Introduction and acknowledgements
Kaya, ladies and gentlemen – it is really lovely to be able to join you here in Walyalup or Fremantle, in my hometown – and not just because I was able to walk here from my office a couple of hundred metres in that direction – though I have to say that is pretty good.
Can I start by acknowledging the traditional custodians of this land, the Whadjuk Noongar people, and pay my respects to their Elders, past and present. This has been a gathering place of significance for a long, long time. Indeed, Walyalup, where the Derbarl Yerrigan meets the sea – or the wardan – was a place that hosted Indigenous trade and cultural ceremonies for thousands of years.
And one of the remarkable strengths of Australia’s carbon market, under the Australian Carbon Credit Unit Scheme, is not just the way the ACCU world has benefited from First Nations knowledge and practice, but the way that First Nations businesses and communities are leading some of the most extensive and successful ACCU projects over a large portion of the Australian landscape.
But before I say a few more things about the critical importance and value of carbon farming, let me thank you all for coming across to this side of the continent. I relish this opportunity to engage with and hear from the people whose effort and expertise, whose commitment and investment provide the vital ingredients that have made the Australian carbon market one of the largest and highest-integrity enterprises of its kind.
It is a distinctive success story, and one that is not told or heard enough in my view.
We often say in the energy and climate space that Australia is the world leader when it comes to household rooftop solar.
But it’s no exaggeration to say that our carbon market is in the very top echelon on a global comparative basis – and we don’t say that often enough.
All of you have helped to make that true.
Taken all together, the ACCU scheme covers more than 2,500 projects, half of which have been registered since we came to office in 2022.
Since 2011 the Scheme has delivered more than 185 million tonnes of abatement.
The Savanna methods alone are practiced across 34 million hectares – an area as large as Germany. It has avoided more than 11 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions.
And in addition to its core purpose – of avoiding emissions and sequestering carbon in the landscape – the Savanna method has delivered substantial improvement in local environmental condition and biodiversity, and it has drawn on the strength and wisdom of First Nations’ stewardship, with 70 per cent of the 86 fire management projects across northern Australia owned and operated by Indigenous enterprises, benefiting from something like $59 million dollars in carbon revenue.
The Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation’s project in WA alone covers 1.1 million hectares and has generated close to 300,000 ACCUs over the past 12 years, with revenue supporting ranger jobs, training, and equipment, while at the same time strengthening cultural fire practices and protecting at-risk ecosystems.
And that is the reality or essence of carbon farming across the board: a set of activities that are necessary in the task of decarbonisation; in the urgent, necessary task of responding to dangerous climate change – but that also bring with them a range of other benefits that answer to the principles of sustainability and social justice and economic diversification, and deliver these good things in rural, regional, and remote Australia.
And that truth about the value and meaningfulness of the ACCU scheme is what I mean when I say to people that I feel very fortunate to contribute as an Assistant Minister to what I regard as the most consequential area of policy and program administration in Australia.
Before going on to say other things – let me be clear in saying that my capacity to make a contribution of any kind depends hugely on the expert foundational work and advice of the smart and wholehearted public servants within the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment, and Water. And it relies on the excellent, rigorous oversight provided by Chair Karen Hussey and her fellow members of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee (ERAC).
I’m very mindful that I’m a relative latecomer to this community – recognising that this is the 10th Carbon Farming Industry Forum – and I want to give a shout-out to Sasha Courville and the CMI team for delivering this instalment of what’s become a key gathering.
Ladies and gentlemen, what I’d like to do with my time this morning is provide a reflection on recent progress in terms of both the substance and the form of the scheme, and to cast forward to some of the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Before I do that, I come back to what I said at the outset about the fact that Australia’s carbon market is one of the largest, most effective, and highest-integrity schemes of its kind anywhere.
And for me it is crystal clear that one of those elements is the foundation stone on which the others have been built – and needless to say that element is integrity.
It’s the integrity of the science and the integrity of the administered system that delivers the outcomes we need in terms of carbon emissions reduction and sequestration; it is the bedrock of market confidence and social licence; it is the guarantor of scheme durability that is the basis for investment.
And over the last 18 months or so, with integrity as my operational touchstone, I’ve been glad to work with you all to keep evolving the ACCU scheme so that it is bigger and better in future.
And I absolutely acknowledge that the scientific and systemic integrity of the Scheme is an outcome to which we all contribute – government, regulators, scientists, landowners, and project operators.
When I was asked by the Prime Minister in July 2024 to take on my present role, and then asked by Minister Bowen to take on responsibility for the ACCU Scheme, it was made very clear to me that we needed to crack on with high quality method development, including new ways to expand the range and useability of carbon farming activities.
Before the end of that first year, I made the new Environmental Plantings Method, and we selected four methods to be advanced through the new proponent-led approach which had been recommended by the Chubb Review.
Last year I remade the Landfill Gas Method, and we commenced the consultation process for both the Integrated Farm and Land Management Method and the Integrated Native Forest Management Method.
In the first quarter of this year, I made two new Savanna Fire Management Methods – including one that credits both emission reduction and new carbon pools of sequestration for the first time.
Over the summer we also put into practice our recognition that the proponent-led approach can assist with the timeliness and quality of method remakes.
On that basis, last year I asked the Australian Resources Recovery Council to take the lead on a remake of the Alternative Waste Treatment Method, and this year I asked Meat & Livestock Australia to assist with the design of a new Beef Herd Management Method, to be known as the Livestock Method, and to include the methane-reducing benefits of feed additives, like asparagopsis, which of course potentially ties-in well with the emerging ‘blue carbon’ economy.
I am very pleased to announce today that I have asked a consortium of organisations led by Midway to assist with the remake of the Reforestation and Afforestation Method. As part of this the proponent will be tasked with examining the inclusion of Pongamia trees with a view to realising more of the benefits of nature-based solutions while maximising the co-benefits of ACCU methods.
In this case, that could include the harvesting of timber and oil seeds which can be used as a feedstock for biofuel.
In my view, that is a record of good progress – though I am happy to be frank in saying that we have not always delivered on the timetable that we would prefer.
It is in the nature of this enterprise that all of us – from government to the ERAC to project operators – want to see method development occur in a smooth and timely fashion… with the obvious caveat being that we also want to get the best method outcome. Needless to say, that’s the hard part, and it’s the part on which there are often many and divergent views.
It is also in the nature of this enterprise that there are difficult issues that need to be managed and difficult decisions that need to be made.
The ERAC acted properly in late 2024 to suspend the Beef Herd Method. And it’s a good thing that we now have the opportunity to create a new and better method that can operate in that space, correcting the integrity issues that have been identified, and expanding the scope of the potential abatement, both in coverage and in cause.
I took the decision in March not to remake the Coal Mine Waste Gas Method, having carefully considered a range of the relevant factors.
And shortly I will need to consider advice on how to respond to the current review of the Soil Carbon method, being mindful of the importance and potential of these activities
In all of those matters, I seek to proceed on the basis of expert advice, through open consultation and engagement, with Scheme integrity as the paramount value to be maintained, and with careful consideration of the other issues relevant to an effective, productive, stable carbon market.
Now I said earlier that my first imperative was in relation to method development and delivery, but I was also very conscious at the outset that we couldn’t put aside the task of larger Scheme-wide reform, following on from the Chubb Review and successive reviews by the Climate Change Authority.
And so, I’m rapt to be standing here this week with the Consultation Paper on that reform out in the public domain.
I know you will all be engaging with that process and I’ve already been briefed on some of the consultation input that has been provided.
I don’t propose to run through all the elements of the Scheme-wide reform that is under contemplation, because I’m confident that people in this room will be familiar with those elements.
But I hope you share my enthusiasm and my sense of opportunity when it comes to strengthening and enhancing the ACCU Scheme in some key areas, like integrity, research and development, First Nations consent arrangements, the publication of advice and reports, and the capacity and advisory functions of the ERAC – as it becomes the Carbon Abatement Integrity Committee.
Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to conclude by looking forward beyond the next year or so – a period in which I’m confident we’ll see further significant additions to the palette of available ACCU Methods, and a period in which I expect we’ll put the Scheme as a whole on a sounder, more effective footing.
Both of those achievements are necessary to ensure that our carbon market industry continues to support our commitment to ambitious emission reduction targets, in keeping with our Nationally Determined Contributions to the cooperative global effort under the Paris Climate Agreement.
Last year, by accepting the advice of the Climate Change Authority, the government lodged our 2035 NDC of 62–70 per cent emissions reduction on 2005 levels – a commitment that is among the most ambitious national targets.
To continue our progress towards that outcome, we recognise that decarbonisation needs to occur in virtually every area of Australian life, and we’ve adopted the Net Zero Plan to make sure we apply that focus across six different sectors of the Australian economy.
And while we’re making particularly impressive progress with respect to Australia’s clean energy transition – with the clear objective of securing Australia’s potential as not just a renewable energy superpower, but also a clean industry powerhouse – we do take a measured and realistic view of the challenge involved in the decarbonisation of certain industries and certain sectors.
We bring optimism and technological innovation and concerted effort to those challenges, but we also draw confidence from the contribution that emission avoidance and sequestration can make to achieving net zero by 2050.
We have in prospect the Safeguard Mechanism review to ensure that its policy settings continue to be appropriately calibrated, including its post-2030 settings, the Mechanism’s interactions with the ACCU Scheme, and the question of whether additional incentives or structures are required to drive further onsite abatement. Of course, the government’s first priority is and has to be an appropriate expectation that all sectors take action to reduce emissions directly.
But as part of making steady and sensible progress, Australia’s billion-dollar carbon market provides opportunities for companies to act now by funding abatement elsewhere in the economy in order to meet regulatory obligations with certainty, and to protect the viability of Australian industries that are trade-exposed and emissions-intensive, but who may often be less emissions intensive than competitors elsewhere.
Modelling by Treasury, the Climate Change Authority and ABARES shows that land-based carbon storage is the largest, most cost-effective form of sequestration that will support us to meet our 2050 net zero commitment.
And for all those reasons, there is no question that Australia’s carbon market industry will play a role whose importance and value continues to grow, and therefore no question that the ACCU Scheme will remain a vital and enduring part of Australia’s policy landscape.
It represents an evolution of our market that has been a long time coming.
It corrects a failure of our market that has led to harmful distortions and extraordinary unaccountable costs; a failure that has so far prevented us from finding a sustainable way of living on planet earth – precisely because our market didn’t value what it should have valued, and didn’t price what it should have priced.
And although the ACCU Scheme is designed to measure and attribute carbon emission avoidance and carbon sequestration, what is remarkable is that ACCU method activities are also delivering other critical public goods in the form of environmental repair and a just economic return for First Nations’ stewardship, to which the market is rightly assigning value.
As a person who has always reckoned that our approach to markets should have a lot more open-eyed preparedness to make sure they’re working to deliver fairness and sustainability and a lot less reverence for the dysfunctional status quo – I think those core and non-core achievements of the ACCU Scheme are bloody good things.
If we reflect on the positive big-picture wins in what we might call Q1 of the 21st Century, the ACCU Scheme definitely goes on my list.
Its significance and value will only grow. First and foremost in relation to our climate work. But also in its positive impact on our environment and biodiversity, and the economic opportunities it delivers for rural, regional, and remote Australian communities.
I hope that all of you take some well-earned pride and satisfaction in your contribution to that achievement, and I look forward to working with you to make the ACCU Scheme stronger, broader, and more effective.
Thank you.
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