Senate debates

Thursday, 18 August 2011

Bills

Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill 2011, Carbon Credits (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2011, Australian National Registry of Emissions Units Bill 2011; In Committee

1:05 pm

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

It is good to be back here again on the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill 2011 and back on this amendment. The debate on this amendment was hopefully drawing to a close before we concluded our time for govern­ment business yesterday. I indicated at that time that the coalition think that this is a very important amendment and we are extremely concerned that the comments of the govern­ment senators suggest that they do not take this amendment as seriously as they should. While it is an amendment being moved by the government, it was an issue championed by the coalition. It was an amendment initially put on the list of amendments by the coalition and we welcome the fact that the government chose to embrace it, that it accepted there are genuine stakeholders interested in this amendment. The farming community and the National Farmers Federation in particular have been advo­cating for it. But what concerns us is that the government appears to treat the substance of this amendment with disregard. The minister came in here on Tuesday and tabled draft regulations that flow from clause 56 of the bill that this amendment is seeking to add an extra paragraph to. He tabled those regula­tions, which create what is known in the carbon farming bill, colloquially at least, as the 'negative list'—the list of the kinds of projects that are not allowed. And those projects are not allowed for fear of there being adverse consequences as a result of those projects going ahead. There are four different criteria in the existing bill for those adverse consequences as a result of those projects going ahead. Those criteria deal with matters such as access to water, biodiversity considerations, employment considerations and the impact on the local community. And those four criteria are very valid considerations indeed.

We sought, because stakeholders had a concern, to add a fifth criterion—that fifth criterion being this amendment to add the consideration of any adverse impacts on land access for agricultural production. We sought to do that to ensure that there was some certainty of the matter with regard to how this bill would operate and to make sure that it would not see a loss of prime agri­cultural land in Australia from agricultural production. We think that, as a major food producing nation, that is absolutely critical. We think that, as a country that has both an opportunity and a responsibility to grow our food production in the future, that is absolutely critical. And we think that, in terms of the original four criteria for potential adverse consequences, this fifth criterion is equal to if not more important than the other four. So I was concerned when the minister indicated that he could not point to anything in the draft regulations—

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