AGRICULTURE'S emissions could still be included in an emissions trading scheme, experts have warned.
And the shift in the Liberal Party which saw Tony Abbott elected leader and the Federal Government's emissions trading scheme defeated could be the catalyst for their inclusion.
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The Government has evaded requests for a guarantee agricultural emissions will never be included in the scheme.
Amendments to the scheme negotiated by the then-Turnbull opposition had indefinitely excluded farm emissions and brokered several other wins for agriculture.
However the Bill was defeated by the Abbott opposition and senior coalition figures have said the same bill will be voted down in February.
This would give Labor the trigger for a double dissolution election.
Australian National University Centre for Climate Policy Associate Director Andrew McIntosh said the Government could walk away from the exclusion if it won control of both houses.
However he predicted amendments about reforestation and avoiding deforestation would be retained.
Under the sequestration amendments, farmers will be paid for allowing land cleared after 1990 to regrow; for maintaining vegetation they have the right to clear; and could be paid for sequestration on grazing or cropping land without suffering the financial cost if a natural event such as bushfire releases the carbon.
"I was laughing at the fact the Nats were going bananas at (the amended CPRS) ... if you're a farmer, it's a real boon," Mr McIntosh said.
Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce said it was "of course" a risk that Labor could remove the amendments but that the Government could have done so later anyway.
National Farmers' Federation chief executive Ben Fargher said the peak farm body was working on the basis the amendments were now Government policy, but admitted "anything is possible post-February".
Climate change minister Penny Wong has said Labor would take the same amendments to Parliament again in February but her office did not respond to requests for a guarantee the amendments would stay.
