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

I just want to talk about the integrity of the scheme, because this issue goes to the integrity of whether or not the offset that is created is a genuine offset and additional to what would have occurred otherwise. The reason for that is that, when these offset credits are created, they will be sold in a voluntary market or a compliance market if they qualify for that, and they will offset a tonne of pollution that is coming from an industrial project, for example. So you have to be sure that, as you have that additional tonne of emissions going to atmosphere, you actually have this additional tonne in the landscape. Otherwise you are actually cheating the climate and cheating the atmosphere, because you are doing what you always do in the landscape sector while the emissions are going up there, so you do not actually have a genuine level of reduction—of additionality.

I totally agree that we need to be encouraging environmentally and socially beneficial projects—that is without doubt—but it has to be additional to business as usual. Of course there are going to be people who are doing the right thing now who think: 'If I'd been doing the wrong thing, I could actually change my practices and benefit. I'm actually a good land practitioner and I'm doing the right thing, and I won't benefit from this.' That is going to be the case, because the people doing the right thing will not be able to claim additionality. I totally agree that that is the position here. It is equally going to be the position, for example, for people who have protected native vegetation on their land and put a covenant on it because they wanted to; they thought it was the right thing to do. They will not be able to create a carbon permit for that, because it is not additional to what was already happening at the time. So that is one of the things that I have thought about a lot; I have thought about how you can address that in other ways. Needless to say, that is something that I can assure you I am aware of and have thought about, but the main thing here is that it has to be additional.

The second thing I would say in relation to environmentally and socially beneficial projects is that one of the things I have been really worried about and have spoken to the government at length about is the fact that I have zero confidence in local government regulations in terms of appropriate land use planning, because I have never seen any local government—I should not say 'any', because maybe there are some; I am not familiar with many—that actually has rigour in land use planning, and I have come across that many times. So my issue was to make sure that NRM groups are supported and that NRM plans meet a basic level of criteria so there is consistency across the country in terms of NRM. That is why I am really pleased that in the legislation now you have a very clear undertaking that there will be consultation with natural resource management groups and with NRM plans, in addition to local and state government regulations, so that people right down to the catchment level will be able to have a say in whether or not a project that is being proposed, whatever it might be, is consistent with their NRM plans. That is one way of overcoming the problem that we have identified previously of farming land being displaced by other activities. We do not want that to happen; we want to have agricultural land protected.

So, Senator Xenophon, I appreciate the intent of this to recognise good socially and environmentally beneficial projects, but I do not want to compromise the integrity of the accounting to make sure that we get genuine additional abatement being delivered through this legislation.