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

Mr RICK WILSON (O'Connor) (12:12): I rise today to speak against the Carbon Credits and Other Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2026, because integrity and transparency have no part in this bill, as I read it. The more technical details have been dealt with by my colleagues speaking previously, but in summary it makes three changes. Firstly, the bill would allow a mere native title claim to be treated as native title actually existing.

Now, while we all want to see native title dealt with fairly and justly, this creates a new level of uncertainty for proponents who are looking to implement a program in an area which may be under native title claim as opposed to a settled native title. Secondly, the bill would allow the government to purchase carbon credits against a very opaque value-for-money test, replacing the current least-cost consideration.

Now, taxpayers always want value for money. They deserve to get value for money. But this new clause would allow the government to buy carbon credits with a whole range of criteria other than value for money, and that can't end well for the taxpayers.

Thirdly, and probably the most frighteningly for most Australians, this bill hands Minister Chris Bowen sweeping powers to disrupt carbon abatement projects through a special mechanism that would allow him to unilaterally declare methodologies void. Once again, this creates enormous uncertainty for proponents who are entering into agreements which, in many cases, are up to 100 years long.

For those reasons, the coalition will be opposing this bill. I want to take the opportunity today to talk about ACCUs and what they mean for my electorate of O'Connor and the people who live and work there. For many people in this place, Australian carbon credit units are a financial tool which is used for companies, large corporates, who are captured under for the most part the safeguard mechanism to reduce their carbon emissions while actually continuing to emit carbon or in fact increase carbon.

What does this mean for the people who live in O'Connor? I'm sure many people watching this speech, people reading this speech at a later date or people in this House will remember when, a month or so ago, the Rushy Lagoon purchase in northern Tasmania made headlines. It made headlines because it was the largest farming property in Tasmania that had been bought by an international fund with borrowed money from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Effectively, Australian taxpayer money was lent to a foreign manager to outbid Australian farmers and buy that property. That made the headlines for very good reasons, but across O'Connor that's happened 142 times. We have seen large corporates come in and buy up entire farming properties.

They started in the Central Midlands, which is not in my electorate, then they moved to Southern Cross in the Yilgarn shire, which most definitely is in my electorate, and they have been moving progressively into the high-rainfall, high-value agricultural land in the southern part of the electorate, with a property at Greenbushes being purchased several years ago.

It has now been planted down to a shotgun mix of native species, which is all well and good. However, the neighbouring farmers had no opportunity to purchase that property. They are now left with a severe fire hazard on their boundary and have vermin coming out of that property onto their property.

There's a whole range of issues. It's by very happy coincidence that Luke Bayley is with me in the chamber here today. Luke, welcome.

Luke is the CEO of the South Coast Natural Resource Management group. As the name suggests, natural resource management is about managing our natural resources and making the most of those resources while protecting nature and the environment, and they do a fantastic job. The NRMs are here in Canberra this week.

It's great to see them here, and I absolutely support their work. Natural resource management is about, as I said, making the most of those natural resources. As a farmer, I'm aware that there are many farming properties which have areas that could be utilised for ACCUs or for producing, for example, biofuels.

Sadly, that's not what's happening at the moment. We're not seeing these organisations, these large corporates, entering into agreements with farmers to utilise areas of properties that are of lower value for agriculture, which is the backbone of my communities and the economy across the bulk of my electorate. What we're seeing is these corporates coming in and buying entire properties.

To be fair to them—I've named some of them plenty of times, so I don't want to seem like I'm running a jihad against some of our best and biggest Western Australian companies—I recognise that under the safeguard mechanism they have to offset their emissions. If you're a company that pumps gas, then you don't have many options other than to go and buy farmland and plant it back to native bush.

But there are other companies who are taking, I think, a much more sensible approach, and that is to enter into agreements with farmers to lease parts of properties on long-term leases to produce, in one case, oil mallees, which can then have the oil extracted, and that can go in a process to produce biofuels. I think that's a wonderful opportunity for the farmer.

It's an opportunity for our natural resource management people to get involved in that process and link up those corporates and the farmers who have got that sort of opportunity. That's where I think we need to be heading in terms of ACCUs. I think that the practice of purchasing entire farming properties and taking them out of long-term agricultural production lowers the amount of food that we produce and reduces the number of people that are living in those communities.

Many of those communities are in decline because the farms are getting bigger. The technology is improving, and the mechanisation in producing a tonne of grain—the productivity is quite frankly extraordinary, but what it does mean is that there are fewer and fewer people in those communities. Corporates coming in, buying up entire farming properties and taking out the families that operated those farms is exacerbating the decline of those rural communities.

Once this gathers pace—we've only just entered the first 18 months of the safeguard mechanism, and there's a review that's coming up later on this year, which no doubt will ramp up the requirements of those companies. They've got very deep pockets. I don't blame the family who sells that property above the odds.

They're coming in and knocking on the door. They're not going through the normal channels. They're knocking on people's doors and saying, 'We've got a premium to offer you for your farming property.' The first the neighbouring farmer finds out about it is when he sees the fences being ripped out and the tree planters going in.

It is creating some division in those communities, but, as I say, I don't blame the people who are selling up for taking that option. It is their property and it is their right to do so. The government has set up a system whereby large corporate interests with very deep pockets are coming into these communities and offering a premium.

Taking out those families, taking out that production, is causing some serious issues for the people that are left behind, by the way, in terms of managing that fire risk and managing the vermin. The weeds that come out of those properties are a big problem for those remaining families. That's what I wanted to talk about today—to put on the record, as I have done previously, my implacable opposition to this notion of corporate Australia being forced to come in and buy up productive farming properties in my electorate, taking people out of my communities and hollowing them out.

There are better options. As I mentioned, there's the option of leasing parts of properties or giving every party more security to purchase those properties. The problem there is that the state land departments will not allow existing titles to be subdivided to allow that to happen.

There should be a change at state government level in state government land management to allow a farmer who may have a portion of his property that is low productivity, poor quality land—for whatever reason; it might not fit into the cropping system or the livestock system, or it might be an isolated block on his landholding. These properties should be allowed to be subdivided and partially utilised for ACCUs.

But, as I say, the taking out of an entire property is detrimental to my community, it's detrimental to the Wheatbelt of Western Australia, and I think in the long term, in terms of our food security, it is detrimental to our country.