REGULATIONS AND DETERMINATIONS
Mr JOSH WILSON (Fremantle—Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy and Assistant Minister for Emergency Management) (15:48): As the minister explained, the government are going to oppose this motion because we support the sensible further development of Australia's land-based emission reduction efforts through what has become the largest, highest quality and highest integrity carbon market in the world.
We support the bringing forward of carefully designed and rigorously developed methods that expand opportunities for emission abatement while delivering new economic opportunities that are overwhelmingly located in rural and regional parts of Australia and significant improvements in environmental conditions and biodiversity. And we support outcomes that protect our native forest estate and therefore protect our precious distinctive Australian biodiversity.
And that's precisely what the integrated native forest management, or INFM, method can deliver. The project put forward by the New South Wales government under the INFM method is part of their commitment, as the debate has considered, to establish the Great Koala National Park. It will support the protection of 176,000 hectares of native forest on which koalas depend—forest that is home to a hundred at-risk native species—while creating significant new economic opportunities that we on this side of the House support.
And that's why the INFM method is supported by the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, the National Parks Association of NSW, the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation and Greenpeace, among others. It is disappointing that the Nationals bring this motion, particularly when their apparent remit is the interests and wellbeing of people in rural and regional Australia.
It is disappointing that they would seek, through this motion, to undermine the carbon farming system that has emerged to such varied and positive effect over the last 15 years in the communities that they represent. I say that knowing that the ACCU scheme is appreciated in rural and regional communities, where the enormous value of having options to diversify economic activity while caring for country is seen very clearly.
I say that while we work with Meat & Livestock Australia on an updated livestock method. I say that while we work to deliver an updated reforestation and forestation method, where stakeholders from around the country—but particularly landowners, farmers and people in rural and regional Australia—come to us, come to the government and say how grateful they are that this vital opportunity in Australia is being maintained and indeed expanded.
I say that, as the minister has noted, knowing the incredible extent to which the savannah fire management method has protected 34 million hectares in northern Australia, delivering $59 million a year to project operators, 75 per cent of which are First Nations led businesses. The INFM method recognises the carbon sequestration value that's achieved when there's a commitment to a substantial cessation of logging in state managed native forests, while rigorously calculating and applying conservative discounts for the possibility of carbon leakage.
We are very conscious on this side of the House, through this new method and through the ACCU scheme as a whole, of just how critical it is to deliver substantial emissions abatement in a variety of ways, in every area of Australia's landscape and its economy in a way that's predictable, forward-looking and fair. We make no bones on this side of the House about the fact that the ACCU scheme is helping to combat dangerous climate change, whose effects will be felt most sharply on the social and economic circumstances of people in regional, rural and remote Australia.
The obligation and the responsibility on all of us to take that seriously is something that this side of the House understands, while those on the opposite side of the House completely ignored it and put their heads in the sand about it for the 10 years while they were at the helm of the ship. We know that helping to combat dangerous climate change by emissions avoidance and sequestration, and the support that the ACCU scheme provides, is critical.
It's absolutely essential to a sensibly managed process of decarbonisation—one in which Australia continues to reduce our national emissions profile, in keeping with our ambitious 2030 and 2035 Paris climate agreements, but does so without jeopardising the viability of emissions-intensive and trade exposed industries. The INFM method, a new ACCU method, will make a small but substantial new contribution to that task while supporting a new much needed native forest sanctuary for at-risk Australian flora and fauna, not least of which is the koala.
As I have to keep pointing out, the feature of the ACCU scheme that appears to have been deliberately ignored by those opposite—in bringing this motion and in general—is the extent to which the carbon market is creating opportunities for communities in regional and rural Australia. Economic diversification, economic viability, investment in a whole variety of ways, whether it's in the clean energy transition or in carbon farming—that is supporting the vitality of regional and rural communities.
That's something that we see clearly, and that's something that we will continue to support. This motion seeks to block the protection of Australian native forests. It seeks to block, for no good reason, a new piece in a vital patchwork quilt of land based greenhouse gas abatement, at a time when we need to keep doing as much of everything, everywhere, all at once as we can possibly manage: renewable energy and storage, electrification of transport and decarbonisation of industry, agriculture and our built environment.
Land based abatement, and all the many good things that brings with it for environmental repair and restoration, particularly for rural and regional communities, is a critical part of that. I'll tell you that the people that come to see the minister and me express that in no uncertain terms, all of the time. The ACCU scheme methods— Ms Penfold: Don't lecture me about what's good for regional Australia.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): Member for Lyne, you've had your turn. Mr JOSH WILSON: including this new method, are a critical element of that process, delivering abatement and sequestration that will help protect this country from dangerous climate change, which is the greatest risk that faces the communities that you purport to represent. They're securing and smoothing the emission reductions we need from our largest emitters and, at the same time, improving environmental conditions; improving farm outcomes; improving farm productivity; creating greater resilience to climate impacts; and supporting local economies, businesses, jobs, economic diversification and broader social wellbeing right across this country in a way that those communities celebrate.
They will be telling you that too while you carry on with your pantomime here today—jobs across rural and regional Australia. That will be true of the INFM method as it adds to the stable of ACCU methods in one of the largest, highest integrity, most successful and most valuable carbon markets in the world that we celebrate and defend and will expand and that, for some unknown reason, you consistently oppose.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The time allotted for this discussion has now concluded. The SPEAKER: The question is that this motion be agreed to.