakeholders, as we trust the government will, about the regulations that pertain to section 56. We will make those engagements as constructive as possible. If stakeholders have concerns that the regulations do not fit or adhere to the amended section 56 and the inclusion of this criteria around the availability of land for agricultural product­ion, then I guess we will be back here at some stage debating the regulations in a disallowance motion. Hopefully, it will not come to that. Hopefully, the government can refine these regulations into something that adheres to not just parts (a), (b), (c) and (d) of section 56 but also part (e), which is around land access for agricultural production.

Whilst the minister at the table, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, should have a particular vested interest in the amendment before us, the operation of this bill or act, if it is passed, will be with the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. I urge that minister to make sure that, as the regulations are finalised, serious consideration is given to whether they are adhered to and that if stakeholders, in particular the farming groups, have continuing concerns about the possible impact of this bill on land for agricultural production then those concerns are heeded so that we get a win-win outcome, so that we get the outcome where farmers actively participate in a market, in an environment, to sequester carbon in their soil and, in doing so, we have the potential benefits of increased water retention, of increased productivity on their land and of the potential for Australia to grow its food production but at the same time we get the other win of certainty that those farmlands will be protected, that we will have agricultural production on all of our potential prime farmlands and that there will not be any adverse outcomes or consequences to that under this bill.

That is what I hope will happen as these regulations are finalised. Notwithstanding what the minister at the table has had to say in downplaying the significance of this amendment, I hope most sincerely that the government will take this amendment with all seriousness and will ensure that it is complied with and reflected in the regulations, not just to the letter of the amendment but to its spirit. Should the stakeholder groups, and farm groups in particular, have concerns about the application of this clause in these regulations in constructing the negative list of activities, I hope that is reflected seriously and those concerns are picked up in these regulations.

Minister Ludwig, obviously you are not going to give any greater comfort at present that we can expect to see anything stronger in the regulations. Obviously, you are not going to give us any greater detail as to how this amendment may operate in the regulations. After some period of debate, I have come to accept that. I have heard your answers; I understand the points that you have made. I am disappointed, but I certainly hope that the minister who will have responsibility for the operation of this law, if passed, will have a different attitude about the significance of this amendment. The opposition certainly does. I hope that, in time, we will see it thoroughly reflected in the regulations that I wish had—and should have—been drafted long ago in tandem with the presentation of this bill, because they are so critical to how it works and because they can set aside so many of the concerns and misgivings that people have. That has not been the case. Nonetheless, as we now move forward on this, I hope that the government will show a different attitude to this important amendment than the minister has suggested to date. That does not, of course, change the opposition's support for this amendment.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take issue with a point that the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry made on these water access entitlements and ask him to clarify it. I think he was saying that these calculations are being made on the basis of the modified status of a particular piece of country. So it is based on what is there now versus what the original state was. I accept that in a lot of circumstances a fair bit of time has passed between them. I also want him to clarify his point about the amount of water that is actually taken up by a regenerated area versus what it might have been in its native state. I am genuinely interested in this. As I said before, this is a new concept. It is something that I am very concerned about being in the regulations in the first place because it has the capacity to do something that could then be applied to other agricultural pursuits. Quite frankly, the thin edge of a very dangerous wedge would be, rather than a farmer making the decision to plant a crop based on whether he understands he has the water, for some regulation to be imposed on him that he can or cannot plant a crop based on what his water right is.

I put on the record my concern that we are even going down this track in the first place. We will continue to pursue that through the process of scrutinising these regulations. I go back to the point I made earlier that we asked for these regulations back when the bill was being debated and scrutinised by the committee. All of these issues could have been much more easily dealt with, the progress of the legislation through this place could have been much more easily managed, had the government been prepared to do what the opposition asked at the time. In fact, we even moved a second reading amendment to the legislation asking the government to delay the passage of the legislation until the Senate had been able to properly consider the regulations. In my view, that was a very reasonable request. It has been vindicated now because there are legitimate questions and concerns that have been raised by this process.

As I say, this is the first time that I have seen any requirement for any agricultural pursuit to have a high security water licence before there is an entitlement to actually go ahead with that agricultural pursuit. Is this to become the norm? Are we going to see this occur in other circumstances when a farmer is told that he cannot plant his crop unless he has that water right? Are we going to see that be part of an ENGO campaign, for example? I would not be surprised. Here is the precedent. I have often had the discussion with some in the farming community, 'Be careful of what you ask for; you might just get it.' I am quite concerned that this is even in the regulations to start with, but I would like to get a decent sense of the method of its calculation. I would genuinely be interested in the minister putting something on the table in relation to this so that I can get an understanding of where these numbers come from. He says the numbers are from the CSIRO. I am happy to accept that that might be the source, but I would be genuinely interested in having a look at it so I can compare it with some other science that I have read. There is some very good research that I have looked at that talks about the water take-up of trees. The one thing that I do know is that you cannot put a blanket ban on it because it is extremely variable. It varies depending on where in the catchment it is. It varies based on the gradient of the land, whether it is higher or lower in the catchment and whether it is closer to a watercourse or further away.

All of those things vary, yet this table is effectively based on long-term rainfall and a volume of water that a planting might be expected to take up. How can we as a Senate understand the basis of this? That is why I am asking these questions. The uptake of water through tree plantings of any kind is not a new issue. It has been discussed over a number of years. Yes, the MIS circumstance has exacerbated that discussion and, yes, the MIS circumstance has probably prompted some people to say, 'Let's use this as a mechanism to stop people planting trees.' That is not something that I have not seen before: find a point of community concern and then campaign on that to try to stop people undertaking an activity—stock in trade for some ENGOs.

I genuinely would like to see the basis of this. I would really like to understand the basis of the science. How do we get to something that is based on a rainfall range of 100 millimetres one way or the other and then a water offset for an intended uptake? Surely these are the sorts of things that the proponent of a scheme should be required to consider as part of the process. Why be so specific in what you are defining as part of your regulation? Why not have it as part of a project plan that you have to consider this and then include that as part of the approval process? Perhaps that is a better way to do this rather than being specific and saying, 'If you receive average rainfall of 600 to 700 millimetres over the long term, you need a 0.9 megalitre high-security water licence to undertake a tree planting.' That just does not make sense. As I have said, it varies depending on whereabouts in a catchment you are and on the gradient, and it varies according to the species. Different species will have different uptakes. A saltbush will have a different uptake to that of a eucalypt.

We have before us something that has a very specific focus—and it is something that has never been seen before—and all I am asking for is to see the basis of the calculation. I am genuinely concerned that it is there in the first place, because it could be the nasty thin edge of the wedge, but I would genuinely like to look at the basis of this.

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

I am conscious of the fact that Senator Birmingham, who is running this for us, is keen to have a vote on this particular amendment before a quarter to 12, so I will keep my question very short. The minister would be aware of the banana industry in North Queensland. He would be aware that the banana industry uses a hell of a lot of electricity in its cooling and ripening rooms and a hell of a lot of transport fuel to get the bananas from Tully in Far North Queensland down to the markets in Sydney and Melbourne. The minister would also be aware that just a year ago the Labor Party leader Julia Gillard promised she would never introduce a carbon tax in her government and here we are actually debating bills around the carbon tax.

The banana industry in North Queensland will be hit with increased electricity costs once the carbon tax that Julia Gillard promised would never be introduced is introduced. The banana industry will also be hit with huge increases in freight costs to bring bananas from Far North Queensland down to Sydney and Melbourne. The banana industry will struggle just as the northern beef cattle industry will struggle. Can the minister assure me that the Carbon Farming Initiative will actually help banana farmers by giving them some assistance that will in a very small way ameliorate some of the additional costs they will have to pay when the Gillard government introduces its toxic carbon tax?

Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the earlier questions, the CSIRO research has been relied upon to provide the information. These regulations are out for comment. Quite frankly, I know those opposite do not believe in the science. I am sure they would not believe in the science even if we could table the CSIRO's science report today. They are opposed to this legislation and they continue to oppose it. They do not believe in the Carbon Farming Initiative, which will provide benefits to the environment and reduce salinity, as well as provide specific benefits for the farming community.

Pass the legislation. Stop filibustering. We will get an outcome that farmers can participate in. We know that the farming community is excluded from the carbon price. We have advocated for that and it has been agreed to. The farming community can certainly now use the CFI as an opportunity. This goes to the second question that was asked. You do not have to use the CFI if you do not want to. If you want to participate in it and if you want to develop a methodology that uses one of the available opportunities, you can do so. If you do not want to then you can continue. This is really responding to the Chicken Little arguments that were raised earlier about how the sky will fall down and everything else will happen. That is completely false. If you do not want to use the table do not use the CFI and do not use the opportunities that it presents to you. It is a perfectly logical answer for some who might not see an opportunity, but many will. So pass the legislation and let those farming communities benefit from sequestering carbon.

In response to Senator Macdonald, the banana industry, as you can appreciate, had an opportunity post Cyclone Yasi to receive significant support and assistance to get them through pretty difficult times. We provided a farm clean-up and a significant opportunity to get them through that difficult period. Because there were no bananas in the marketplace there were calls for alternative opportunities. What we have had though is a responsive banana industry able to deal with a particularly difficult event and get back up on its feet. In the foreseeable future bananas will re-enter the market, which will bring down the prices.

Not only the banana industry but all of the agricultural industries—I will not pick any out individually—can benefit from the CFI if they want to participate in it and develop the opportunities. They can use it as a way of reducing salinity in the soil, providing environmental benefits. I know that many in the farming community already do significant work on this. They can use that to their advantage by having their organisations join in this process of identifying the positive outcomes of sequestering carbon. This will ensure that they can reduce their carbon emissions, and that there are not only long-term benefits for their own environment but also income streams from it. All of that is available to them. It is not available while the coalition oppose the legislation and continue to filibuster.

We have been dealing with an amendment that everybody agrees with. No matter how many times the opposition have tried to characterise it otherwise, it is a sensible amendment. It provides what the opposition asked for and what the government sees as necessary. It does it by amending the criteria that are taken into account by the minister when making decisions around the legislation. We are now four or five hours in. We have had a couple of hours on one amendment that we all agree to. The coalition can argue that they are not filibustering, but they are. We really ought to get on with this legislation.

I think the coalition are now going from the ridiculous to the sublime. They are demonstrating just how opposed they are not only to the Carbon Farming Initiative but also to the opportunities that the Carbon Farming Initiative will present to farming communities. That disappoints me the most. I philosophically understand why the opposition oppose this. I do not agree with you. I completely think you have the wrong end of the stick. I see that it is your position and you are going to stick to it, but I do not understand why you want to deny farming communities the benefits of reducing salinity and soil erosion while also providing income streams. I do not understand that at all, quite frankly.

It is probably wedded to the fact that I mentioned earlier: in this debate, the coalition philosophically have a huge problem. They do not agree with the science. They do not agree with our position. They reflect that in many ways, such as saving money by not having a department. They have no legislation. They have no rigour. They have no model. They only have a direct action model, and I would not even call it that. It is just a tissue-paper-thin document which looks like a policy but is not. It is a clayton's policy, quite frankly. It will not work and it will not do what the CFI will do, which will provide all of those benefits and ensure, as we have done in this, that land use is a criterion that is taken into account. The opposition's direct action policy can have perverse outcomes. They do not want to talk about those perverse outcomes here, and I can understand why they would not want to, but if you look at the coalition's comments on those perverse outcomes the Liberals demonstrate that they are divided on this issue, as they are on the science of climate change.

The legislation we have will strike the right balance between rewarding environ­mental planning and protecting prime agricultural land; however, the Liberals do not want farmers to benefit from the carbon markets. They are spruiking the idea of tree planting as a panacea for climate change, but you could have the perverse outcomes that Senator Colbeck mentioned. It could create areas where you have insensible policy which encourages tree planting but without any rigour, model or safeguards and without any department or legislation. But they have provoked me into responding in a more broad way. I do this to highlight how the coalition are even opposed to benefiting farmers. That troubles me more each day as I sit in this chamber and listen to the Liberals spruik about the Carbon Farming Initiative. They ask questions but in truth they are filibustering; they are opposing the legisla­tion. Do that at the end—get on with it.

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

Most of the legislation the Labor Party has brought to this chamber has been so hopelessly drawn that it has had to be amended not long after its introduction. It has been brought in without proper scrutiny of all the elements. That is why we are spending time looking carefully into the bill before the committee at the moment. Senator Ludwig talked about filibusters but he just took 12 minutes to tell us practically nothing. If anyone is doing the filibustering, for some reason it is Senator Ludwig and the government. Senator Ludwig even raised issues that were not part of the debate, but as he has raised them it behoves me, in fairness and for an honest debate, to respond to them.

Senator Ludwig said that we want to abolish the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Yes, we do. We are looking for a lot of savings, and there is one very big saving. Which government was it that started the Greenhouse Challenge Plus Program? It was the Howard government. Which government put in place a number of initiatives that meant a reduction in Australia's greenhouse gas emissions? It was the Howard government. Did we need a new department of climate change to do that? No. We did it with the department of the environment. Clearly, that is where it can be done—without the huge expense that the Labor Party always wants to impose upon the Australian taxpayer by setting up another group of bureaucrats, another group of public servants, another group of people to push paper around. The department of the enviro­nment is perfectly able to handle this, and it can do that under an Abbott government just as it did under the Howard government.

Senator Ludwig also expanded the debate by talking about people not believing in climate change. I can only speak for myself, but I think most of my colleagues accept that of course the climate is changing. The climate has been changing for millions of years. Many scientists say that man is the cause of climate change but an equal number of highly qualified scientists, or more, do not agree. I am not a scientist, I am a mere politician, so I do not know. I take the view that when everybody else takes action, we will too. Certainly I accept that the climate is changing and I would be surprised if anyone did not understand that 20 million years ago the world was covered in ice. It is not covered in ice now, so of course the climate is changing. Millions of years ago the centre of Australia was covered by rainforest. It is not now; it is quite arid. So of course the climate is changing. Is it warming? That is a different question. The facts seem to suggest that in the last couple of decades the climate has either cooled or has not changed at all. They are matters beyond this debate, and I only mention them because Senator Ludwig raised them even although they are extraneous to the issue we are dealing with.

Senator Ludwig spent some time denigrating the coalition's direct action policy, a principal part of which is to put carbon into the soil. That was something the coalition was advocating and promoting long before the government ever thought of it. And you can reduce emissions, you can improve the quality of the soil, through the proposals that the coalition has put forward. You do not need a great big new tax on every Australian—a tax that will have no worldwide impact whatsoever on climate change—to get a reduction in emissions. The direct action proposal of Mr Abbott and the coalition will bring a reduction in green­house gas emissions. In fact Ms Gillard, the leader of the Labor Party and current Prime Minister, thought a year ago yesterday that no new tax would be needed when she said there would be no carbon tax under a government she led. The Labor Party leader made a solemn promise that, if her party was elected to government, there would not be a carbon tax.

At about that time Tony Abbott told Australians that, as sure as night followed day, once you got a Labor Party-Greens alliance they would be after a carbon tax. Mr Swan, the deputy leader of the Labor Party and the current Treasurer, accused Mr Abbott of being hysterical for daring to suggest that the new Greens-Labor govern­ment would bring in a carbon tax. Mr Swan said that Tony Abbott's suggestion that the government was going to bring in a carbon tax was hysterical; it was not true. That was then followed up by Ms Gillard, the leader of the Labor Party, saying, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' Indeed, she also said that if any action were to be taken on climate change initiatives it would only be done after there was a consensus of those in parliament. A year ago—just 12 months, 366 days ago—there was consensus. The Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the National Party all agreed that there would be no carbon tax.

So there was consensus just a short 12 months ago. There was unanimity in the Australian political scene. Everybody agreed there would be no carbon tax. People voted for Senator Feeney, Senator Ludwig and Senator Brown on the basis that, if the Labor Party were elected to government, there would be no carbon tax. Why did they think that? Because the leader of the Labor Party put her hand on her heart and said, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.'

It was not as though she did not know she would need to get into bed with the Greens. We all knew before the last election that the Senate was going to change. We could not maintain in the Senate the enormous success we had had in Queensland. Six years ago the Liberal Party had a magnificent success in Queensland when we got an unheard of four out of the six Senate positions. We knew that could not continue. Everybody knew it could not continue. Ms Gillard knew that if she formed government after the election it would have to be with the imprimatur of the left wing of the Labor Party—that is, the Greens. So she knew that was coming, yet in spite of that she promised us there would not be a carbon tax. Wayne Swan, the deputy leader of the Labor Party, reinforced that. Ms Gillard said, 'If we're going to do anything about climate change, it will be on consensus.' I repeat myself to make the point again: there was a consensus 366 days ago, one year ago, and that consensus was no carbon tax.

I raise those matters only because Senator Ludwig has broadened this debate, in what seemed to be a government-initiated filibuster, by bringing in these extraneous matters. I want to return to the question I asked Senator Ludwig about the banana industry. We know how very essential that industry is to all the banana eaters around Australia. As Senator Ludwig rightly said, Cyclone Larry first of all and Cyclone Yasi most recently devastated the banana industry. The banana industry has shown resilience and is back in play now. Coming from the area, I can assure Australian banana eaters that the supply is coming good, that prices will fall and everyone will be happy again—except that to get the banana product from Tully way up in Far North Queensland to Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra requires huge transport trucks. Those huge transport trucks, as Senator Sterle will tell us and as Tony Sheldon from the Transport Workers Union will tell us, use a helluva lot of fuel—a helluva lot of diesel and petrol.

Under the Gillard government's carbon tax those long-distance heavy transport vehicles are going to be slugged. You can imagine what that will do to the banana industry and to the price of bananas for the ordinary Australian public. There will be no compensation that I am aware of. That is why Tony Sheldon from the Transport Workers Union is so violently opposed to this toxic carbon tax being introduced by the Labor Party and its leader, Ms Gillard.

I hope the members of parliament who are in this place due to support from the Transport Workers Union will do the things they were elected to do and the things that their union sponsored them into this place to do—that is, to oppose this toxic tax which will mean such devastation for the heavy transport industry and, by extension, the industry I am talking about at present, which is the North Queensland banana industry. Banana growers are going to be slugged by the carbon tax on fuel introduced by this government, which promised that it would not introduce it.

The banana industry also uses a lot of electricity in their storerooms, coldrooms and ripening areas. It is not even argued about now. Even the government's own figures say it is 10 per cent, but we know what the government's modelling is like. More and more we are suspicious of modelling done by this government. The New South Wales government says that electricity prices will go up more like 15 to 20 per cent. That modelling is more believable because it is was done by independent economic analysts. That brings me back to the question I asked and the amendment we are dealing with: what impact will the Carbon Farming Initiative have—in a positive way, hopefully—on ameliorating the huge additional cost the banana industry is going to have to meet as a result of Gillard's carbon tax?

I have been distracted by Senator Ludwig's broadening of the debate, his filibuster. I did want to ask about the sugar industry as well, which is also very important in the north, but I have run out of time to do that. I would like to repeat my question: what tangible financial results will this particular carbon farming initiative give to the banana industry to help ameliorate some—a very small part, I would think—of the impact of the carbon tax on that industry?

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

Parliamentary Secretary?

Senator Feeney interjecting —

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not sure whether Senator Feeney spoke then or whether he just bounced in his seat.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was succinct.

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

I took it as a bounce.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You took it as a bounce? A bounce in his seat? I was expecting and hoping for a response to Senator Macdonald's genuine concerns about an industry in his home state and an industry that is important to all Australians. The importance of that industry is being demonstrated—we have seen the impact flow through to inflation. That industry has gone through tough times following some natural disasters.

Whilst Senator Feeney bounces in his seat, Senator Ludwig did at least provide some comments before he had to leave the chamber, but I was very disturbed by those comments. He claimed that the opposition does not want to give farmers the opportunity to sequester carbon in their soils and to enjoy some benefits from that. That is just a blatant misleading of the chamber. The opposition, as I have outlined before, has for a long time—far longer than this government—championed the concept that we can achieve significant carbon abatement in this country through enhancement of our soil carbon stocks; that we can make good inroads in reducing our share of global emissions by capturing carbon in our soils, by increasing the carbon content in our soils; and that, in doing so, we can enjoy a number of benefits such as those that Senator Ludwig has outlined. Those benefits include reduced risk of salinity, increased retention of water and increased soil capacity. Out of all that, we can enjoy the benefits of our soils being able to produce more and our farmers being able to produce more. We can actually boost Australia's overall productive capacity. So to come into this place and suggest, as the minister did, that we do not support the idea of farmers sequestering carbon is far from the truth.

The coalition has long supported the concept—has recognised the need and the opportunity—of putting greater carbon content into our soils. What we do not want to see, though—because it is what we have seen all too often from this government—is a bad scheme, a flawed scheme, a scheme that potentially has unintended consequences. That is what we do not want to see. That is what we on this side want to stop. That is why we have been diligent and determined in our approach to tackling all of the issues that we have seen with this legislation. That is why, as my colleague Senator Colbeck pointed out earlier, we were crystal clear from day one that we believed this bill deserved to be considered alongside all of the proposed regulations needed to make this bill work; that the Senate inquiry that looked at this should have been able to look at it in its entirety, with those regulations; and that it was important to make sure that, when the Senate committee engaged stakeholders who have an interest in this issue, those stakeholders were able to give us fully informed feedback about it.

But, no, the government resisted that. The government could not manage to get its act together and could not manage to present all of this information in one hit. Instead of the Senate inquiry looking at this legislation with all of the government's proposals before it, it only had some of the proposals. It was not until yesterday afternoon that this chamber was finally presented with a copy of the draft regulations. Long after the Senate committee has finished its deliberations on this bill, long after the House of Representatives has passed this bill and well into the debate on this bill, the government finally comes along and drops these regulations on the table. According to it, the final version of these regulations was pumped out at 11.43 am yesterday.

These regulations are particularly important to the clause of the bill that we have been debating this morning—to proposed section 56 pertaining to excluded offset projects. That proposed section creates the so-called negative list in an attempt to ensure that there are no perverse outcomes or adverse consequences from the operation of the scheme. It attempts to ensure that, in striving to give farmers and others the opportunity to sequester carbon, we do not have adverse impacts in several areas, those areas being the proposed criteria for exclusion.

Four criteria were previously identified. Four is, I know, a number that is important to you at present, Senator Feeney. There are four criteria identified—water, biodiversity, employment and local community. The Senate is agreeing to add a fifth criterion—I do not think there are five spots on the Labor Party's Victorian Senate ticket, Senator Feeney, but, if they wanted a fifth, maybe you would be in the running. We want to add a fifth criterion of land access for agricultural production. The Senate has agreed to do that, but regrettably the minister stood in this place and brushed aside the significance of this. He has described it as little more than a clarification. We do not think preserving land access for agricultural production is a clarification. We think it is important. We think it is sound policy and we think it is vital that we preserve that in this country. That is why we think these regulations need to reflect the letter, the spirit and the intent of the amendment being proposed. I indicated before that I accept we were not going to get any greater clarification from Senator Ludwig. He had made his attitude clear on this. He did not think this was a meaningful amendment. I am not particularly hopeful that we are about to get any great response or contribution from the bouncing Senator Feeney in this regard.

What I do hope is that, when we pass this amendment shortly, the minister for climate change takes it seriously, and the government as a whole take it seriously. When they engage with stakeholders in analysing the regulations I hope they accept that this is a key principle, which is worth pursuing and worth us being genuine in our approach to. That is what I hope and that is what I urge the government to do. I hope that the government, in finalising this so-called negative list of projects that will not be permitted or accredited under the scheme, actually take into account the issues of land access for agricultural production and are mindful of ensuring that our best farming land remains available for farming purposes.

Farmers can grab hold of whatever opportunity they can to increase the carbon content of their soils, because that is a good thing, but we do not want any other negative outcomes that would see any of those farming lands taken out of agricultural production. That is what we think is at the core of this amendment. That is what we think is so vital in terms of the government honouring the letter, spirit and intent of this amendment. That is why we are so disappointed on initial analysis with the regulations, which have been drafted seemingly with no consideration of this amendment despite the fact that the government has known for a couple of months at least that it was going to accept and adopt this amendment.

If Senator Ludwig and Senator Feeney will not do it, I urge Mr Combet and those who will ultimately be responsible for the finalisation of the regulations that will be brought to this place to ensure that, when those regulations come here, we do not have to have this debate again; to ensure that you actually get it right, that you heed the concerns of the stakeholders and that, when we put the new subclause (e) into clause 56, it is a component that is considered with equal weighting to the other four components and that it is considered alongside them all. That is what we think would happen in a well-managed scheme, in a good scheme, rather than the type of shambolic approach that the government takes to the implementation of its environmental programs, which we have seen time and time again. I can but ask that Senator Feeney and the officials make sure that we honour this amendment fully. It is not as Senator Ludwig described it 'simply an add-on, simply a clarification' but something meaningful and gives meaningful security of land access for agricultural production into the future.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is unfortunate that I had to leave the chamber and I was not privy to any comments that Senator Ludwig may have made in response to the questions I asked in my last contribution on the draft regulations provided to the chamber yesterday morning. I have to say that, for me, this is a really serious issue and I tried to stress that in my previous contribution. This actually introduces something into the legislative process that has not existed before. To demonstrate that we were serious about this we expressed our concerns in our report in response to the legislation. We said at that time that the lists are also a potential trojan horse in the introduction of measures that are not current common practice but are the subject of much community debate and would be best resolved outside this process.

Now we have them being inserted into the regulations. I accept that they were part of the draft negative list. It is much more defined in here now, but I am seriously concerned about the way it was defined. As I said before, I do not see how you can, in a blanket way, say that for a 100-millimetre or greater than 1,000 millimetres rainfall range you have to have a set high-value water entitlement. I just cannot fathom why, for a 600 to 700 millimetre long-term average rainfall, you have to have a 0.9 megalitre water offset licence per hectare per year for the life of the project. I just cannot work that out. It depends on where you are and what you are planting, and that will vary.

It is just like a number of other measures that are included in this bill. We talked about those in the dissenting report—for example, the risk of reversal buffer. The government has put a set five per cent risk of reversal buffer into this legislation and that would be best placed in the individual plan for each of the projects. We know that the risks of reversal vary according to the different forms of sequestration being proposed. Some are higher security than others. Some are much lower. Yet we have a fixed five per cent risk of reversal buffer proposed in the legislation. The same concept is being applied here. It is no different to what the government has done when the Prime Minister has said that no prices should go up by more than one per cent under the carbon tax. She has taken a piece of modelling and tried to apply that across the board. It just does not work. It is simplistic and you cannot apply it that way.

I spoke to a small regional airline a few weeks ago. They said that 30 per cent of their overhead cost is aviation fuel. On the government's own modelling, that is going up by 10 per cent. What does that mean? In simple maths it means a three per cent increase in their prices. They have no option. That is before they apply any of the other costs that they might have—the electricity costs to run their hangars and their servicing business and all that sort of stuff. Their prices will go up by three per cent just from the cost of aviation fuel, which is not exempted under the proposed carbon tax, and so you have the government saying, 'We are going to give extra money to the ACCC and we are going to send the ACCC after anyone who says they are putting their prices up by more than one per cent.'

What do we tell all the small regional airlines around Australia whose overhead costs of operation are 30 per cent aviation fuel? It is not going to vary broadly. It is going to be pretty consistent across those small businesses and 30 per cent of their overhead cost is aviation fuel. It is going up by 10 per cent, a three per cent increase in cost to business. Do we say to them, 'The ACCC is going to come and see you; you cannot put your prices up by more than one per cent because the Prime Minister said so'? Her modelling reckons it should go up by less than one per cent. She told the people on King Island that it is 7c in $100. That is what she is applying, yet King Island gets the triple whammy. Their airfares are going up by at least three per cent. The only way to get on and off the island is by air. Shipping is not exempt. That is all going to go up, and we all know that it costs more to get things to those islands because you have to ship it all in by sea or by air. Of course, they already pay more for energy because that is the way it is in those places, unfortunately. There is no equalisation provided to them by the state, so their already higher power prices will go up by 10 per cent. We know that—the local power authority said so.

So here we have this process of taking an average and applying it across everything. It just does not work. It is not practical. So how can you say that, if you are in an area that has a 900 to 1,000 millimetre long-term average rainfall, you need a 1.8 megalitre water offset entitlement per hectare per year for the life of the project? How does that work? Surely the best way to deal with that is to say, 'When you submit your plan for your project, we need you to consider what the water use might be and then, in that plan, tell us what you are saying it is and provide us with the information to back it up.' I cannot see me recommending support in my party room for these regulations the way that they are written at the moment. Why would you? As the coalition stated in its dissenting report, here we have Trojan horses. I have said a number of times this concept has not been seen in the legislative process in Australia before. It is probably there at the insistence of the Greens, prepared to give the Labor Party the benefit of the doubt on that. I notice the Greens have vacated the field.

I do not think those sorts of general­isations fairly apply. I acknowledge and accept that there are people concerned about the water use of tree plantings. As I said earlier, things like MIS have exacerbated those, but I also know, having read some of the science, that the water uptake varies considerably over the life cycle of the plantings and it varies considerably depend­ing on the type of planting—eucalypt to pine, saltbush, all those sorts of things. They all vary where they are in the catchment. You cannot make some blanket application across the board. If you want to deal with the issue, that is fine, but deal with it in a project based sequence, just in the same way that the coalition said we should do it in relation to the risk of reversal.

We said at the outset that we support the concept of storage of carbon in the landscape. As we have been reminded a number of times during this debate, it is our policy to do that. But, as has been indicated right through the process and in evidence that we heard in the Senate inquiry, this legislation has a whole heap of barriers in it affecting what the government says it wants to do.

I come back to the point that I made in my first contribution this morning. The government says that it wants to protect agricultural land through this amendment, yet what it has done in Tasmania threatens 100,000 hectares of agricultural land—10 per cent of it—because it is pushing the forest out and the only place to situate the plantations that the NGOs, the government and the Greens say that the industry is going to transition to is onto agricultural land. There is no other place to go. We do not want to convert any more native forest to plantation. The conversion of native forest to plantation is one of the issues that underlies the negotiations that are happening in Tasmania right now. Why do we continue to apply those mistakes when we should have learned from them? The Prime Minister should have learned that she cannot go round telling people that prices will not go up by more than one per cent and she will send the ACCC round to tap on somebody's shoulder if that occurs. She just cannot do that. I have given one example. I can give you another one. I went to a powder-coating factory not far from where I operate. They run with gas and they run with electricity. They have done their calculations based on the fact that electricity is going up by 10 per cent and gas by nine per cent. What did they say to me when I asked them how much their prices would have to go up by? They said three per cent; that is their calculation. Are they going to have the ACCC pay them a visit, tap them on the shoulder and go through their books, wasting the time of the business in an investigation because the Prime Minister wants to use the ACCC as a political tool to help her sell her carbon tax? I do not think that that is reasonable or fair. That should not be part of the process.

I repeat that the coalition supports the concept of storing carbon in our landscape. We put up a number of suggestions as part of our report. But the government, being wagged along by the Greens tail, does not want to do any of that. We have this absurd table about how you have to have a high-security water licence, based on rainfall, to plant trees. It does not stack up. As I indicated in our report, tabled earlier in the year, it is a new concept and something that still remains contentious in the community. And yet it has been inserted—slipped—into some regulations, with some very basic principles, just averages, being applied to it.

If you do a calculation or a bit of modelling, then for 600 millimetres to 700 millimetres of rainfall you need a water entitlement of 0.9 megalitres per hectare per year. For 700 millimetres to 800 millimetres, you need 1.2 megalitres of water offset entitlement per hectare per year for the life of the project. And we know that that varies. For 800 millimetres to 900 millimetres of long-term average rainfall, you need 1.5 megalitres of water offset entitlement per hectare per year for the life of the project. For greater than 1,000 millimetres, you need 2.1 megalitres of high-security water entitlement per hectare per year for the life of the project. CSIRO might have come with those averages. They have just plonked them in, but the best way to deal with this is on the basis of saying that this is a measure that needs to be dealt with as part of any individual plan. People should put it in their plans and then have that assessed as part of the approval process for the plan. That makes sense—just like the risk-of-reversal buffer. Those things can be managed.

The government wonders why we do not support the legislation. There are two really good reasons: one, it is very difficult for us to support the regulations in the form that they are in and, two, you are not prepared to consider any of the sensible suggestions that we have made as part of this process. You are more than happy to take on what the Greens tell you you have to but you will not constructively engage with the opposition.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will briefly respond. The casual observer of this debate would be forgiven for not being able to recognise the fact that we have now spent the best part of three hours considering a government amendment that is agreed to by the opposition. The reality is that we are witnessing here a manful attempt by those opposite to filibuster this debate. Let me tell you for free, Senator Colbeck, that on filibustering points you are the winner. Your speech gave the greatest impression that you were trying to talk about the subject. You were not, of course, but to the casual observer your speech would have given the most effective appearance of at least trying.

Senator Colbeck, on the 30 seconds of content that appeared in your remarks and your questions in terms of long-term rainfall and those tables—while not relevant to the debate at hand—this is a matter that was obviously part of the consultation paper, the feedback process and the draft regulations. You know all of that. You have asked those questions and got those answers previously. While not relevant to the debate at hand, I will also make the comment that it is an issue that you have already taken up with the government and I am sure that you will continue to do so.

In terms of King Island and your forensic remarks about it, I look forward to the day when you go to King Island and explain how your direct action policy imposes a direct cost of $1,300 per household upon each of them. I will also watch with great interest how you explain to them how your $70 billion worth of budget cuts will impact on them and their community.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is not helping your cause.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Birmingham, I always welcome your advice. Our policy is that carbon emissions will be cut by five per cent on 2000 levels by 2020, a total of 160 million tonnes of carbon. Senator Joyce, you will note that a weight is ascribed to carbon emission abatement. The fascinating thing about this debate is that your policy is exactly the same. You too seek to reduce carbon emissions by that much by 2020; you too seek to abate some 160 million tonnes of carbon. I am always fascinated to see the threads of climate change scepticism weave their way through your speeches because you are trying to hide your fundamental dishonesty in this debate. On paper, you too are committed to combating climate change. You too are committed to reaching a realistic target by 2020. But in reality you are not. For you, this entire debate is about appealing to the sceptics and the science deniers and hiding from public view your own policy. I hope that you fail in that endeavour. To the extent that any of the previous speeches offered any questions—and they barely did—I think that I have adequately responded.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is important to talk about an issue that pertains to prime agricultural land. I recognise that there is support on this issue, but the National Party went in to bat for the particular issue of the protection of prime agricultural land. Prime agricultural land, as you well know, is vitally important for our capacity as a nation to feed ourselves. On the hierarchy of needs, it is at the very top. Prime agricultural land is more important than mining, because we as a nation have a duty to feed not only our people but others throughout the world, especially as the global food task—which my good friend and colleague Senator Heffernan is always talking about—increases as population increases. We have to make sure that we have the capacity to utilise our prime agricultural land. When talking about prime agricultural land, which this amendment discusses, I think it is important to state that some misconceptions have been put out there, none better than a statement by the minister in Queensland, Ms Nolan, who has stated that farmers never had any rights over their land. That is totally and utterly factually incorrect. Certainly, the Crown had the right of prospecting on your land and, right back to Magna Carta, had the rights to gold and silver on your land. But it did not have the rights to the coal, oil or petroleum on your land as far as mining went. Those rights were taken over in Queensland in the 1915 act for petroleum and gas, for security of those rights in World War I. It is almost 100 years ago, but certainly not hundreds of years ago, and it is certainly not something that was there in perpetuity. In Victoria, as I am sure Senator Feeney is aware, it was the threat of World War II that led to security for that asset—they started pilfering it off the farmers at that point in time. Then, going all the way through to 1981, it was at that point in time that the adroit Neville Wran managed to pilfer the rest of the farmers' rights. So it is factually incorrect to say that the farmers did not actually have a property right. They did, but it was taken from them.

It is because they lack property rights that we now see the immense discrepancies and the absurdity that farmers get less than 0.75c for every $1,000 the mining company earns. I do not think that is a reflection of a fair bargaining position. I am certain that Senator Feeney and others on the other side have a clear understanding of how bargaining positions go for workers—when you are getting a fair deal and when you are not—and I imagine that there may therefore be some sympathy from over there for the fact that the farmers are not getting a fair deal.

Also, regarding the carbon sink legislation, if we lose our prime agricultural land to forests rather than mining it, is not going to be much use to us unless we intend to evolve to a higher form of termite! The idea that we will all somehow live happily ever after in an economic upland with forests kept in perpetuity rather than ones you can cut down is wrong. It will send the towns and their economies into privation. At the same time we will have absconded from our moral duty to feed other people. That is a duty we have. One might recognise that the rice industry in Australia has the capacity to feed up to 60 million people. That is quite substantial. It seems peculiar that in some of our legislation we might want to shut it down. Do we think it is not morally correct to feed people? Do we think there is something that presupposes that having scrub is more morally right than feeding people who are hungry? I think that the highest duty you have is to feed your people. I am sure my colleague Senator Brandis will agree with me on that one. No doubt he has come in here because he thinks I am an extremely loquacious speaker—

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think you are an extremely eloquent speaker, Senator Joyce, and an adornment to the Senate.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. I have always thought so myself!

So on this issue the National Party does have an extremely strong interest. It was one of those times where the National Party crossed the floor—the lot of us, on carbon sink legislation.

Now there is an interesting thing we should talk about. We have the carbon tax legislation coming up. One of the greatest rights you have in this place as a represent­ative of the people, first and foremost—there is no mention of a political party in the Constitution; it is your representation of the people—is that if you believe something to be truly right you can vote on that accordingly. You have the right to walk from one section to another in this chamber and in the other place. It is a fundamental right that you should have. I believe strongly that, behind the rhetoric, there are people in the Australian Labor Party and maybe the Greens—or maybe not—who fundamentally do not believe in a carbon tax. It is wrong that in the year of our Lord 2011 we still have this kind of medieval approach of bullying people so that on key issues they cannot exercise their vote in the way they see fit. And this is a key issue; it is a big one. No-one can arrest you or assault you because of it. But it is wrong. We talk about the modern position with the internet the way it is and we talk about all the other liberties that people want and their view on them. We are allowed to discuss same-sex marriage but we are not allowed to discuss the liberty of being able to vote the way you want to on an issue. But you should be able to do that.

It is absurd that some person you have never in your life met and who was never elected to office can instigate a process of extracting you from this parliament by disendorsement or basically bullying you out of the joint. That is wrong. It should not be happening these days, and I think the Australian people are more and more becoming a wake-up to this. They will watch the carbon tax debate evolve and they will be asking their local representative to represent them first and foremost above and beyond allegiances to any other body. That is their right; it is what they should be entitled to do. Every person will be answerable for the way they vote, because it takes only one vote in the other place to stop the carbon tax. So any one of the people in the lower house actually has the balance of power. They have the capacity to make a major change for our nation. All they have to do is move the 10 feet or 10 metres from one side to the other. The right to take that walk should be absolutely ingrained. It should be your fundamental right.

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

Senator Joyce, I think I have been fairly tolerant, but I do remind you of the question before the chair, which is an amendment to the legislation.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think I should reflect on your tolerance. You have been a very tolerant person. I understand.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You need to spend more time with him!

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We need to get to know one another better! But it is very important that on prime agricultural land we reflect the intention of what that is about. It is not all the land in Australia; it is merely a footprint of maybe three to four per cent of our nation. That leaves you 96 per cent to knock yourself out with. That prime agricultural land should be protected and the rights of the farmer should be protected. The capacity of Australia to feed itself and feed others is a moral obligation we hold. If we destroy primary agricultural land you cannot get it back in the future. God has not been around for the last couple of weeks. Whatever is there is all you are going to get, forever. There is no more. That is as good as it is going to get. Anyway, I think we should be considering that.

Progress reported.