SUPPORT for a march on Parliament to oppose the Government's emissions trading scheme is gathering momentum among farmers, but farm groups remain cold on the idea.
Liberal Senator, Bill Heffernan, recently called on farmers to show their opposition to the ETS and push for an immediate decision to leave agriculture out of the scheme on the debit side, but allow them to opt-in on the credit side.
Senator Heffernan told Rural Press this week he had addressed the joint Coalition party room on the issue and it was well received.
He said his office had heard from more than 100 farmers keen to help co-ordinate the march, yet he conceded it would only truly get the momentum it needed if more farm lobby groups got onside.
While the National Farmers' Federation has been furiously lobbying for agriculture to be left out of the scheme, its president, David Crombie, did not see marching on Parliament as helpful to getting an outcome of that sort yet.
Mr Crombie said farmers have already put a very unified position to the Government, and NFF was happy to keep working with Government for the time being to try and gain the exemption decision.
Newly elected president of the Victorian Farmers Federation, Andrew Broad, said while he shares the concerns Senator Heffernan holds about the impact of the scheme in its current form on agriculture, he too would prefer to keep working with the Government to achieve the right result.
He does not think many farmers fully understand the full implications of the scheme and just how dangerous it will be for agriculture if it is not excluded from counting its emissions.
Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke, told last week's Q&A program on the ABC there was no sector of the economy that feels climate change more than Australian farmers.
"They have the biggest interest in us being part of the global solution on this," Mr Burke said.
"In terms of agricultural emissions themselves, they are (already) out of the scheme. They’re out of the scheme for very good reason at the moment and that is you cannot trade what you cannot measure.
"…whether it be emissions or whether it be offsets, the science is not yet there and the international accounting mechanisms are not yet there to have agricultural emissions as part of the scheme and get a good outcome for farmers."
Mr Burke also acknowledged the financial contribution farmers had already made to reducing emissions in Australia.
"Farmers have already made a significant contribution because the only reason we met our Kyoto target so far was because of land clearing laws which overwhelmingly hit the assets of farmers in NSW and Queensland, so there has been a contribution already.
"To have an early decision when the science isn’t there and the international trading isn’t in place… we’d always like to say, let’s make a decision on everything right now.
"But if you can’t trade it because you can’t account for it and the international system is not in place, why rush a decision when you know you don’t have the information to make it accurately."
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