Carbon Credits and Other Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2026

Ms WATSON-BROWN (Ryan) (18:52): Carbon credits, ACCUs, the INFM—people may have heard these terms being thrown around in the last couple of weeks, but what are they? Put simply, the government gives businesses a special token or a carbon credit either for not creating one tonne of pollution or for removing one tonne of pollution from the atmosphere. Businesses earn these by, for example, protecting an area of forest or planting new trees.

Companies can then buy and sell these credits, theoretically providing them a financial incentive to reduce pollution. It sounds like an okay idea. However, in reality, this scheme provides a permission structure for big companies to carry on polluting under the guise that they're offsetting their harmful emissions by planting trees somewhere else.

It's an accounting trick, not a climate policy. It's like paying someone else to go on a diet for you while you keep ordering burgers and pizza. The real problem is that Australia's current carbon accounting rules are broken.

They allow big polluters to access these credits and avoid reducing their actual emissions, sometimes on the back of fake projects. These fake projects are truly laughable. A company that proposes planting a forest in the middle of the desert is clearly not serious about offsetting their emissions; they just want to tick the box, grab the credits and then run off and continue polluting, hoping no-one realises they haven't planted a single tree.

The scary thing is that in many cases that bet has paid off. Companies are getting away with dodgy offset proposals, avoiding scrutiny, taking their precious credits and continuing to pollute. Without proper oversight, the whole system falls down and Australia's carbon emissions continue to increase.

Despite its packaging as an integrity measure, this bill, the Carbon Credits and Other Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2026, will allow existing dodgy credits to be laundered through new methods. If a project is not real, it should be cancelled, not relabelled. The Greens won't stand by and let Labor cover up for big polluters.

The Senate inquiry into this bill will allow a rigorous examination of carbon offsets and how the system is failing. While the offset system remains broken, this bill just lets the scam continue, so the Greens will not support it. Let's be clear: our planet is on fire.

It's literally on fire. Extreme weather events around the globe make it absolutely crystal clear that the world is already overheating and under strain. At bare minimum, we must stop adding fuel to the fire, not continue pouring petrol on it.

When the carbon market was created in 2010, it was not set up to facilitate more coal and gas expansion. It was designed as a tool to facilitate a rapid transition away from coal and gas. An offset was meant to be a last resort for the sectors that genuinely cannot easily decarbonise yet, like cement and steel, while forcing polluters to invest in habitat protection to build resilience against climate impacts.

Offsets are supposed to play a supporting role in decarbonisation, but, in Australia, they've unfortunately taken centre stage now. Only Kazakhstan and Australia allow complete, unlimited use of offsets. Rather than doing what the science demands and phasing out coal, oil and gas, the Albanese Labor government has been allowing pollution to get worse—some say, actually encouraging it to get worse.

While Australian households are doing their bit to reduce emissions, coal and gas companies are getting a free ride. Under Labor and Liberal, coal and gas executives have bought their way out of real pollution reduction with cheap, low-integrity carbon credits. Every dodgy credit that they wave around is a promise broken to the communities living with the floods, living with the fires and living with the heatwaves that come from a warming planet.

This is the perversion at the heart of this system. Big corporations can ignore their pollution by banking pollution cuts somewhere else. Coal and gas just can't be offset.

It actually needs to be kept in the ground. There are some genuine improvements in this bill. In particular, it extends negotiation and consent rights beyond native title holders to First Nations groups whose native title claims are still being processed.

It mandates that a First Nations representative join the government's advisory council and improves various other governance arrangements. These are positive changes that the Greens support. First Nations people must have a say in decisions affecting their country, but long overdue progress on that issue must not be held to ransom while polluters get away with free riding and not doing their fair share.

If the government actually wants to fix this bill and bring back the positive parts, the Greens would welcome it, but minor tweaks just will not cut it. We need significant change and we need dodgy credits out of the system, right now. Rather than simply fiddling around the edges of the problem, the government should be doing a whole lot more to protect the climate and our environment.

One thing that they could do is actually protect nature, not use it as an excuse to keep polluting but actually protect nature for its own sake and for the sake of future generations. Protect it for its own value. Australian taxes should protect Australia's nature, not destroy it.

Right now, for every $1,000 of tax you pay, just 60c goes to nature—or 0.06 of the federal budget. Meanwhile, billions more tax dollars are handed out to industries. That's our tax money handed out to industries that destroy nature, like coal, gas and deforestation.

Australia's nature is in crisis. We lead the world in mammal extinctions. That is not a gold medal that we want.

We're the only wealthy country listed as a deforestation hot spot. Our iconic wildlife, our uniquely Australian creatures, face growing threats from bird flu, habitat loss, invasive species, climate change and bushfires. Nineteen of our unique ecosystems, including coastal mangroves, native forests and woodlands, are showing signs of collapse.

We all love the wildlife and landscapes that make Australia so special. They are a really important part of Australia's identity. My own electorate of Ryan is home to many precious natural environments including Mount Coot-tha.

That's 'honeybee mountain' in Yuggera language. It is home to some incredible wildlife, including the greater glider, which my grandkids have actually seen in its natural habitat in the Mount Coot-tha bushland. There's Enoggera Creek and the reservoir—'Enoggera' means meeting place or gathering place in the Turrbal language—with its amazing bird life, including azure kingfishers, the critically endangered regent honeyeater and so many others.

There's Moggill Creek—named for Magil, the water dragon in Yuggera language—home of platypus, which local environment groups count every year. It is part of the interlaced network of many other beautiful waterways and green spaces in Ryan. I know, and Ryan knows, how valuable and irreplaceable these places actually are.

We must act now to protect them for future generations. Without federal funding, the government's stated commitment to nature protection is just a wish list. Australia's peak scientific bodies have said nature needs at least one per cent of the federal budget.

That figure would protect 35 million additional hectares of land, meaning meeting Australia's 30 by 30 target in a way that represents the diversity of our habitats and our species. We just can't sit and wait for the government to do the right thing. Join me in signing the petition and calling for one per cent funding for nature.

Tell the government it's time to protect nature.