Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (17:11): I rise to oppose the Carbon Credits and Other Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2026. I approach this bill as I always do—to give voice to the people of Mallee. For years now, I have stood alongside farmers and farming communities confronting Labor's reckless renewables rollout. I've met farmers driven to tears, literally, by the way that proponents have treated them—and, I've got to say, by the way the government has treated them. I have stood with farmers protesting in St Arnaud, in Horsham, in Charlton, on Spring Street, in Ballarat and at Parliament House here in Canberra.

I have heard farming families along the route of VNI West, who have asked a pretty basic question: 'What happened to our property rights?'—farmers like James and Emma Burke. Emma summed it up when she said, 'They're not considering agriculture at all.' There are farmers Colin and Mary Fenton, Barry Batters, Gerald Feeny, Ben Duxson, Jason Barratt, Marcia McIntyre and Billie Baldwin, whose properties have been targeted by the Victorian government with VNI West. They are supported by others affected, like Glenden Watts, Tess Healy, Cindy O'Sullivan, Will and Rachel McIntyre, Anthony Guzzardi and Lisa Saunders, and Rob Reading. They have all challenged the way VicGrid, a government agency, has attacked land rights with statutory powers; the way the government has issued farmers with $814 fines for refusing VicGrid access to their own land; and proponents' having lied about landholder support.

These are not theoretical arguments for people in my electorate. They concern farms, homes and businesses built by families over generations, and that experience makes me particularly wary when this parliament considers further changes to the way government created incentives interact with Australian farmland, because today we are talking about carbon credits. The consequence of Labor's bill today may be another productive farm whose greatest financial value is no longer growing food or fibre but, rather, growing carbon credits. The danger in this so-called utopian fantasy land is that the Albanese Labor government is rapidly tilting the economic playing field so that harvesting carbon becomes more attractive than harvesting food or fibre. That should concern every Australian.

Australia's population is growing; the world's population is growing. But we aren't creating more prime agricultural land. Good farming soil doesn't just happen. It is a managed system. Good farmland has been fertilised, irrigated, cultivated, protected from erosion and nurtured by Australian farmers over generations. Once our best agricultural land is lost to farming, we cannot simply click our fingers and create some more. As Leader of the Nationals Matt Canavan has been saying, we are rapidly progressing towards importing more food. Who would've thought that in a nation blessed with so much productive agricultural land? I have said before in this parliament that food security must be a national priority, and government policy should never forget it.

There is a particular reason that this bill worries farmers. Carbon sequestration involves storing carbon in vegetation and soils for a long time. Area based projects generating Australian carbon credit units can carry what the Clean Energy Regulator calls permanence obligations. Those obligations can last 25 years or 100 years. Once the permanence period has been nominated and the project has been registered, the Clean Energy Regulator says that choice cannot simply be changed. Think about that in ordinary farming terms. A farmer can change his crop the next season. A family can change its business plan. A son or daughter may want to take over the farm. The agricultural market can change. The climate can change. Technology can change. But some of the carbon arrangements being entered into today can create obligations measured not in seasons but in generations.

That is why I was interested in a recent analysis of Australia's carbon farming market by Mills Oakley lawyers who advise landholders and carbon businesses in this field. Their advice to farmers considering carbon projects is straightforward: understand what you are signing up to before entering what may be a 25-year to 100-year binding legal relationship. It is similar, and I digress for a moment, to the wind turbine hosting arrangements some farmers have gone into. Farmers need to look at the fine print, as I have encouraged them to do year after year. Future farming family generations may find themselves liable for removing the infrastructure from the land. Queensland's costs for those being decommissioned two years ago were about $1 million for each turbine. Remember that many of the companies putting up these turbines are foreign owned and may well not be around when the turbines reach the end of their operational life.

Back to Mills Oakley, they identify potential consequences including long-run arrangements under this bill: firstly, reducing the value of land depending upon the commercial arrangement; secondly, making a future property sale more complicated because a purchaser may need to accept continuing obligations; and, thirdly, limiting how the landholder manages that land. Even the Climate Change Authority's 2026 review of the ACCU Scheme recommends further examination of whether credits from 25-year permanence projects should remain appropriate for safeguard mechanism compliance, along with further work on reversal risk and permanence discounts. So there are legitimate questions here.

These issues go directly to something I've been fighting for for years. I developed the Prime Agricultural Land Protection Bill 2026 because I believe Australia needs to identify its best agricultural country and defend its productive agricultural capacity. My Nationals colleagues Alison Penfold, the member for Lyne, and Matt Canavan, Senator for Queensland, introduced versions of that bill in the House and the Senate. The principle is very simple: the Commonwealth should not undermine our prime agricultural land. Our best farmland should be producing the food and fibre Australians need and to feed a growing world population. My bill proposed a national mapping exercise to identify, as Queensland and New South Wales have already done, prime agricultural land, other productive agricultural land and marginal land, with strong protections against the loss of agricultural productivity.

That principle applies just as much when we talk about carbon sinks as it does when we talk about transmission towers, wind developments or large-scale solar developments. If an Australian farmer makes a voluntary commercial decision about the use of their land, that is one thing. It is quite another for government policy, taxpayer backed finance, compulsory regulatory demand and government purchasing to progressively alter our productive farmland. We should never reach the point where policy designed in Canberra makes locking up highly productive land for carbon more lucrative than producing food.

This is not merely a hypothetical concern. The coalition has already acted on precisely this issue. The shadow minister for energy has introduced the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Amendment (Protecting Australian Farmland) Bill 2026, aimed at preventing the CEFC financing purchases of farmland primarily to generate carbon credits through land regeneration or forestry. Our broader energy policy will establish a code of conduct for renewable developers, requiring them to earn community support—you know, that little thing called social licence. The lack of social licence is what saw the Prime Minister chased out of Ballarat by tractors after the Bush Summit last year. Regional farms are not vacant space on the government's renewable energy map. Farmers' property rights matter. Their homes matter. Their communities matter. Food security matters.

VNI West, renewable energy zones, wind developments, blanket solar farm developments and transmission infrastructure have created enormous uncertainty. I am pleased to say, after I brought the Leader of the Nationals to St Arnaud in my electorate, where he declared we would not support VNI West, that that is the position now taken by the Victorian Nationals and Liberals in coalition approaching next month's state election. Let me be clear. VNI West will not happen under a coalition government. Indeed, the pressure is biting the Andrews-Allan-Carroll Labor government, as they have put a pause on the Western Renewables Link, the WRL, which connects to VNI West. As yet, silence on VNI West from Labor. Perhaps they have thrown the member for Ripon under the bus, so to speak, but the Ballarat and adjacent state electorates might be higher priorities. Who knows? This is the problem. For Labor, it is always about the politics. It is not about prime agricultural land. It is not about listening to the people.

Property rights require certainty. This bill introduces another form of uncertainty. Whatever side of this issue somebody comes from, surely one principle should be uncontroversial. A farmer should be able to know who has rights over his or her land, what those rights are, how long they last and what process applies. A prospective claim should not leave a farming family trapped in indefinite uncertainty. The more complicated governments make arrangements affecting farmland, the more important certainty becomes. When the coalition rolled out native title following High Court rulings, we provided funding for farmers and landowners to deal with the legal advice and consequences.

Mr Hill: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, I notice the member for Grey has got his noise-cancelling headphones in and is watching something. It might be the Senate—who knows? I just want to understand whether that's permitted. I've always thought it's not, but it may be and, in fact, I'd actually be delighted if you made a ruling that it was. Presumably that would enable me to wear earplugs next time the member for Goldstein speaks and prevent the OH&S injuries which most of us endure. I had 20 minutes of it last night and I left feeling unwell. I've got no problem with it, and I think it would be a good precedent because we could all wear earplugs when the member for Goldstein is on his feet.

Mr Venning: Is it against the standing orders?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Chesters ): My understanding, Member for Grey, is that there is no rule on electronic devices, as long as you're not interrupting people. So people can't take a call in the chamber or be loud. Is it appropriate, Member for Grey? Is it the Senate?

Mr Venning: Yes, I'm watching Jonno's valedictory speech.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No worries, just as long as it's not anything dodgy!

Mr Hill: I'm don't know if noise-cancelling headphones would deal with the other problem I mentioned, but it may mitigate the damage. Thank you, Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, Assistant Minister. The member for Mallee may continue.

Dr WEBSTER: Even small rural councils, such as the nine out of the 12 in my electorate that have banded together in their Resource Ready strategy, go cap in hand to the Victorian government for funding just to deal with the cost of participating in the myriad of consultations and reviews due to the rollout of mineral sands and energy projects proposed in my electorate. This is not a level playing field. It is almost vertical in favour of Labor's fantasy land of energy transition, which costs regional communities the most. Community voices are not being heard, and I am here sharing their voices and saying enough is enough.

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