Australian farmers have warned they will be “crippled” by Labor‘s new laws requiring companies to report their carbon emissions, and say it will result in more expensive groceries.
The legislation quietly passed parliament in September, with Treasurer Jim Chalmers declaring it would help “manage climate risks in our economy”, but Nationals leader David Littleproud and the National Farmers Federation warned the estimated $2.3 billion cost of the scheme will be passed on to farmers and consumers.
The Scope 3 measures will apply to large firms from January 1 next year but will eventually cover thousands of smaller companies including supermarkets, suppliers, insurers and banks, which will in turn force farmers to provide data on their climate-related emissions.
“It means prices have to go up. No one can absorb that. That has to be passed on. $2.3 billion is a lot of money and there’s no business that can absorb those costs without being able to pass them on,” Mr Littleproud told the Advertiser.
“It’s the financial burden for farmers from all scales that are going to have to comply with this legislation. This is an ongoing cost that is just adding more cost to the end consumer.”
He added that no other country in the world was imposing such a scheme, with similar legislation rejected by President Joe Biden in the United States, and said he suspected it was so Prime Minister Anthony Albanese could brag about “doing more than anybody else” at global meetings.
South Australian farmer Elden Oster, who is part of a group campaigning against Scope 3, said it would create more paperwork for farmers and inevitably raise the cost of food production.
“We’ve got more red tape, more bureaucracy, more experts telling us what we can and can’t do. And now the carbon space is going to cripple the mindsets, the mental health and the capacity of farmers to have to do mandatory reporting, which isn’t mandatory yet,” he said.
“It’s time for the Australian Government and the Australian people to realise that we are growing food, and some of the best food in the world, to feed the world and to feed our great nation – and you can’t eat carbon.”
Mr Oster said Australian farmers were having a minimal impact on global climate emissions, while another farmer, Paul Pearce, said the requirements were “farcical”.
When the legislation was passed Mr Chalmers said it was designed to “help Australia maximise the economic opportunities of cleaner, cheaper and more reliable energy” but was also criticised from the left for not including a requirement to reduce emissions.
Mr Littleproud has vowed to scrap the scheme if the Coalition wins the next federal election, and said earlier this year: “I firmly believe Scope 3 needs to be entirely removed, given the enormous burden this would place on our farming industry, as well as the lack of data and measurement available.”
Header image: Anthony Albanese wears a cowboy hat while meeting with beef farmers in Queensland in May (Facebook)
