Senator JOYCE (Queensland—Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) We have asked for just one thing right from the start: for prime agricultural land to be excluded. It was not asking for much. We started in June. We never got there. We got this peculiar response, ‘We’ll rely on local government guidelines and state government guidelines,’ because they knew that the thing they had to dance around was that they would never grasp the nettle and exclude prime agricultural land. The reason they will not is that that is where it is going to go—because that is where the MISs go. This is just a turbocharged MIS. If you are relying on local government guidelines, which local government guidelines? Which local government guidelines stop you from growing trees? I have no idea. Even if the local government came up with those guidelines, they would be taken to the land court at the state level. These issues are all part of this mystery and this riddle as they try to fool us in the way this legislation works.

On this issue—and this is something that the Australian Greens and the National Party differ on— believe that the emissions trading scheme is going to be one of the worst things that ever happens to this nation. In a time of recession we are moving towards a period where we are going to create another tax. It is another tax to encourage people to leave our nation and do business somewhere else. That is what it is. The response to the queries that we put to Treasury in the Senate Standing Committee on Economics says that this is strongly revenue positive. That means the government collect money. It might be coincidental, as the government run into deficit, that they will be looking at ways to pick up funds. What a brilliant way to do it: go on a moral gig of ‘we’re going to save the world, collect money and fix up the deficit’—because the government become the arbiter of where it is morally right and morally wrong to send that money that they have collected from the Australian people.

But, if senators in this chamber do not believe in the concept of the ETS and they have serious concerns about it, they cannot vote for this, because this is step 1 of putting their foot on the sticky paper. I imagine the Australian Greens will continue their support of it, but I and my colleagues see that the ETS is going to be economic vandalism. If we want to reduce carbon emissions, I think a possible economic downturn will do that in spades. We do not need to exacerbate the
process by encouraging the aluminium smelters and a whole range of other businesses to move overseas. If you vote for this, you have to understand that you are voting that you believe in the ETS and everything that surrounds it. You have to be sincere and fair dinkum. You are either on board or you are not; you cannot have this sort of optional belief system. That is also a key concern. Australia cannot continue closing down prime agricultural land. As we continue to rely on overseas imports for food, we do not just lose our domestic production; we also make ourselves vulnerable because those overseas suppliers can enter into an arrangement where there is a specific supply contract with specific retailers of the product. Those supply lines to overseas
venues become a very powerful instrument to stop other participants in the market. Big retail players have the capacity to set up explicit supply lines to certain big players overseas, but your independent greengrocer and your independent stall probably do not get the same arrangement and the same process. So, at a retail level, this can start to move against small business. This really shows the intermeshing of all the effects when you start passing legislation that reduces Australia’s access to prime agricultural land to produce food.

I also brought up through the Senate estimates the fact that the legislation, and I have quoted it before, in schedule 8, 40.10 says that capital expenditure is deductible for the establishment of carbon sink forests. Other people have said, ‘That’s different,’ and, ‘The explanatory memorandum’s different.’ We have heard today from Senator Milne, who has spoken to one of the leading tax barristers, who said that is bunkum: ‘If it says capital expenditure’s deductible, capital expenditure’s deductible.’ Game, set and match. The minister has never had the capacity, the bravery, to go into the legislation and say, ‘It excludes the purchase of land.’ So, if it does not exclude the purchase of land, I suppose it includes the purchase of land. If that is the case, that is totally unfair. Who else gets a deduction for purchasing a block? Why don’t we give the deductions that we are giving to these people to the people growing fruit, vegetables and meat, people who are trying to sustain themselves and in the process send their hard-earned dollars by way of tax to the Treasury? Why aren’t we giving them the same advantage? I can imagine other things associated with the planning of a carbon sink forest—if they put up a shed to store stuff in, that is a capital expenditure, so they will get an upfront tax deduction. A farmer would have to write that off over 15 or 22 years or something. This is outrageous. Why are you creating another sentiment of market differentiation, where the person on one side of the fence gets one advantage and the person on the other side gets another advantage, and what differentiates them is that one has the gall to try and feed Australia while the other is planting trees to get an income stream at a future date and gets the benefit of an upfront tax deduction?

We heard Senator Boswell talk about the prospect of 40 million hectares of new forestry. We only have 22 million hectares of crops. We have to understand this concept and where it can go. We have to look into who is actually pushing this agenda—who is going to make money out of this? Follow the money and you find the problem. That is the query. It is obviously going to be the people who have the capacity to make a margin on trading it and the people who make a tax deduction on putting it in place. For the sake of regional towns, for the sake of maintaining Australia’s food sovereignty and for the spirit of fairness among all citizens in this nation—who should not be compromised by having to pick up the tax bill for the tax deduction that this is—I ask and plead for people to knock out these regulations. At a later stage, to make sure we clarify it, part of the TLAB 5 measures will explicitly disallow the tax deduction.

I know there are people who feel very strongly about this—some of them probably not noted in the media. I know there are strong feelings against this piece of legislation. So I ask: even if you are not going to vote against this, at least do not vote for it, because if you vote for this you are voting for our nation to go down a path of unfairness and you are taking the first step in a very dangerous economic proposition for our nation to deal with in a possible recession.