Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Forests provide a range of vital environmental services, including carbon sequestration, biodiversity preservation, temperature regulation, soil conservation and water regulation and conservation. Illegal logging destroys homes, endangers our water supply, endangers species and affects culture. Despite its active plantation timber industry Australia has in recent years imported increasing amounts of timber, to the value of approximately $6.9 billion in 2022-23. We import timber from 135 countries, the top five being China, New Zealand, Indonesia, Germany and Malaysia. The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry recently noted that as much as 10 per cent of our annual timber and wood based imports could be illegally logged timber. That trade in illegal imports globally reduces the price of legal timber, such as in our own plantation stock, by as much as seven to 16 per cent.

We already have a regulatory framework aimed at reducing the harmful environmental, social and economic impacts of illegal logging. The Illegal Logging Prohibition Act 2012 and its regulations apply to both the import into this country of raw and processed timber products and the processing of domestically grown raw logs. They require importers and processors to conduct a structured risk assessment process before importing a regulated timber product or processing domestically grown raw logs.

Several reviews of Australia's Timber Legality Framework have been conducted over the last decade, and this bill, the Illegal Logging Prohibition Amendment (Strengthening Measures to Prevent Illegal Timber Trade) Bill 2024, will implement improvements identified as needed in two of those: the Statutory review of the Illegal Logging Prohibition Act 2012 and the Sunsetting review of the Illegal Logging Prohibition Regulation 2012. I note the statutory review conducted by the then Department of Agriculture and Water Resources found that 'determining the extent to which the act has achieved the government's policy objectives remains challenging'. This was because 'there was limited concrete data available to measure the impact of the act'. In fact, that review relied largely on internal departmental data—including the compliance assessments—on trade data, on information obtained in previous reviews and even on anecdotal evidence.

The subsequent sunsetting review of the regulation found that as much as 40 per cent of imported timber is misrepresented in terms of both its species and its origin and that the department's reliance on desktop audits for compliance action is both inefficient and ineffective. It found that the legislative framework does not allow for emerging technical solutions and that our Timber Legality Framework lags behind best practice developments in other jurisdictions. The sunsetting of those regulations has now been deferred until 1 April 2025, and we don't as yet have a draft of the proposed replacement regulations.

Those matters are of concern but my interest in this bill relates primarily to section 15, which relates to the processing of domestically grown but illegally logged raw logs. The sad fact is while there are clearly significant issues with illegal logging internationally this issue is a big problem domestically too, and there is a reason why there are fewer swift parrots in this world than orangutans.

In my home state of Victoria, logging is theoretically regulated by the Code of Practice for Timber Production 2014. However, between 2009 and 2017 more than 300 breaches of this code were submitted to the forest regulator within the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, and not a single breach was prosecuted. In 2019 an independent report into DELWP's failure to monitor or regulate logging found that it had neither the capacity nor the capability to achieve its objectives. Those violations of the law led to numerous court cases in which local community groups have prosecuted the Victorian government's logging agency, VicForests, for illegal logging. The Victorian government's shameful and quixotic response has been to repeatedly change the timber production code to make it harder for communities to take legal action against VicForests. Further, in response to local communities surveying for threatened species, and for illegal logging within native forests, and for their protests within logging coupes, the Victorian government has enacted laws that threaten community members with a $21,000 fine or 12 months in jail.

Communities keep fighting back. In October 2022, Warburton Environment Inc. won a landmark Supreme Court Case against VicForests over the agency's failure to protect tree geebungs from logging. Also in 2022, the Victorian Supreme Court found that VicForests broke the law in failing to protect endangered gliders when logging in Gippsland and in central Victoria. In late 2023 the Victorian Supreme Court ordered VicForests to halt salvage logging in the Wombat State Forest after a community group alleged that VicForests had failed to survey appropriately for threatened species. VicForests had used a computer program with habitat distribution models. It had used a computer program to survey for threatened species. It argued in court that a desktop analysis should suffice in determining the presence or absence of endangered species in forests. In this, as in other matters, VicForests has misled the public.

Just yesterday, The Age reported on the death of an endangered greater glider on a Victorian Department of Environment tree-felling site in the Yarra Ranges National Park. Forest Fire Management Victoria has been removing what it claims are hazardous trees in that national park to maintain a strategic fuel break. On 6 May, Matt Ruchel, the Executive Director of the Victorian National Parks Association, warned the fire management agency. He warned the department's secretary, and the federal and state ministers' offices, about sightings of greater gliders and Leadbeater's possums in trees identified for removal.

The Victorian state government, through its agent, VicForests, is acting in active contravention of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. That act requires the referral, assessment and approval of all operations likely to have significant impacts on listed threatened species. Yesterday, in that coupe, an endangered greater glider was found dead as a direct result of the neglect of VicForests. I call today on the federal Minister for the Environment and Water to act immediately to halt the illegal actions of VicForests and to hold the Victorian Minister for Environment to account for these activities.

The Victorian government officially ended harvesting of our state forests on 1 January 2024. This announcement was welcome, but it was quite misleading. While logging operations which were part of the state's timber release plan have come to an end, this did not apply to logging operations under the timber utilisation plan. That plan relates to logging coupes in the western defined forest area, most of which expire in June 2024, but there is as yet no clarity for what happens to those areas after June. Despite the fact that native forest logging has officially ceased during the first half of this year, VicForests has continued to remove large logs from the Wombat State Forest under the guise of debris cleanup or salvage logging, and it has allegedly continued to sell those logs via its vehicle, Forest Fire Management Victoria.

How the Victorian state government plans to manage forests after VicForests ceases to exist on 1 June is unclear. The plan for the employees of VicForests is unknown. It is utterly unclear how we are going to continue to monitor for illegal monitoring in our native forests after that date. What we should do, what we could do, is clear: we should ban the sale of all timber cut as part of salvaged logging or debris cleanup in native forests. There should be no market for wood obtained in the process of logging for fire breaks and other so-called fire protection measures. Only by abolishing those markets altogether can we stop the exploitation and abuse of the existing rules around timber.

In 2021 the Victorian state government pledged a commitment to establish three new national parks which would legally protect the central-west areas of Victoria from future natural resource exploitation. Those parks are not due to be legalised until 2030. They include the Wombat-Lerderderg National Park, the Pyrenees and the Mount Buangor National Park. Until those parks are legalised, logging of those state forests can continue.

I call on the state government to immediately enact the Victorian forest plan for industry transition, which includes diverting a proportion of commercial timber plantations from export to support our local industry, thereby ensuring the sustainable local production of high-grade timber products. There will be many retraining and other work opportunities and replanting programs for logged areas. These should include programs to address soil erosion, protect our water catchments and monitor the health of our forests. We could improve our plantation wood production so that, instead of exporting 97 per cent of our plantation eucalypt pulp logs, we process them on country, creating Australian jobs.

The Australian government also needs to work with the Victorian state government to establish the proposed Great Forest National Park, thereby protecting and expanding the habitat of many endangered species and linking isolated forest reserves. The governments should collectively bring forward and prioritise the formation of those three new national parks.

At the same time, it makes sense to better fund and promote tourism, education, cultural awareness and management programs relating to Victoria's magnificent native forests, including funding for jobs in environmental protection and forest restoration in collaboration with First Nations people. Those programs could support positive alternatives, such a small-scale farm industry and sustainable social enterprises like the CERES Fair Wood scheme.

This act previously required that a statutory review be undertaken after five years of the legislation. This was in a section that will be repealed by this bill but hasn't been replaced with any further requirements for regular statutory reviews of the act's operation and effectiveness. Rather, the bill suggests that the secretary could, at his or her discretion, publish reports about the operation of this act—or could not, as the case might be.

This contrasts pretty starkly with the frameworks for the control of illegal logging in other jurisdictions. In the EU, timber regulation is subject to six-yearly reviews and requires the publication of a biannual report on the application of the regulation based on information provided by the member states. In Canada, an annual report on infrastructure administration of the relevant act and a yearly review of enforcement provisions have to be tabled in parliament.

The EIA and CIEL have also recommended that the government publish an annual report of compliance activities, due diligence checks and any other relevant enforcement actions, including fines, court cases and audits, as well as the publication of substantiated third-party concerns. Given particularly that the statutory report we've already seen identified high levels of noncompliance with the previous iteration of this legislation, and given the notable, frequent and egregious violations of this legislation domestically, the legislation has to be accompanied by regular monitoring and by transparent reporting of its effectiveness.

Victorians deserve clarity about the state and federal government's plans for the management of native forests in our state. We need to know and deserve to know that the regulatory framework around domestic timber is such that illegally logged timber will be identified and that persons removing timber illegally from protected areas will be dealt with appropriately. We need to know that this legislation will be subjected to appropriate statutory review sufficient to provide reassurance regarding compliance, due diligence and responses to concerns of interested third parties.

I will be moving an amendment to this bill during its consideration in detail stage in order to push the government further on action in this area, with an aim of appropriate review of this legislation at reasonable periods. I signal to the government my commitment to further action in this area.

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