Senator JOYCE (Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (5:52 PM) —I also take note of the report currently being discussed, which is that of the Finance and Public Administration References Committee on native vegetation laws, greenhouse gas abatement and climate change measures. I understand the rhetoric about the retrospectivity of this report, but it is vitally important to remember that it gives three recommendations that are supported by all parties except the Greens. We negotiated those recommendations to deliver some hope that we are going to change things for farmers.

Senator Cameron —On a point of order, Mr Acting Deputy President: the Labor senators have been misrepresented by Senator Joyce. There were no negotiations to try and come to some agreement on these recommendations. The recommendations were the recommendations of the National and Liberal parties.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Marshall)—Senator Cameron, that is not a point of order.

Senator JOYCE —It is not a dissenting report. There are additional comments by the Labor Party. The recommendations were the recommendations of the committee. What we have here are the recommendations of the committee, which included senators from the Labor Party. But let us put this behind us and have a debate and try to concentrate on how we can bring about a better outcome for the farmers. The farmers do not want a rhetorical flourish; they want some hope that we can deliver a better outcome. I agree with you, Senator Cameron, that we do not have—and I will say this quite openly—the capacity to compensate every farmer for all the trees that have been taken from them. I say that on the record. We do not because the Labor Party have got us $140 billion in debt as we speak and they are heading towards about a quarter of a trillion dollars in debt.

If we cannot compensate the farmers, then we must change the legislation. In fact, we must go so far as to give the trees back to them. The trees were stolen from them. They were an asset of the farmers and we proved that through the inquiry. The title specifically said that these assets were assets of the farmers and they were taken from them without the farmers ever being paid for them. I believe both sides of the chamber find that abhorrent. You cannot just wander into someone’s life and take an asset from them without paying for it. We should not believe in that. Once we believe in that, we would not believe in the value of going to work. Why would you go to work to pay for something if there is a prospect that you would not own it?

I hope this report becomes part and parcel of a bipartisan approach to try to take this issue forward and put pressure on to bring about a fairer outcome. I think I heard from those on both sides of the argument say that when people drilled down into this issue—an issue that maybe a lot of people did not know about—they saw how irrational some of these laws had become and how completely arbitrary and ridiculous they were, where you had a person with a number of trees in a wheat paddock and they were not able to get rid of them. Why? We do not know. It was almost a Franz Kafka type of intrusion. This intrusion affects a minority group and we have to move away from thinking that if we do not see them as a minority group they are not a minority group.

Farmers make up less than one per cent of the population. They are generally poor, not rich, to dispel one myth, and they do not have the political power that they should have because people find it convenient to look past them. If this happened to another minority group, there would be a hue and cry about this. Imagine if we went to another group and said, ‘We are going to steal something from you without payment because we believe we are in a position where we can.’ As a social justice issue, surely that should strike a chord and we should be doing something about it now.

I hope that this report does not become a political football but becomes a seed from which we can start to seek and find justice. I am not here to talk about state or federal responsibility and waste the farmers’ time. I am here to talk about exactly what we can do from this point forward and to hear from other people how we can go forward and bring justice to these people who do not have justice at the moment. The people listening to this right now—yes, the history lesson is interesting—are far more interested in how we are going to fix it and what we are going to do about it to try and make their lives better. The reality is that there has been the theft of an asset of the individual by the government, whether or not it was in collusion with the federal government. The theft happened and these people were dispossessed. In some instances, this has without a shadow of a doubt put them in a position where their assets have diminished. In some instances, this asset is worthless, has become without worth and is unsaleable.

We also have the ridiculous situation where a person who owned the trees woke up one day and the trees had become the property of the government. However, they had to pay rates on the land where the trees were, they had to pay the insurance, they had to keep the weeds down and if somebody else’s tree fell on a neighbour or anybody else—a person coming off the road—walking through the place guess who would have been sued. Not the government but the farmer would have got sued. He would have been sued for an asset he did not actually own. How can this be justice? How can this be right? Surely, the focus of the chamber right now should be about trying to bring a remedy. The honourable thing is to seek a remedy, because that is the only way you provide a sense of hope.

These people were told that it was to be done on an environmental basis, and even that has been flawed in many instances. The reality—as we are seeing more and more—is that, if it is based on carbon sequestration, the amount of carbon being stored and quarantined is inferior to the amount of carbon stored by such things as summer pastures. This is just a fact of science. People might have a biodiversity argument, but that was not the argument put up at the time. That was an argument of carbon sequestration.

The issue is: why should you go to a minority group and persecute them for a solution for the wider community? If the wider community believe they need it then the wider community should pay for it, and if the wider community are not prepared to pay for it then the need for it cannot be that great. That is the essence. To describe a similar circumstance, it is like people going to suburban Australia and saying: ‘The need of the community is that we now quarantine the use of your third bedroom for a social good—we’ll probably give that to the homeless—but we’re not going to pay you for it. In fact, you’re still going to have to pay the rates and insurance on it. You have to deal with the impost if you ever try to sell that house now that that is there.’ Obviously, when people see it in that dynamic, they see that it is completely abhorrent.

I definitely want stronger views on compensation, but the issue was that we had a recommendation of a report with no dissent. There is no dissenting report in this. I repeat: there is no dissenting report in this. We have additional comments, but we have no dissent. So this report is without dissent. That means it is without dissent from either the Liberal Party, the National Party, the Labor Party or any other party.

Senator Siewert interjecting—

Senator JOYCE —Oh, yes; there is one by the Greens. The Greens dissented, but they are not actually trying to make things better; they are trying to make things worse. The Labor Party did not dissent; therefore they are in agreement with the recommendations. It is as simple as that. The reason that we have kept the recommendations where they were is to keep the Labor Party on board. That is why the recommendations are without dissent: because it is vitally important for this nation and for justice to this minority group that we bring about an outcome that is bipartisan. We now have a bipartisan report and recommendations. Let us not now revel in the rhetoric of history. Let us make sure, if we are people who are going to do something that is right and just, that we move forward from this point as if we were dealing with any other minority group and try to bring about some sense of justice for them. If we do not, then we make a mockery when we do it with other groups, because that means we have a form of partiality as to who deserves justice and who does not. I hope that is not where this chamber goes.