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

The capture of gas from landfill is certainly a critically important component of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions. Turning it into energy generation is very good for society and greenhouse gas emissions. Whilst we will always aim to reduce landfill, it will be a while before we get to the point where we have zero waste, so we need to support companies that are actually out there doing this. A number of them actually got in and started to do it early before there was any compulsion to do so. However, in recent years, particularly in metro management of waste there have, increasingly, been local and state government regulations requiring the capture of gas from landfill. In terms of this bill, the question then becomes: how can you measure that which is additional, recognising that there is already regulation in metro Australia and that, in most of rural and regional Australia, there is no regulation?

However, I am very concerned that the companies concerned had not engaged in this debate in terms of the parliament working out how we might deal with this under the Carbon Farming Initiative. In talking to LMS they said, in particular, that they had been engaged in discussions with the government over a long period and had hoped it would resolve the matter and that is why they had not brought it into a political context. As it has been brought into a political context, I want to thank the minister and the depart­ment for facilitating a meeting for me yesterday with both the company and the technical experts from the department so that we could sit down and work out how we can move this forward. I am sure that no-one in this parliament would want to see companies that are actively engaged in reducing carbon emissions, employing people and doing the right thing actually go broke as a result of this program. No-one in this parliament would think that was a sensible thing.

Yesterday we had a meeting. It came down to a discussion about the technicalities of what the baseline should be for measuring this as the entitlements would occur under the legislation. I have been told that those discussions were fruitful and that there has been some resolution. So, before I make a decision about what we are doing on this matter, I want to hear what actually happen­ed overnight in those technical discussions. It would be good to see this matter resolved in a positive way with regard to the environ­mental impacts, the jobs in those industries and to actually get advancement for this whole issue of management of the land waste sector in Australia.