Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this debate very much on the basis of being a farmer living in the central west in New South Wales. There are some real concerns with the legislation that the government is putting forward before us here today: the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill 2011, the Carbon Credits (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2011 and the Australian National Registry of Emissions Units Bill 2011. There certainly was a process of Senate inquiry, and it became very clear through that process that there was a significant lack of detail that was put forward not only for us to consider through the inquiry but for the broader community out there, particularly those in agricultural areas who stand to be the most affected.

On this side of the chamber, we are very supportive of carbon farming. There is no doubt that all that we can do to improve our soils should be done. As a farmer, I probably know as well as all the other farmers out there that, if you do not look after the land, the land will not look after you; it is as simple as that. So obviously anything we can do to improve our farming practices and ensure that we have sustainability of land into the future is something that farmers are very concerned with and certainly have a very strong approach to doing.

However, the lack of detail in this bill makes it impossible to support—apart from a whole range of other areas. Even if you agreed completely with the intent of every­thing the government is putting forward here, the lack of detail would preclude anyone from being able to support this bill. It is in a whole range of areas, and I will just run through some of those this evening.

The first and most glaringly obvious is the fact that the Carbon Farming Initiative is going to work entirely differently under a carbon tax or an ETS from how it is going to work under a voluntary market. There were a lot of submissions and certainly a lot of concern out in the community that the government should wait until there is certainty around whether or not there is going to be a carbon tax—as the government says, leading to an emissions trading scheme—before it actually moves to introduce this legislation. I note that the New South Wales Farmers Association were particularly strong in their view about this and, indeed, said in one of their media releases, dated 25 May—quoting Mr Brand, their CEO:

"Until we know the details of how those proposed schemes would work, debate on the Carbon Farming Initiative should be deferred,"

I think he was quite right. I think that, to understand properly how this piece of legislation is going to work, we do need to know whether or not there is going to be a carbon tax or an ETS in place or whether it will be operating under a voluntary market. It is an incredibly complex piece of legis­lation that is missing an enormous amount of detail.

One of the very worrying concerns is the fact that much of the detail is going to be in the regulations that accompany this legislation. We are not going to see those regulations until we have been asked to determine our position and to vote on this piece of legislation. I do not think that is good enough for this chamber, I do not think it is good enough for the parliament and I do not think it is good enough for the Australian people, because in essence what the govern­ment is doing is saying, 'Just trust us, because we'll get it right later on in the regs.' That is certainly not good enough for the coalition and certainly not good enough for me, because the government is asking us to fly blind and just blindly agree that this piece of legislation will work as it says it will, by and large, without any supporting factual evidence through those regulations. So we should not be considering this legislation until the government has before us the regulations that are going to accompany it. One of the issues is the 'common practice' definition. There are a lot of terms in this piece of legislation that are quite compli­cated but, by and large, the common practice definition with regard to abatement through soil sequestration is that if it is something that is not common practice then it is going to be included. Quite frankly, there was not much more detail than that. I think that before people out there make up their minds on this piece of legislation and, indeed, before those of us here in the Senate actually have to vote on it, we should all have in front of us what that common practice definition is going to be. If I can take you to the Hansard of the inquiry by Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee into this bill, I said to the department officials on 20 April:

… I note that you said at the outset there are no methodologies yet for the soil carbon sequestration. What are you currently defining as common practice within the soil carbon sequestration field that will be excluded?

Ms Thompson, who answered, said:

That is a very good question. I think that is one of the things we will need to look quite hard at when we are preparing the positive list for soil.

That was on 20 April, a matter of only weeks ago. The common practice definition is pivotal to how this piece of legislation is going to deliver what it is intending to do, yet we had the department telling us just a few weeks ago that they were going to need to 'look quite hard' at it. That is just simply not good enough.