Podcast: NFF president Fiona Simson joins The Australian Ag Podcast

National Farmers’ Federation president Fiona Simson joins The Australian Ag Podcast to discuss reactions to net zero safeguards and more.

Fiona Simson, president of the National Farmers’ Federation.

Farmers have thrown their support behind a socio-economic safeguard built into the Federal Government’s climate change policy.

The Australian yesterday revealed that the Productivity Commission would conduct five-year reviews assessing the economic impacts on a 2050 net-zero emissions target on rural and regional communities.

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The mechanism, demanded by Nationals MPs to garner their support of a net zero plan which Prime Minister Scott Morrison will take to crucial global climate change talks in Glasgow this weekend, was signed off by cabinet on Monday.

The first assessment in the permanent review process will be delivered in 2023.

The Nationals argued the safeguard was needed to protect regional jobs and industries who they say have borne the brunt of previous city-centric policies such as the Murray Darling Basin Plan and the sale of Telstra.

National Farmers’ Federation president Fiona Simson said a safeguard being built into the policy made “absolute sense” and would act as protection for rural and regional communities.

“In Australia, we particularly in agriculture, have freed up a lot of markets in recent years and we are absolutely supporters of free markets and level playing fields – but sometimes they have unforeseen consequences,” Ms Simson told The Australian Ag Podcast.

“We’ve certainly seen that in the water market, for example, so from my perspective it makes absolute sense.”

Ms Simson said when the NFF addressed the Nationals party room last week they raised the concept of “at least a review”. “We are talking about new science here, we are talking about new data, new technology, we need to make sure what we are doing is working and if it’s not working we actually need to stop it and start doing something else,” she said.

“Certainly we have seen some quite devastating unforeseen circumstances that have come about from other initiatives that haven’t had these review mechanisms implemented.”

Ms Simson said farmers were keen to “square the ledger” in the latest climate change policy after “carrying the load” of the Kyoto agreement in the 1990s. Then large tracts of farmland were locked up and promised compensation never made.

“What we don’t want is what happened in Kyoto in finding all these carbon credits under our soils and then selling them all off to overseas companies who may be big polluters themselves but who are willing to keep doing what they are doing just by using our carbon credits.

“We need to be cautious about that.”

Originally published as Podcast: NFF president Fiona Simson joins The Australian Ag Podcast