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

It is similar to MISs. To be honest, MISs have been a big problem in many areas. I can understand that there are arguments, and I will not disagree with the Greens on this, of the worth of MISs maybe in Tasmania, but in other areas they have been a huge problem. They are an unnecessary influence once more of the hand of government coming in and prescribing winners and losers and creating differentiation and opportunity by reason of a fence line—and that is strange. If people want to go to undeveloped areas in undeveloped markets, then maybe you have an arguable case. But to go to an area which is developed and has a developed market, and the effect of your legislation is to swamp the market with a product, then that just works against all the other people who have made sacrifices to be in that market. That is a kind of badness, but at least they are generally producing something that has an employment outcome or a food outcome. So it is the lesser of two evils because at least you have a food outcome or an employment outcome or some form of production coming off that land. What carbon sink legislation does is just throw the whole lot out the window. What you are left with is towns in the form of Hansel and Gretel destitution: the house in the middle of the forest is apparently the desired outcome. That is entirely unfair for the people who live in the area.

So today we will once more stand to repeal section 40J of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. That is the capacity for upfront tax deduction and the tax deductibility status of carbon sink forests. There are other amendments proposed by the Greens; with due respect, we will not be supporting those. But we are making a clear statement that will spell out once more to the Australian public that this is an issue that we brought up at the start and that we have been consistent about. We have voted in a consistent way and we will vote in a consistent way today. I acknowledge also the sacrifice that Senator Nash has made because of her stand on this. For the future it is on the record once we have dealt with this today and the Australian people will know where we stand. Every time this issue comes up we are not going to vote in this way because it then becomes a wedge and it is used as a wedge mechanism. By doing this today we are clearly saying to the Australian people and to this chamber: we must once more readdress this carbon sink issue. We are pleading for a more pragmatic and practical approach to this: go into it, find a definition of prime agricultural land, excise prime agricultural land so it is not covered by this and then you will solve so many problems. Once we have that definition of prime agricultural land then, yes, there are other areas in agriculture that could be utilised.

In the history of land tenure in such places such as New South Wales, once an area had been cultivated mining was proscribed. Provisions such as these, over a period of time, have been whittled away and whittled away, but we have a responsibility, as one of the great food-producing nations of this lonely planet, to produce food to feed people. We have a responsibility to make sure that those people who make the sacrifice to produce the food are looked after. We have a responsibility to promote that production of food as something that is morally good, just and right. The efforts of this chamber should be to engender a sense of support for the people who produce the food that feeds the planet.

But when we come up with legislation like this we might hear someone who is probably doing it extremely tough in a regional area saying: ‘I get up every morning and I work with my hands to fix the tractor—to put new pistons in it—and to feed the stock. I live on the barest minimum of a margin. My family’—it is the case in many instances—‘live at the lower end of the social spectrum because of the effort they put in.’ Instead of saying: ‘We know the sacrifice you make. What you are doing is incredibly just and good and should be promoted and we will stand by you because of that,’ we say to them: ‘We will give an upfront tax deduction to the person who does nothing but plants trees in the paddock next door so that that area can grow wild and be infested with pigs. We put more worth on that forest—that scrub or, in many cases, that mess—than we do on your getting out of bed in the morning and trying to achieve a just outcome by feeding Australia and the world.’ We make that statement when we put up pieces of legislation like this.

It is our job in the National Party to say, ‘No, that is not the metaphor that we will sell to the Australian people.’ We are saying that it is more just and proper to give a tax deduction to the person who feeds people—who puts food on the Australian table—than to have an arbitrary, uninspired tax deduction that has come out of the workshop of some inner-city accountants and found its way onto our nation’s books as legislation. That is not what this country is about. That is why the National Party today says: ‘No, we will reinvest in this message. We will sell it back to the Australian people. We will say, “For goodness sake, this is ridiculous.”’ As I said at the start, unless you believe that the Australian people will develop into a higher form of termite then you have nothing in this legislation but a problem for them.

It is unusual that the National Party and the Greens are as one on an issue but today is the day that I concur with their remarks. It just goes to show, also, the dynamism of this chamber and that this chamber has the capacity, on issues, to reflect the intent of those people who sent us here. It shows that this chamber has the capacity to make sure that those people who sent us here are supported through the way we vote. At a later stage, in the Committee of the Whole, I will commend this amendment and I will call on the government to see sense, to promote justice and not to stand by a proposition that a tax deduction for an urban constituent who will never actually see the farm is more just and worthwhile than supporting a person who works on the barest minimum margin and puts their family and their life in an area where they at an inherent financial disadvantage. We would be adding insult to injury to say, ‘Not only do we believe that you can live almost in poverty and destitution because your margins are so tight—you are being squeezed out by the margins of the major retailers and other such people who stand over you—but we believe that the government should be standing over you and rubbing your nose in it.’ The government will be saying, ‘If you did nothing but planted trees and wandered away, that would be an inherently better outcome than your producing food and feeding people.’