Labor’s Carbon Crusade Is Driving a Nail into Australian Productivity

MR RICK WILSON MP
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR O’CONNOR

6^th August 2026

Labor’s Carbon Crusade Is Driving a Nail into Australian Productivity

Two of Australia's most significant agricultural properties have become the latest symbols of a troubling national trend.

In Victoria, attention has focused on Cobungra Station, a renowned High Country cattle enterprise spanning more than 23,000 hectares. In Tasmania, Rushy Lagoon, at 22,000 hectares is one of the state’s oldest and largest agricultural properties. For decades, it has been one of the state's most productive farming operations.

These are not marginal blocks of scrub country. They are not degraded landscapes crying out for rehabilitation. They are large-scale, productive agricultural businesses with long histories of generating food, jobs and economic activity.

Yet increasingly, prime farmland is being viewed not through the lens of agricultural production, but through the value of the carbon credits that can be generated from it.

That should concern every Australian.

As Nick Cater rightly noted in The Australian in July:

“The Collins Dictionary defines a farm as “an area of land on which crops are grown, and animals are kept”. Under its new owners, Rushy Lagoon will become a giant pine plantation and a harvester of carbon credits, with the prospect of a little grazing and wind farming on the side. To understand why Australia’s productivity has stalled, you could do worse than study what happened last week on 22,000 windswept hectares of prime agricultural land 140km northeast of Launceston.”

For years, I've been concerned and warned about this shift. Not because I oppose sensible conservation efforts, but because governments are actively distorting land markets in ways that carry serious long-term consequences for productivity, food security and regional communities.

The Rushy Lagoon sale brought those concerns into sharp focus.

Reports show the acquisition was supported by around $69 million in finance from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. That means taxpayers effectively helped finance the purchase of one of Australia's most productive farming properties for a carbon-focused investment model.

Let that sink in.

A farming family looking to buy land must rely on the strength of their business, their balance sheet and their ability to produce food and fibre.

Carbon investors, meanwhile, increasingly have access to taxpayer-backed finance, government-designed carbon markets and policy settings specifically engineered to support their investment model.

When governments start putting a thumb on the scales, markets stop behaving like markets.

The result is that productive farmland becomes more expensive, traditional agricultural enterprises become less competitive, and land use decisions are driven by government incentives rather than economic fundamentals.

Finally, prime agricultural land is taken out of production for carbon sequestration purposes, with the chance of it ever being used for agricultural purpose again being slim to nil.

Unfortunately, the Albanese Government appears determined to double down.

This week, Chris Bowen announced another expansion of Labor's renewable energy agenda, broadening the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme to cover much larger rooftop solar installations for businesses, farms and industrial facilities. The changes are expected to slash installation costs by about 20 per cent and increase the scheme's reach tenfold.

This isn’t a completely separate policy. It is part of the same mindset that has come to define this Government.

Every challenge seems to have the same answer: another subsidy, another incentive, another taxpayer-funded intervention designed to accelerate Labor's preferred vision of the energy transition.

The cumulative effect is enormous and cannot be ignored.

Across regional Australia, billions of dollars are now shaping investment decisions, influencing land values and altering land use patterns. Carbon projects, renewable developments and government-backed schemes are increasingly competing with agriculture for land, capital and labour.

Here in WA, O'Connor – which spans 1.1 million square kilometres, there are currently 142 Australian Carbon Credit Unit Scheme (ACCU)-supported projects covering approximately 50,000 square kilometres.

That's the same area as Denmark and the Netherlands combined.

Productive agricultural land is one of Australia's most valuable strategic assets. Once it is removed from food and fibre production, recovering that productive capacity becomes increasingly difficult.

You cannot build national food security while steadily reducing the area available to produce food.

You cannot strengthen regional economies by incentivising activity that supports fewer local jobs than traditional agriculture.

And you cannot improve national productivity by directing capital away from productive enterprise and into government-supported market distortions.

Furthermore, the public has every right to expect complete transparency when taxpayer-backed financing arrangements intersect with foreign investment assessments.

That expectation becomes even more important when prominent figures occupy roles connected to both the financing mechanisms supporting these projects and the regulatory processes responsible for scrutinising them.

Whether actual conflicts exist is ultimately a matter for the relevant authorities. But public confidence depends on ensuring there is no perception of conflicts either.

Regional Australians deserve that assurance.

Australia absolutely needs sensible environmental policy. Farmers understand that better than most. No one has a greater stake in healthy landscapes than the people whose livelihoods depend on them.

Environmental policy should never be built on a system where taxpayers help fund investors to outbid farmers for prime agricultural land.

I would strongly urge Treasurer Jim Chalmers to take a step back and examine the cumulative impact of these policies before more productive farmland disappears into carbon schemes and government-backed investment models.

For the two centuries succeeding European settlement, Australian agriculture revolutionised the horizons of farming. Today, sadly, it is in retreat.

Since 2003, Australia’s agricultural land has fallen by around 70 million hectares according to ABS figures highlighted in The Australian.

Rushy Lagoon, and now Cobungra, highlights the worrying trend of a Government squandering billions in green energy policy with the line between public and private investment increasingly blurred.

Because this debate has never been about one property in Tasmania or one cattle station in Victoria.

It is about the future of regional Australia and the competitiveness of Australia’s sovereign productivity capabilities.

ENDS

Media contact: Reuben Keyser
Communications and Community Engagement Adviser
[email protected]
(08) 9842 2777
0455 125 035