Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have a question for you, Minister. I note that I've previously asked the CSIRO in estimates why phytoplankton isn't counted as part of CO2 offsets.

The reply from the CSIRO was, 'Well, that's not a land based CO2 use.' I'll refer to an article from 16 September 2021 on the ABC. It noted that there was a phytoplankton bloom in the Southern Ocean after the recent bushfires. That makes me think that this whole bill is totally redundant. We're going to set up a whole new regulatory system or environment in order to store carbon dioxide in the ocean, or however you're going to do it, rather than actually use Mother Nature itself.

My question to you is: why don't you use the natural levers in the environment that we already have? This lever is well known; phytoplankton absorb 70 per cent of the world's CO2. A lot of that CO2 is created on land, then blown off to sea above the atmosphere and then sinks into the ocean as it cools overnight. Could you please explain to me the whole point of this when we already have Mother Nature doing this job without any cost, red tape or green tape and so on?