Carbon Credits and Other Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2026
Mr MONCRIEFF (Hughes) (19:15): Right across this country, Australians are getting on with the job that eluded those opposite for the entire duration of their government. They're putting up solar panels, installing batteries, taking up EVs in record numbers and investing in progress. Decarbonisation comes in the form of millions of daily decisions made by businesses and households throughout the economy—and, increasingly, many of these decisions are influenced by the growth in and success of Australia's carbon market.
The Australian carbon market is one of the largest, most effective and highest integrity schemes of its kind anywhere in the world. Under the Australian Carbon Credit Units, or ACCU, scheme, thousands of consumers and businesses are running projects that reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions or remove and store carbon directly from the atmosphere through sequestration.
Since its inception in 2011, the ACCU scheme has abated an extraordinary 190 million tonnes across more than 2,600 projects. Today, it underpins a carbon market valued at over $4 billion. Participants run projects that reduce emissions or store carbon through installing cutting-edge technology, upgrading heavy industrial equipment, changing practices to fit productivity and lower energy use, and improving the way our landscapes and vegetation are managed.
The scheme is playing a critical role in helping Australia achieve our ambitious emissions reduction targets, including our legislated 2030 targets and commitments to reach net zero by 2050. The ACCU scheme extends beyond carbon metrics to deliver substantial economic, social and cultural benefits for Australians too. Contrary to some of the things you might hear from those opposite, the transformative power of the ACCU scheme is felt most acutely in the regional, rural and remote communities of Australia.
In many ways, ACCUs have become an important agricultural commodity. They are giving farmers and landholders the ability to diversify their income streams, droughtproof their businesses and attract new private capital. Through soil carbon sequestration, plantation forestry or reforestation through environmental and Mallee planting, the ACCU scheme makes environmental stewardship profitable.
According to the independent Carbon Market Institute, carbon projects can provide landholders with diversified income and improved cash flow through carbon farming projects. The market for carbon farming is attracting more capital into Australian agriculture, with the safeguard mechanism acting as a critical driver of demand. By pricing carbon emissions, these settings incentivise emissions reductions while also encouraging investment to flow into projects such as restoring vegetation, protecting waterways and active land management.
Public finance also plays a complementary role through institutions such as the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, helping de-risk investments in new areas and crowd in large-scale private capital investments. High-intensity carbon markets provide a mechanism to connect private capital with farmers and land managers that are working to improve environmental and emissions reduction outcomes.
And this bill, the Carbon Credits and Other Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2026, directly supports farmers and landholders. But don't just take my word for it. According to the National Farmers' Federation, these reforms strengthen confidence in the ACCU scheme and improve the integrity and transparency of carbon markets.
The scheme is also helping to advance Closing the Gap targets by creating robust employment and economic opportunities for First Nations communities. In northern Australia, First Nations cultural fire practices are being channelled into carbon capture and the prevention of devastating wildfires. Under the ACCU scheme, these practices are encompassed in two new savanna fire ACCU methods, generating an estimated $7.7 billion across northern Australia.
Almost three-quarters of all carbon credits generated through savanna fire management come from Indigenous owned businesses, with the revenue from these cultural burning projects supporting job security, education initiatives, Indigenous ranger programs, preserving cultural heritage and empowering traditional owners in remote communities. This bill strengthens the recognition of native title rights by ensuring project proponents obtain eligible interest holders' consent before an ACCU project can be declared on native title land.
By treating registered native title claimants as eligible interest holders, the ACCU scheme will align with the procedural rights under the Native Title Act and embed the principles of free, prior and informed consent. It allows traditional owners to negotiate fair benefit-sharing arrangements and protect their cultural heritage before the commencement of projects.
This bill ensures that the key architecture of our climate policies support Australia's emissions targets while delivering cheap, reliable energy, efficiently facilitating decarbonisation across our economy and delivering benefits for local communities. It provides the certainty that is so critical for reducing risks that threaten sustained investment and confidence in our $4 billion carbon market across the broader energy transition.
It delivers on our commitment to implement the recommendations made by the independent Chubb review into the Australian carbon credits, in careful consultation with industry, businesses and First Nations communities. This bill amends the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011, the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 and the national vehicle efficiency standard framework.
The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme provides a national framework for companies to report information regarding greenhouse gas emissions, energy production and energy consumption. The data collected through this reporting framework provides reliable evidence for governments to design effective climate policies while also holding large industrial emitters accountable to national reduction targets and integrity in energy markets.
Our amendments enable increased transparency in emissions and energy data submitted under the reporting scheme, streamlining arrangements for publishing data, giving investors and the public confidence in the data driving the energy transition. In 2024, the Albanese Labor government passed our world-class new vehicle efficiency standards. For decades, Australia has been treated as a dumping ground for inefficient, fuel-guzzling engines because previous governments lacked the courage to mandate efficiency standards.
Imported cars sold in Australia were less fuel efficient than cars of the same make and model in markets with more demanding standards. But while it might be cheaper for manufacturers to produce a less fuel-efficient car, the fuel costs over the vehicle's life cycle can be vastly more expensive for consumers and fleet buyers. Our new vehicle efficiency standards give car manufacturers bigger incentives to produce more fuel efficient cars.
In combination with our electric car discount, which reduced cost barriers to people buying cleaner vehicles, our efficiency standards have contributed to a massive take-up in hybrid and EV adoption. The data backs this up. Just last month, EV sales in Australia overtook those of petrol cars for the first time in history.
And guess what? The weekend is still here. Drivers across the country are embracing cheaper cars and greater choice.
New vehicle sales figures show that more than 27,000 battery electric vehicles were sold, representing 24.9 per cent of all new vehicle sales, a record monthly high. Last month's EV sales skyrocketed by 171 per cent compared to the same month last year, with battery EVs outselling traditional vehicles, with 25,824 sales. Under the new vehicle efficiency standards, regulated entities submit annual data concerning their emissions and the mass of the vehicles they import.
This calculates an initial emissions value. If a manufacturer imports low-emission vehicles and achieves a negative value, they earn compliance units that can offset positive balances over the following two years. Manufacturers with a positive value can purchase these units to reduce their final emissions value down to zero and avoid civil penalties.
This 'cap and trade' scheme allows market participants the flexibility to purchase units and improve emissions according to their needs while delivering more fuel-efficient vehicles to consumers in the most cost-efficient way. The CEO of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries recognised that the evidence increasingly demonstrates that the new vehicle efficiency standards are encouraging manufacturers to bring more low-emission vehicles to Australia, which increases both consumer choice and the technology available.
The amendments made in this bill correct a drafting anomaly in the original legislation that restricted the window in which entities could utilise these units to adjust their initial emissions value which, if left uncorrected, would unnecessarily limit a manufacturer's ability to trade or apply units earned from importing low-emission vehicles. This bill fixes that gap, which gives automotive manufacturers the regulatory certainty to plan their future fleet imports and arrange unit trading without administrative distortions and gives the industry the ability to keep delivering affordable, low-emission vehicles for Australian families.
By strengthening the governance of the Australian Carbon Credit Unit Scheme, our government is lowering risk for investors in order to unlock billions in private capital for regional and remote Australia. A robust carbon market supports skilled research jobs and innovation in agriculture, forestry management and environmental restoration, which delivers real growth dividends from decarbonisation.
When it comes to climate change and the energy transition, we know that those opposite are no friends of markets. What we saw from the coalition for their entire term in office was a series of slogans and focus grouped phrases with no delivery—meaningless incantations, like 'technology, not taxes', with no detail about what technology looks like. Even worse were their attempts to pick politically favoured winners through furphies like nuclear energy or backing in ageing and unreliable coal assets when the market is moving away from it.
The Albanese Labor government's approach is delivering real results by setting the right conditions for market actors to drive the clean economy transition, crowding in private capital and delivering real economic benefits to farmers, landholders, regional areas and First Nations communities. We came to government after inheriting a broken national energy grid that was plagued by a decade of policy failure and attempts to paper over this failure by changing the law to hide energy price rises.
Our government overhauled the safeguard mechanism, which ensures Australia's 212 largest industrial facilities reduce their emissions in a fair, orderly and predictable way. We introduced the Capacity Investment Scheme, which drives enormous amounts of investment in dispatchable renewable energy generation and firming storage to strengthen the grid's reliability as ageing coal power plants retire.
We invested $20 billion into Rewiring the Nation to modernise our electricity grid in order to connect low-cost renewable energy zones to major population centres and industrial hubs. Upgrading our transmission network is essential. It is absurd for those opposite to claim, as they so often do, that we wouldn't need to invest in transmission if it weren't for the rollout of renewables.
Australia's transmission network is one of the oldest and most extensive in the world. Between now and 2050, Australia's energy consumption will surge. Coal power plants will close, whether those opposite like it or not.
Energy generated from solar and wind farms will increase. The notion that a coalition government would stand athwart the market to keep expensive and unreliable coal assets alive isn't just illiberal; it is absurd. It's just as absurd as the myth that nuclear reactors could replace coal power plants and plug into the grid without requiring new transmission.
The transmission lines are already close to capacity from renewables, and a fleet of nuclear reactors would likewise require new transmission, which is the exact thing that those opposite are so fervently against. This side of the House recognises that it is our government's responsibility to build the transmission network of the future, not to delay, obfuscate and perpetuate the myth that there is some alternative energy system where this investment would not be required.
Those opposite can continue to engage in the culture wars of 15 years ago. The Albanese Labor government is getting on with the job and getting it done. Our government introduced cheaper home batteries, which makes rooftop solar and domestic energy storage accessible to everyday households.
We know that batteries are critical for storing and firming. More batteries are good for the grid. The Albanese Labor government is delivering cheap, reliable power while building the new green manufacturing industries of the 21st century.
This bill strengthens Australia's world-class carbon markets, delivering real benefits to farmers and landholders, regional communities, energy users and First Nations communities. I commend this bill to the House. Debate interrupted.