REGULATIONS AND DETERMINATIONS

Senator CADELL (New South Wales—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (15:46): I move: That the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative—Improved Forest Management in Multiple-use Public Native Forests) Methodology Determination 2026, made under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011, be disallowed [F2026L00835]. As we go through and we look at what this is meant to do and what it's all about, we see it's about a mechanism to give Australian carbon credit units out there for carbon assimilation, for actually doing something for the environment, for putting things in.

The INFM method has been a rort from the beginning about the realism of what it does and what it's there for. It's being used to justify the establishment of the Great Koala National Park with no additionality for the environment. The trees that are there will stay.

The animals that are there will stay. We are not seeing any more absorption by this. In fact, it is just creating millions of ACCUs at a discounted rate for the sake of a state government looking to fund a koala park.

I've said here many times before that we saw what happened in the Pilliga in New South Wales when this happened. A group of 18,000 koalas lived in the Pilliga when it was locked up as national park, away from any state forest where logging happened. Just two years after it was locked up, a fire went through, and we now have the koala population of the Pilliga listed as functionally extinct.

That is a population less than 500. That is all because we want to lock these things up. We want to do this and we just look for excuses.

We're here with a method. We haven't got an order for production of documents from the ANU, where the Macintosh method, as it was called in the beginning, was established. We haven't got clarity about anything to do with the processes—who was involved, who contributed any gifts or undertakings or financing about how this goes.

We're stuck with this being approved now. It is not good for the environment. It is all about a deal to lock up a section of land, and we've seen the stresses that this creates.

We've seen the Greens' own think tank, the Australia Institute; the Bob Brown Foundation; and all sorts of other groups coming out and calling this for what it is: a rort. The test is today. I know this will go down, and we'll see who in this chamber has integrity about the ACCU system and those that want to do the deal, those that are environmentalists and those that are more pragmatists.

We'll see people who will stand behind a koala or a platypus in the front building and end up giving cheap ACCUs to the very industries they say they hate, because that is what this will do while cutting the jobs of the people on the north coast. It's interesting. I want to talk about Matt and Kirsty Parker, who lost their contract to log in this forest.

They had trees that were cut at their coupe ready to pick up, and instantly, when this was announced, they were stopped. Trees already felled lay there rotting and emitting because they were no longer allowed on. Interestingly, just three days ago, I was given a video by Matt Parker, as he's been rehired to go in there with his bulldozer to take down the path that he wasn't allowed to go down because there is a bushfire raging through that area and a thousand hectares have gone already.

To those people up in the north coast, I say: I'm sorry we have failed to get the numbers here. To those people who will suffer because we now have millions and millions of ACCUs going on the market cheaply and given the effect of those: I'm sorry for what that will cause. This is opportunism over environmentalism.

It is not a good way of going about counting ACCUs; it's not a good way of going about absorption. There is very little additionality in the process there. I know there are some arguments about what it could be and what it can be, but this should have been a better method.

There are better methods out there. We've had inquiries in the Senate about the authenticity, the value, the rigour around ACCUs, and, as soon as we come to something like this, it's hands down and get it out the door and approve it as quickly as possible. I'm disappointed at where we are, but I accept it and I think it's a shame that today, quite frankly, a party that talks about the environment all the time will be the ones that put the final nail in the coffin of the rigour of ACCUs.