Conservation groups have accused Woodside Energy of being “grossly negligent” over its decision to abandon key gas emissions and clean energy investment targets.
Musicians, performers and other artists may worry that being too political will alienate their audiences. But polling shows that audiences are far more likely to take action if their favourite Australian artists invite them to.
The latest greenhouse gas emissions data for the March 2026 quarter were released on Friday - as ever with no fanfare or advance notice - by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water (DCCEEW). They showed that in the past year, Australia’s annual greenhouse gas emissions fell 1.6%.
Giving carbon credits to state governments for protecting native forests is neoliberalism gone mad. Yet, on 15 September, the federal Senate will vote on a Coalition motion to disallow a wonky-sounding regulation known as the Improved Native Forest Management Method, or ‘INFM Method’, which does precisely that. If the Method survives the vote, future state governments will not likely unilaterally protect native public forests ever again.
Methods are legislative instruments made by the Commonwealth under the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme. They set the detailed rules by which proponents of projects that avoid greenhouse gas emissions or remove carbon from the atmosphere can receive carbon credits (ACCUs) from the federal Government. Those credits are valuable because they can be sold to fossil fuel companies and other large emitters under Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism climate policy to purportedly “offset” their own pollution.
Dozens of these methods have already been made, enabling carbon credits to be issued for everything from “Avoided Deforestation” to “Animal Effluent Management”. Integrity problems with the most widely used methods, and the deeper flaw in the idea that project-based carbon credits can undo the harm caused by extracting and burning fossil fuels, have been extensively documented.
The INFM Method has sparked particular controversy because it will enable credits to be issued to the NSW Minns Labor Government for its establishment of the Great Koala National Park—something that the NSW Labor Party promised unconditionally to do at every state election since 2015. Because of these promises, the Park would likely have been established “in the ordinary course of events” and would therefore violate the “additionality” requirement in the ACCU Scheme’s own Offsets Integrity Standards.
These concerns are entirely legitimate, but the INFM Method is uniquely problematic for another, less-appreciated reason: it is the first method that would allow state governments to generate carbon credits for state-level climate policy decisions. This sets a dangerous precedent because it incentivises state governments to withhold climate policy measures and instead invest in gaming the ACCU Scheme with a view to gaining financially valuable carbon credits for those policies.
This is exactly what the Minns Government did. Once it realised that it could turn the Koala Park’s creation into a new revenue stream, it delayed establishing the Park and set about developing the INFM Method and shepherding it through the federal regulatory process that will reach its conclusion with the Senate vote on 15 September.
If the Method is allowed to stand, it is highly unlikely a future state government would ever again unilaterally protect native public forests, since they could always claim they wouldn’t have done so without the INFM Method. And if their circumstances didn’t fit the Method, they always have the option of developing a new one that does.
Quality research, analysis, explainers and factchecks from experts you can trust.
In fact, the INFM Method raises the spectre that just about any state government climate policy might be delayed until the state can engineer a new method by which the federal government could grant it ACCUs for enacting that policy.
It’s already happening. In a recent NSW Legislative Council budget estimates hearing(p.39), Treasurer Daniel Mookhey confirmed that if the INFM Method were to stand, he would have the NSW Treasury model the potential for other state landholders to use it to generate carbon credits. He was also enthusiastic about state governments being ACCU-project proponents, and open to further methods being developed to facilitate this.
As Bob Debus, former NSW Environment Minister, recently wrote about the NSW Government: “It has a direct interest in optimistic assumptions that maximise ACCU volumes and revenue”. Other states are in the same position and will be watching the fate of the INFM Method closely.
So, when federal senators weigh up how to vote, they should ask themselves this question: if the Method is allowed to stand, why would a cash-strapped state government ever again unilaterally enact climate policy, rather than waiting until they can generate Commonwealth-issued carbon credits for doing so?
If the Senate doesn’t take a principled stand, state climate policy will become nothing but a giant ACCU-generating machine, fuelling the fossil fuel industry’s ceaseless expansion.
Dr Fergus Green is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy, University College London and an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. He is the co-author and author, respectively, of two recent reports for The Australia Institute concerning the problems with Australia’s carbon offsets scheme in general and the problems with the INFM Method in particular.
