Federal Nationals senator Matt Canavan said during this past week that a 2050 net zero carbon target allows polluters "to send the bill elsewhere".
Additionally, he opposed the way that writing off carbon emissions had been done - locking up land either through native vegetation rules or direct carbon deals, which not only removed land from production, but also removed the flow-on employment that was generated from otherwise managing that land and also the secondary employment and services created.
There is a lot of truth to this. After all, how many of those areas locked up under a carbon deal or native veg rules would have had trees and scrub there anyway, but now also don't create jobs.
He also said in this interview (a podcast with The Guardian) that "Farmers are a really important constituency of ours, but they're only a small proportion of our vote in the general public" and "about five per cent of our voters are farmers, it's about two per cent of the overall population. So 95 per cent of our voters don't farm, aren't farmers or don't own farmland."
Farmers are already well aware they're a minority in the overall scheme of things - their relative contribution to GDP, employment and just generally feeding the nation being disproportionately high relative to their number. But is it just a bit too convenient - and too soon - to be writing off carbon trading, and a target, in the name of what are effectively outdated methods?
Work is currently underway to replace outdated carbon measurement and management with more robust methods, some of which will be included in the draft Soil Carbon Methodology to be released for public feedback later this year.
These are being designed to measure and create emissions credits on the same land where production agriculture also takes place.
Mr Canavan's colleague, Minister for Agriculture David Littleproud, has also been pushing the development of a trading platform for carbon and biodiversity credits. So when there's the chance farmers might be able to be paid for their environmental contribution, is Mr Canavan too hasty in disregarding these new options?
Farmers may only be a small percentage of the Nationals' constituency, but with a potential money spinner on the table, it appears the Nats could be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
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