25 February 2009
DAFF09/89T

Joint Transcript

Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Tony Burke

E&OE

Subjects: climate change and the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme

PENNY WONG: Thanks very much for coming. It’s great to be here with Tony to speak to farmers and their representatives about the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

As you know, the Government, in the White Paper that the Prime Minister announced in December of last year, said that we wouldn’t be including agriculture at the conception or the inception of the scheme – at the beginning of the scheme – but we would be looking to do so in the near future as of 2015. However a decision on that will be made a number of years from now in 2013.

And the reason for that is we want to have the time to work through with farmers, with the agricultural sector, the many issues, the many technical issues about how we would include or how we could include farmers and this sector in the CPRS.

So we’re prepared to do the work. We know there is a fair amount of consultation which will need to occur for Government to make that decision on a sound basis. We’re going to consult closely with farmers and with their representatives. We’ve had a number of discussions in the lead-up to the White Paper. Certainly Minister Burke has been doing a lot of work in this area as well. So we look forward to the continued discussions today and in the months to come.

TONY BURKE: As well as the discussions that happen today there are also some comments made last night on the 7:30 Report by Mr Turnbull. In that, he referred to some extraordinary tree-planting which he believed was possible and cited this report – jointly prepared involving the CSIRO – and he came to a figure, which appears on page 80 of that report, predicting that nine million hectares of trees could be planted. Now, when you look at the maps, the problem that Mr Turnbull didn’t acknowledge is in meeting the target that he proposed last night the areas where you would be planting trees take over prime agricultural land. To get to the nine million figure in the report that he cited, you would losing farmland in prime areas like Tamworth, Glen Innes, Cooma, Wagga, right through to the WA wheat belt.

Now, the Government has always acknowledged that you do need to have some land-use change, and that will be an implication and an outcome of the White Paper. But our advice has always been that we’d be looking at marginal land.

To reach the figures that Mr Turnbull is talking about, we are actually going down a path in his world where we will take our prime agricultural land, stop growing crops and start planting trees on it. It’s a world where, realistically, you would sequester a whole lot of carbon, but there’d be a lot less to eat.

JOURNALIST: So can you guarantee that you’ll protect prime agricultural land?

TONY BURKE: The carbon price that’s been spoken about, the emissions targets that have been set, were then put through ABARE. The advice that came back to me was that under the White Paper and the proposals that are there, prime agricultural land would not be at threat. It would be marginal land, where the economics stacked up, for people to be looking at doing more tree-planting.

PENNY WONG: Can I say on that, Lucy, the Government has put forward modest calculations about the sort of sequestration we’d get from forests, planting forests. It’s Mr Turnbull you should put that question to. It’s Mr Turnbull who’s putting forward figures that are based – as Tony says – on the use of prime agricultural land. He’s putting forward figures which make that assumption because he doesn’t want to talk about an emissions trading scheme. He doesn’t want to have to talk about a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. So really, Mr Turnbull needs to explain how he gets such ambitious figures given – and why he makes an assumption that it’s a good idea to use those figures given that they are predicated on prime agricultural land being used.

JOURNALIST: No doubt when you meet farmers today, they’re going to raise with you the cost impacts of a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, well before they’re included in the scheme. It was estimated this week that it could be $2.4 billion a year until 2020.

So will you acknowledge those cost impacts and what will you do to help agriculture bear that cost on production, before they’re introduced into the scheme?

PENNY WONG: Well, a couple of things. The first is we are looking forward to having the discussion today at the roundtable and more generally. It is the case that the Government has been upfront that introducing a carbon price does have impacts but we need to do that in order to prepare Australia for the challenge of climate change. We need to do that in terms of changing our economy.

We’ve been very conscious of the impact on agriculture. That’s why we made the decision as a Government to not include agriculture in the early years and to have this consultation process. And you’ll recall also a number of the measures such as fuel tax adjustment and assistance to households can also be applicable to a range of farmers in Australia.

But these are the issues we need to talk to the sector about. One of the things that Tony’s been talking about a lot as well is: how is it that we can be of assistance for farmers in reducing the impact of the scheme and preparing better for climate change. Those are the sorts of issues we want to discuss today.

JOURNALIST: The Opposition has put forward a big push to store carbon in trees and also in soil carbon, so it’s not just trees. What’s wrong with that as an idea? And wouldn’t that be a good thing for farmers because they would be paid to sequester carbon? Why aren’t you doing that as part of the ETS, or separately?

PENNY WONG: The first point is that we do have capacity under our ETS to ensure that forestry is included. That is, that farmers – if they wish to, on land that is marginal – if they want to opt into the scheme and get a credit through planting a forest, that can occur under the Government’s scheme. But the reality is, there is more work that needs to be done on issues around soil carbon, around measurement, around the science and the technical details of this.

Mr Turnbull wants to gloss over this, but the reality is if we’re going to take a responsible approach, that hard work has to be done. The Government is prepared to do that work and we’re prepared to work with the sector to achieve that.

JOURNALIST: Just a question about [Member for Tangney] Dennis Jensen, if I could. He was out this morning. He said he is a climate change sceptic. He says he does not think greenhouse gas emissions emitted by humans are causing climate change. He says the scientists are wrong and he says he’ll raise it in the party room. Mr Turnbull’s promise to have a bigger cut to emissions than the Government he says has not been approved yet and he does not agree with it. What’s your response to that?

PENNY WONG: It’s just further demonstration of the division in the Coalition’s ranks. The same people who denied climate change existed for years under the Howard Government are still in Mr Turnbull’s party room. Mr Turnbull knows it’s the right thing to do to act on climate change. It’s up to Mr Turnbull to pull his people into line.

JOURNALIST: Just a comment Mr Burke on the livestock research project. How do you see that benefiting farmers and can you see any benefits prior to their introduction to the Carbon [Pollution] Reduction Scheme?

TONY BURKE: Some 16 per cent of Australia’s emissions are agricultural. And so even though we’re not a part of the scheme at its start, we still need to be part of the solution.

The research projects which have been announced today go to being part of that solution in two ways. First, through doing the research to give farmers the tools to reduce emissions from livestock. And secondly, to be able to move down a path to be able to more accurately measure those emissions.

ENDS