QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS

Senator HANSON (Queensland—Leader of One Nation) (15:33): I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for the Environment and Water (Senator Watt) and the Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science (Senator Ayres) to a question without notice I asked today relating to Rushy Lagoon. Once again Labor continues to treat Australians like mushrooms as part of its obscene net zero obsession.

Labor has opened another front in its war on Australian agriculture and food security. The deal over Rushy Lagoon stinks all the way from Tasmania to Canberra. This is Tasmania's largest farm, with almost 22,000 hectares and more than 12½ thousand megalitres of water entitlements.

It's been up for sale since 2018. It had an estimated value of around $75 million. Bids over the years were around $70 to $75 million.

This dirty deal has effectively lifted the value of the purchase to $142 million, about twice as much. Local buyers, Australian buyers, were priced out of the property, and it was sold to a United Kingdom based investment vehicle. Taxpayers have been forced by Labor to fund a $69 million equity investment through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which is a government department, bidding against Australians and financing the buying of land as part of this deal.

Taxpayers have been forced to hand out another $8.8 million to buy the new owner some trees so it can harvest carbon credits. This grant was awarded before the Foreign Investment Review Board and Treasurer Jim Chalmers approved the deal. The UK investment vehicle, the so-called Tasmanian Natural Asset Trust, was reportedly established only six days before the grant program was closed to applicants.

It did not own Rushy Lagoon when it applied. I note that the chairman of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Steven Skala, also sits on the FIRB—the Foreign Investment Review Board. The local community is outraged.

Australians farmers are outraged. Anyone concerned about our country's ability to feed itself should be outraged. We're already a net importer of fresh food, seafood and dairy products.

Labor thinks food comes from supermarkets. We know food comes from the hard work of our farmers, the same farmers who have been fighting a losing battle against Labor for the last four years. The deal stinks and Australians have a right to know why Labor is sacrificing our farms and food security on the altar of climate change.

My outrage, as well as that of the people of Tasmania, is that we're going to lose an important farming sector in beef, dairy, sheep and cropping properties. Minister Ayres said that this is about farming. No, it's trees.

You're not farming food. You're destroying very productive land that produces food for Tasmania—and for Australia, for that matter—for carbon credits. What is a government department, the clean energy department, doing giving $69 million to acquire this land for a UK company to grow trees on it?

It is not producing anything. It's all about carbon credits. That's how stupid this net zero is.

It has got to the stage where we are shutting down productive farmland. This is why the people of Tasmania are outraged. What you are going to lose over this period of time is jobs.

They are going to go. Senator Ayres mentioned 190 jobs. That may be in planting the trees initially.

You're not going to have that ongoing employment at all. So you will lost jobs in the community, you will lose the money going into the state as well and you will lose food security. That's what you're losing because you're pushing your net zero.

I have another question—and it should be answered because Senator Ayres couldn't answer me earlier. Did Steven Skala recuse himself or did they know he had a conflict of interest in being on the clean energy department board plus FIRB? A few answers are needed here.

I'm calling on Jim Chalmers to respond, because the deal hasn't finally gone through. Apparently the money hasn't changed hands. I want to know: is he going to rethink this?

To me, it's the same deal—and it stinks for Australia's best interests—that they did with the port of Darwin. It's in the hands of foreign investors. It's not in the best interests of the Australian people.

Question agreed to.