NSW Farmers, Media Release, 2 July 2026

The announcement last week from the Clean Energy Regulator that the Improved Native Forest Management Method (INFM) is now available under the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme, flies in the face of good resource management. It will allow state governments to earn Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) by voluntarily ceasing planned harvesting in defined areas of multiple-use public native forests.

However, as NSW Farmers President Xavier Martin pointed out, there’s a double standard at play.

“The INFM method is being used to bank credits for forests already targeted for protection – yet farmers have been blocked from banking carbon credits for not clearing land they may otherwise have cleared.”

“If it is good enough for government, it is good enough for farmers,” said Mr Martin.

NSW Farmers is concerned that this new methodology is flawed, and does not meet the standards for Additionality, that is reducing emissions by additional actions which must be real and measurable. Instead, it is calculating emissions reductions on carbon that is already stored in the forest, or stored in construction material, or in replacement regrowth, and timber imports will increase to replace our sustainable high value timber. Therefore there is no additionality and the Association supports calls for an independent assessment of the material considered by the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee to have reached this decision.

“This flawed carbon accounting methodology is also being used to underpin the environmental rationale for the Great Koala National Park’s (GKNP), despite experts identifying serious integrity problems in the methodology,” noted Mr Martin.

To use carbon credits as a way of funding ever more national parks, such as the proposed GKNP, is poorly conceived. What has received little public scrutiny is the fact that the NSW Government will earn ACCU revenue for only 15 years, after which NSW taxpayers will be responsible for funding GKNP management for the remaining 85 years of the 100-year permanence obligation.

“The footprint of the proposed GKNP represents a massive overreach and there has been no proper, in-depth consultation with impacted landholders whose perpetual leases have been forcibly acquired or on what it will mean for farmers and regional communities.

“The damage done to private landholders and their businesses is unacceptable and the projected outcomes for koala conservation are wild speculation, yet NSW taxpayers are being locked into these funding commitments for 100 years,” said Mr Martin.

NSW Farmers will continue to advocate that the GKNP be footprint be dramatically reduced and for farmers to be treated equally with public land managers when it comes to carbon credits and forestry operations.