ADJOURNMENT

Senator BROCKMAN (Western Australia—Deputy President and Chair of Committees) (19:47): Betrayal—betrayal is what we have seen in regional Australia from this Labor government. Many, many Australians would now have heard about the situation—the case of Rushy Lagoon, where a property was sold to a foreign buyer. That in itself is not a problem; many Australian agricultural properties have been invested in by foreign purchasers.

However, when you add to that the fact that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation has underwritten the purchase by a foreign investor of Australian agricultural land, when you add to that that another government grant has been accessed by that foreign investor, when you add to that that Australian carbon credits are the underlying business model of that foreign investor and when you underlie that with the fact that the regulator of Australian carbon credits is the Australian government, you have a very, very murky story indeed.

Why are farmers, not just in Tasmania but right around Australia, so dreadfully worried about this betrayal by the Labor government? It is because they are being outbid, by up to 30 per cent, by these purchasers that are using government money based on carbon credit prices that are regulated by the government and outbidding them on land that should be producing the food and fibre that Australia and the world needs.

That is why this is a betrayal. That is why this is a murky story, the bottom of which we have not yet reached. And this is not an isolated case.

In my home state of Western Australia there are something like 225 projects, underwritten by carbon credits, that are taking productive farmland out of production. Some of these will be marginal land; I accept that. Some of these will be taking marginal farmland out of production, but I know for a fact that many of them are not.

I know for a fact that many of them are in high rainfall areas of Western Australia. They are highly productive land, such as Rushy Lagoon, a property that in the recent past ran 8½ thousand head of cattle and 22,000 head of sheep. That is not a small production unit; that is a significant agricultural producer—a significant producer of red meat and fibre, not just for Australia but for the world.

I ask you now: Can anyone eat a carbon credit? Can anyone dress themselves in a carbon credit? I think we all know the answer to that.

And that is why this very murky and very negative arrangement, where you have a foreign company with a business model based on carbon credits that is using Australian government money and is outbidding Australian farmers for Australian land by 30 per cent, is a disgrace. It is a betrayal of the Australian farming industry and it should not be allowed to stand.