‘Parasites’, ‘cowboys’: The carbon companies dividing rural Australia

Three years ago, Steve Blore was a pin-up boy for carbon company Climate Friendly. In a promotional video, against a backdrop of uplifting music and cinematic drone shots of the outback, the Queensland land manager praised the company’s projects for benefiting rural communities.

“You look after the vegetation because it’s worth dollars to you,” he said in the video. It seemed like a win-win.

Today Blore tells a different story. The dollars flowing from the six carbon projects he manages in outback Queensland have drastically reduced, and he can’t get a straight answer about the future.

While some scientists are increasingly sceptical about whether outback carbon farming schemes actually cut emissions, Blore is among the farmers claiming they were promised more than is being delivered.

Steve Blore in a Climate Friendly video extolling carbon farming.

He grazes cattle on outback properties around Quilpie, in south-western Queensland, while his business partner sells carbon credits from the trees growing on the land.

The properties are among dozens in the so-called “golden triangle” of outback NSW and Queensland relying on the human-induced regeneration, or HIR, method of capturing carbon.

Under this method, farmers ease grazing and allow trees to regrow naturally, locking up carbon from the atmosphere in their trunks.

That carbon is then packaged as financial instruments called Australian Carbon Credit Units and sold by the tonne to polluting industries through compulsory and voluntary government schemes.

Blore manages this property in Queensland’s rugged outback.Credit: Jason South

But a recent Climate Friendly audit cut the expected capacity of Blore’s land to sustain a forest.

“I went with them [auditors] one day and they said you’ll never get mulga, it’s not the right soil type. There’s not much use looking for mulga trees where mulga trees don’t grow,” Blore says.

“All of a sudden, once you’ve signed your life away, some of these areas have been cut back by 40 to 50 per cent ... They got it wrong. They got the numbers wrong.

“I’m a proponent of carbon [projects]. If we get it right it’s going to be good for the bush, but now it just keeps getting chiselled back and chiselled back and the landholder is wearing the burden.”

He’s not the only one who has grown disillusioned. This masthead revealed last year that some large carbon companies had been accused of engaging in predatory behaviour towards traditional owners in Far North Queensland.

Now interviews with landholders, real estate agents, councillors and lawyers from Queensland and NSW to Western Australia, as well as leaked documents and correspondence, reveal deep dissatisfaction with big carbon companies running HIR schemes.

Some country people now regard the companies they’ve got into bed with as cowboys, predators or parasites. Others worry that the deals which provide a cut of all income for the carbon companies could lead to financial strife and reduce their control over land.

A bulldozer repairing tracks through mulga forest on a carbon farm near Quilpie, Queensland.Credit: Jason South

Local leaders are also concerned that rural communities are being stripped of their pastoral populations as land is destocked in favour of trees.

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Ten years ago, Queensland’s outback was gripped in a deep drought. Stock was culled, dams ran dry and graziers turned to bore water as the federal government rolled out loans to struggling communities.

It was against this backdrop that Tony Abbott’s government launched the $2.5 billion Emissions Reduction Fund to underpin carbon offset projects.

It changed Australia’s climate policy from Labor’s carbon trading scheme operating like a tax on polluters – which Abbott had successfully demonised – to public subsidies for projects to reduce or lock up emissions.

This turbocharged the cottage carbon industry. Today two of the biggest companies, Climate Friendly and GreenCollar, are each estimated to be worth about $800 million.

These companies, along with a growing number of smaller players of varying experience and quality, act as brokers between farmers who host the carbon projects, the regulator that certifies their projects, and the government or polluters who buy the credits. They usually take a cut of the proceeds.

Steve Blore runs the cattle part of the carbon farming land near Quilpie, Queensland.Credit: Jason South

In the early days, Steve Blore says, sales representatives rolled through rural Queensland spruiking carbon as easy money in tough times. They held meetings in outback pubs and knocked on doors to sign landholders up to deals that typically last 25 years (though some contracts last 100 years).

“We’d been in 10 years of drought,” Blore says. “Some people had their strides around their ankles. They were desperate. All of a sudden, this carbon came along. It sounded too good to be true.”

Blore says each company would examine the land then provide a different estimate of how many tonnes of credits, known as ACCUs, it could generate. Most landowners went with the highest offer, he says.

Many of those people, says Blore, have been disappointed that the sales pitch did not match the reality after they signed a contract with the company that predicted the highest volume of credits.

“Poor buggers, it’s human nature, you go where you’re going to get the greatest result.”

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Today, south-west Queensland has among the highest density of HIR projects in the country.

Many farmers and landowners have benefited as carbon projects delivered money to cash-strapped rural communities, as well as jobs and access to land for traditional owners. There are also potential environmental benefits as the land is relieved of the burden of running too many cattle and sheep.

Blore has removed 35,000 sheep, which eat small mulga trees to the ground in dry times, and spread the cattle more sparsely. He installed fences to lock up land and waited for the trees to grow.

He and his business partner carried out their end of the bargain, Blore says, but in recent years, things have changed.

Stung by criticism of HIR, the government’s Clean Energy Regulator introduced in 2019 stricter auditing requirements resulting in cuts to the carbon income for farmers, many of whom now say they’re not getting what they were promised.

“The [carbon companies] say the landholder has to take all the risk,” Blore says. “We call them parasites.”

It’s a common complaint. Many unhappy landholders have told this masthead they cannot reveal details of their carbon contracts after signing non-disclosure agreements.

Some say they took out bank loans based on earning estimates from carbon salesmen and are now facing bankruptcy, financial distress or forced property sales.

Critics say farmers were not equipped with enough information to understand the risks. This masthead has previously reported on calls for publicly funded independent advice to help inform consent.

“These people are farmers,” says one adviser, who could not be named because they were discussing confidential information. “They know sheep and cattle, not carbon.”

Climate Friendly said in a statement that forecasts were based on “best available information” and adjustments and audits were a “hallmark of high-integrity carbon farming”.

The company said some audits had actually increased the available credits and pointed to a survey by Charles Sturt University conducted in 2021-22 that found nearly three-quarters of farmers said carbon projects meant they were better prepared for drought.

“Evidence shows that carbon farming increases drought resilience,” the statement said.

Frank Old says the goalposts with the carbon project keep changing.Credit: Jason South

Bourke farmer Frank Old’s family signed up with GreenCollar in 2017 and changed his land management as a result.

Since then, Old says, there has been “revision after revision”.

The carbon companies and the government regulator call it “re-stratification” – another look at the forest potential of the landscape. Farmers have a different word for it.

“It’s called shrinkage,” Old says.

Meanwhile, there was no drop in the work to manage the land and protect from fire.

“Our responsibility, all the work we’re doing, has not changed one iota,” Old says. “The thing that really gets up my nose is, had we known that this was even likely to happen, we would never have put large tracts of our country in, because it would have been unviable. It’s unviable now.”

Before it took off, rhe HIR model was designed by the environment department under Labor in 2013

John Connor, chief executive of industry body the Carbon Market Institute, says more recent changes have improved integrity, and that uncertainty stems from industry immaturity.

“We’ve been trying to get best practice in there. There are unders and overs. There are certainly some who are getting more abatement than was initially expected.”

Old says difficulty in getting information from GreenCollar, the government or the regulator about rule changes has fuelled frustration.

“GreenCollar did a marvellous job of pulling the wool over the government’s eyes. Marvellous,” Old says.

“The Clean Energy Regulator was happy to pay us in the earlier years; now they’ve decided it doesn’t stand the pub test. How wrong did they get it in the first place? Is it the landholders’ sole responsibility to wear that?

Frank Old and son Lincoln on their property near Bourke, NSW.Credit: Jason South

“If I was counting sheep, I know what I’m doing. But if I’m counting ACCUs it’s a different kettle of fish.”

Both Frank Old and Steve Blore think they are bearing a disproportionate burden and farmers need a stronger voice.

“We’ve already kept our end of the bargain, you blokes haven’t,” Old says. “You blokes have changed the goalposts halfway through the game.”

GreenCollar strongly defended its processes and provided letters sent to some farmers explaining the need for audits.

“Modelled forecasts and estimates about how regeneration will occur are exactly that – estimates,” GreenCollar said in a statement. “What actually occurs on the ground needs to be carefully monitored and tested. If areas are not keeping up, something needs to be adjusted.”

GreenCollar acknowledges that the past couple of years have been “periods of slow progress” after scientific questioning of the scheme prompted reviews, audits and new legislation. That had led to delays and changes to projects.

“We are aware that some individuals have, at times, been frustrated with how long it takes.”

Overall, though, GreenCollar said it supported “evolutionary improvements” to the scheme, arguing they were “a realistic expectation of a maturing industry”.

Clean Energy Regulator head Carl Binning says change has been necessary to maintain integrity.

“As the projects mature, as vegetation grows, the outcome becomes more certain. We are not in the business of fettering the decisions that landholders make, but they do need to be aware of the risks that they take,” he said.

“And like any business, carbon sequestration and the generation of carbon sequestration is not a riskless activity.”

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For farmers, that can be painful. This masthead interviewed a West Australian grazier who said he had to sell properties to avoid bankruptcy after securing loans based on a carbon company’s unmet income estimates.

The project contract, obtained by this masthead, included clauses that lawyers have described as restrictive – including an “umbrella term” that gives the carbon company exclusive control over the sale, timing and price of carbon credits.

One person familiar with the situation, who could not be named because they were discussing confidential information, said the company involved had refused to sell the credits, which would have released much-needed cash to the landholder.

“I don’t think there’s a commodity in Australia where the owner of the land has no control over the sale of that commodity,” said the person. “I find it astounding that no one has spoken up about this.”

Australian National University Associate Professor Sarah Milne spent three months in the Quilpie region of Queensland in mid-2024 measuring the social impacts of the industry and found the companies were the leading source of grief.

“There are regulatory gaps,” Milne says. “They are all profit-making, private actors. There’s an industry code of conduct, but it’s voluntary and comes from [industry body] the Carbon Market Institute.

“They should be thinking about community consultation and social licence and sharing the benefits, that’s what needed here.”

John Connor, the institute’s chief executive, says profitability is not a bad thing: it drives investment in environmental solutions. And while there are no plans to make the code of conduct mandatory, he’s confident it’s making a difference.

As for whether people had been misled, Connor said some carbon company practices were “robust”, but he defended them.

“They are business people,” Connor said. “They’ve been trying to get business.”

Consultant Jason West has spoken with dozens of pastoralists in Western Australia. In a LinkedIn post in April, he wrote that one of his main takeaways was “frustration with carbon developers”.

“Easily the most vocal feedback to me is the lack of transparency, engagement, and service by carbon developers with pastoralists,” West wrote.

“Not surprisingly, the carbon sign-up race over the last five years [in WA] has seen many promises not fulfilled by developers and/or contracts with pastoralists that are prohibitive and unbalanced in terms of risk and cost.”

These critics argue that landowners reduce their stock and invest in fencing and other changes expecting income, and if the income does not eventuate, the farmers alone bear that risk.

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Yarning around the barbecue on the verandah with Steve Blore and his farmhands one warm night in November, talk turns to the number of properties in the Quilpie area where virtually nobody now lives.

Cattle on the carbon farm Blore manages.Credit: Jason South

They’ve taken the carbon money and gone, says one of the farmhands as he waits for his steak.

One neighbouring property is 405,000 hectares “and it’s only got one bloke on it” – a caretaker. Meanwhile, the cattle had turned feral, and bushfire management was not being done, the farmhand claimed.

Murweh Shire Mayor Shaun Radnedge worries about this too. As a result, his council now charges higher rates on land with carbon projects.

Shaun Radnedge: Butcher and mayor of the Shire of Murweh.Credit: Jason South

“They [carbon companies] weren’t happy … [But] those middlemen, the brokers, should be the ones managing pests, weeds and fire management. That’s got to be factored into the contracts.”

In Paroo, the neighbouring outback council in Queensland’s south-west, Mayor Suzette Beresford also worries about communities breaking down and the lack of information that’s publicly available due to confidentiality clauses in carbon contracts.

“Around 40 per cent of our shire is now under carbon farming,” Beresford says. “We’ve seen loss of population in our rural areas. That has a flow-on loss to business, loss of volunteers, people who used to support the local gym, carnival, pony club, tennis club.

“The money that comes from the ACCUs, the income, doesn’t come near our local economy. It goes to absentee landlords.”

Suzette Beresford, the mayor of Paroo Shire, with the Cunnamulla Fella statue in Cunnamulla.Credit: Jason South

Beresford wants the Queensland state government to declare carbon farming a land use so at least the shire can see who owns the property and how the land is being used.

A recent report commissioned by the shires found it difficult to disentangle the effect of carbon projects from broader rural decline. But it found the carbon companies often had “opaque corporate structures”. And: “Unsurprisingly, ‘absentee landholders’ were difficult to contact.”

‘Parasite on your property’

While some say the potential income from carbon has sent the price of land in prime carbon farming territory rocketing, others complain that the opaque business structures and focus on confidentiality have driven their property’s value down.

Jesse Moody, whose family was among those who signed with company Select Carbon in the midst of the Queensland drought a decade ago, says that his family property used to be worth $6 million but in October it was valued at $1.5 million – a fact he attributed to the carbon contract.

“If I had my time again, I would never have let them onto the land,” he says. “Someone has to call them out.”

Select Carbon declined to comment on the circumstances of individuals.

One landholder in regional NSW, who did not want to be identified for fear of reducing the value of his property, had tried to sell up but buyers were turned off by the carbon contract that restricted the land use.

“To cut a long story short, it’s allowing a parasite onto your property,” says the landholder, “which then inadvertently allows the greater parasite, the state, to be locked onto your land.”

“I’ve seen some egregious contracts with farmers,” said a leading industry source who could not be named because they were discussing confidential information.

An agent in regional NSW also had to take two properties off the market due to carbon project uncertainty and opposition from carbon companies to releasing information to potential buyers.

“Halfway through the marketing campaign we had a real issue with the project proponent sharing information,” says the agent, who cannot be named because they were discussing confidential information. Then the company reduced the original forecast for carbon credits that could be claimed.

The industry spokesman, John Connor, said he had not heard of these issues.

Climate Friendly said it acts promptly when asked for information from real estate agents – though it could not provide information when a property was off the market.

Back in Quilpie, Steve Blore stresses there is merit to carbon farming. He says it brings money to the land and creates jobs, income and access to land for traditional owners. But he wants landholders to have more rights, and says the regulator should take a bigger role overseeing the carbon companies.

If the carbon company overestimated the potential of the land to produce credits at the start, he says, the regulator should “right the wrong”.

“If you’re not happy with one [company], you should be able to change. You’re stuck with them for 25 years. It’s got to be fair,” Blore says.

“In these deals there’s three parties, but there’s only one party that actually has skin in the game, and that’s us, the landowners.”

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