Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I will take up that interjection. Now we know what backbenchers from the Labor Party actually think. They think it is cheap populism to talk about Latrobe Valley power workers' jobs. Well, congratulations to the backbenchers of the Labor Party. That is what they now think about the workers of our nation. Congratulations! It is no wonder the Labor Party cannot hold a seat east of Melbourne if that is what they think of the workers these days. You should be embarrassed.

There are 500 years worth of brown coal. It is a reliable natural resource. It provides a cheap form of energy, and our challenge is to use it in the most environmentally friendly way possible. There have been some remarkable efforts over the past decade by companies that are exploring ways to reduce the moisture content and export brown coal. There is a well-advanced proposal to use the carbon dioxide emissions to grow algae for several environmentally friendly products, and I understand there have been some great breakthroughs with a particular project in the Townsville area. Carbon geosequestration remains, I admit, something of a holy grail for the coal-fired power stations, and it is doubtful whether it will proceed on an industrial scale in the foreseeable future, but the research and development is needed in this particular space.

The point I am trying to make is that over the past six or seven decades working families—who the Labor Party used to speak so much about—in the Latrobe Valley have made an enormous contribution to the Australian nation, and they will continue to do so if they are supported in the future. They should not be vilified in this place. The government should not be using terms like 'dirty coal-fired power stations' and 'the 1,000 biggest polluters'. It should start acknowledging some of the positive achievements of these families working in my region. The Nationals do support a range of policies that provide for direct action to meet the agreed emissions reduction target of five per cent by 2020, but our policy is to avoid the punitive nature of the carbon tax and provide incentives for these companies to invest in technology and new systems to reduce their emissions. Some very successful trial projects have already been undertaken in the Latrobe Valley region with funding from both the former Labor state government and the coalition government at a federal level.

We do support direct and practical environmental action that achieves a positive outcome, makes sense in terms of improved productivity and builds a bridge with the sections of the community who have some reasonable doubts about some of the more extreme forecasts. I believe that is the real opportunity for us in building community consensus about the need to undertake practical environmental works.

This government has a long list of failures when it comes to its so-called green programs. There was the home insulation disaster in which four people tragically lost their lives. We had the abandoned cash-for-clunkers policy and the green loans and home assessors programs. The wasteful and reckless policy we have seen from this government is probably the worst in living memory, and now the government expects us to trust it with this important piece of legislation—the same government that could not deliver any of these programs just mentioned, the same government that cut $11 million out of the forward budget estimates for Landcare.

So we have a government that will cut money out of Landcare but is still able to find money for a climate change advertising campaign. Given a choice between propaganda and propagation, this government will always go for self-promotion and the propaganda campaign. I do not believe that the community trusts this government to be able to deliver any program, particularly something as complex as this carbon farming initiative. Like other speakers on this side of the House I will reserve my judgment until we see the full details of this bill, but I am not convinced that this government understands the risky nature of the path it wants to lead Australian farmers down. At a time when food security should be the focus of national attention, we run the risk of introducing a scheme that will see prime agricultural land turned into forests on the back of government incentives. Any schemes that distort land use decisions and result in large tracts of prime agricultural land being turned into plantations are a huge risk for the future of rural and regional Australia. Our prime agricultural land must be protected from this type of government interference. I congratulate the many members on this side of the House who expressed similar sentiments. I am not against tree planting or reforestation projects in the appropriate places, such as on the more marginal land in our nation, but that has not been the experience of many rural and regional communities over recent years. I fear that this government does not properly understand the needs of regional communities. Simply saying 'trust us' will not wash with farming families.

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