COMMITTEES

Senator BROCKMAN (Western Australia—Deputy President and Chair of Committees) (17:09): I rise to speak on this committee referral of the approval of the sale of Rushy Lagoon, and I do so for a very good reason. Even though where I happen to live in Australia is about as far from Rushy Lagoon as you can get it doesn't mean that the events that occur in that part of Tasmania do not have direct implications both for the good governance of Australia and for an enlightening look at how this particular government operates when it comes to these sorts of decisions.

But it also reflects much more broadly on the trend that is happening across agricultural land, when land is taken out of production and moved to basically a non-productive state, particularly when it comes to food production. I will preface this contribution by saying I am not opposed to foreign investment in Australian agriculture. The Esperance sand belt, which is one of the most productive parts of the Australian Wheatbelt, would not have been opened up the way it was but for foreign investment—in that case, from America.

It's very interesting to note that, whilst that foreign investment was very important to the opening up of that Esperance zone, it is now almost universally within the hands of Australian farmers producing grain not just for Australia but for the world. It is, as I say, one of the most consistent and productive parts of Australia. So I am not rising to speak about Rushy Lagoon because it is a foreign investment alone, but I am rising with great concern about this entanglement of foreign investment, government funding, government backed schemes to value carbon units—Australian carbon credit units, as they're called—and the outbidding of Australian farmers by 30 per cent for land that should be in the business of producing food and fibre, not just for Australia but for the world.

You can take any one individual property and say, 'Taking that out of production doesn't really matter.' But if you do it over and over again—and there are 225 examples of property being tied up with carbon unit production in the state of Western Australia alone—you will materially decrease our access to food and fibre both in this country and for export to the world.

What has happened here with Rushy Lagoon is a very murky conflagration of a foreign investor buying a very, very large piece of Australian farmland—at one point in the near past, it ran something like 8½ thousand head of cattle and 22,000 head of sheep—taking it out of food production and putting it into trees. Again, we need trees. We need agroforestry.

We need the production of timber in this country. But what makes this very, very murky is that a large chunk of the investment dollars in this project has come from a government instrument, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and seemingly, though I cannot say this for sure, a large part of the revenue model for this particular sale and the price paid—again, significantly above what local farmers were able to offer—comes through the supposed value in Australian carbon credit units.

So we have a deal with a foreign business backed with Australian government cheap money—it's not cheap money; it's taxpayers' money, but, from the corporate world's point of view, it's cheap money because they don't have to contribute it—on the basis of Australian government regulated carbon credit units and done in a way which is extraordinarily non-transparent, particularly to the farming community in that area, who face the impacts of that land being taken out of production.

Those opposite say, 'Oh, well, there'll be some trees planted, so there will be some forestry jobs created.' I'm a huge supporter of forestry jobs, and what the WA Labor Party did to the Western Australian forestry industry is an absolute disgrace. But the fact is—having been involved in agriculture myself, including in livestock production and timber production—that the jobs that disappear through the loss of livestock production are not replaced if that farmland is taken into timber production.

They simply are not replaced. It's not just the direct jobs. The sheep industry is very labour intensive.

The cattle industry is to a lesser degree, but the sheep industry is particularly labour intensive. You need the shearers. You need the veterinarians.

You need the support services. You need the agricultural product supply in your local community. You need all these things which give life to communities, which give economic substance to communities.

Replacing them with trees not only diminishes our ability to provide high-quality protein and high-quality natural fibre to the world but also weakens the economic base of those communities. There is no doubt about that. If you do a straight swap between livestock production and a timber producing enterprise, and if it were an Australian farmer who made that decision, fine.

That's their right. That is absolutely their right. But this isn't an Australian farmer; this is a foreign company backed by government money on the basis of government regulated carbon credits.

It's mind boggling. The fact that that company could come along and pay something like 30 per cent above market value—it's great for the seller, absolutely. But is it good for agriculture?

Is it good for Australia? Is it good for that local community? The fact that the government instrumentality, the CEFC, is putting its money into it is what should make it a problem for this government, but they don't have a problem with it.

They don't have a problem with it because they want to see these carbon units, these carbon credits, having some sort of a market. So they've got to shoehorn activity like this into the economy through a huge investment, through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and other similar investments right around Australia—there are 225 in my home state of Western Australia—which means that companies like this foreign entity could outbid local farmers who are producing the food and fibre that Australia and the world needs.

Recently in the media there have been question marks over how long Australia will actually be self-sufficient in terms of food production. That's shocking that that's even entering the debate. A very, very short period of time ago, we exported food and fibre to the world.

We produced enough food and fibre for three times the population of Australia. We were massive net contributors to the world. We stopped people from falling into malnutrition.

We stopped people from being at the point of starvation. We helped feed the world. Now, it's actually entered the public discourse that we are going to have to consider a situation where Australia is a net food importer.

It's absolutely shocking and shameful, and it does reflect on government policy, which has effectively, in multiple ways, green-lit this particular project at Rushy Lagoon. It was the government, first of all, that had to approve the foreign purchase. It was the government, through its Clean Energy Finance Corporation, that funded the project.

We haven't seen the business model, but the reporting that's out there says that it's the government that controls the carbon units and the system of carbon credits that is the business model of this project. So the government has its finger in this pie in every way it possibly can. It's got investment.

It's the regulator. It's the decider on the foreign investment. That is just an extraordinarily murky and dangerous combination, especially, as I have said, when this is not a one-off event.

This has brought it into the public spotlight, but these kinds of projects are cropping up right around Australia in high-quality agricultural land. It is simply not true that this is now happening in marginal country. This is happening in high-value rainfall land.

It's happening in places like Boyup Brook in my home state of Western Australia. It's happening in Rushy Lagoon in Tasmania. This should be an issue that concerns every Australian.