David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This bill, the Illegal Logging Prohibition Amendment (Strengthening Measures to Prevent Illegal Timber Trade) Bill 2024, is an important one, but I would like to highlight that this is a process that the former government started when we were in the government benches. At the last election, the Labor Party agreed to and carbon copied the coalition's forestry policies. We don't mind plagiarism, but we want that to be on the record. All the things that have been said and done since the election are what have me concerned about illegal logging.

We all know about orangutans. We all know about palm oil plantations in tropical parts of the world with remnant tropical vegetation. We've all heard stories about Brazil and other countries in South America; about our near neighbours to the north of us, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia; and other places. There are international standards for sustainable timber, but unfortunately most of what I would class as illegal is, technically, not illegal. Currently in Queensland they're given a leave pass to destroy native remnant vegetation, all with the aim of trying to save the world by building 600,000 hectares of haulage roads and 110 renewable energy projects down the Great Dividing Range. This is adjacent to and disrupting what the last speaker mentioned: linking up national parks so there are continuous areas. Well, guess what? The wind industry and the solar farm industry have bought a lot of that.

There is a regulation that says you can just go to the local council if it's a renewable energy project. You don't even have to put it before the council. Under that regulation, a project can get approved by the CEO of a council. There is no environmental impact study required. It's strange and outrageous. Yes, I can hear you all shouting. That's because it is outrageous.

If you want to put new pasture in your paddocks to grow protein, crops or anything like that, you can be taken to court under the environmental laws in New South Wales and in many states. Yet there is a leave pass being given to the environmental vandals who are carpetbagging the country and who are getting paid huge, upfront, large generation certificates and renewable energy certificates. Then they get a leave pass to ignore the environmental guidelines that the whole country has to deal with. It's outrageous, and it's been happening for too long.

What is happening in Queensland is outrageous. All 110 of these projects have been recorded visually and cartographically by a trained cartographer, Steven Nowakowski, who was a one-time Greens candidate and is an avid environmentalist. The environmental footprint of the renewable rollout is actually destroying way more than any illegal logging in Australia is. To put things in perspective: in native forestry in Australia there are around 132 million hectares of native forest area, and only 0.06 per cent of this area—the equivalent of six trees out of every 10,000 trees—is harvested annually from native forests. In my own state, New South Wales has 9.5 million hectares of native forest. Only 20,000 hectares of that 9.5 million hectares of native forest is harvested. That's 0.2 per cent. There are three hectares of national park for every one hectare of state forest.

The tragedy is that we are importing timber from these tropical countries that don't have a regulated forestry industry that is sustainable. In forestry in Australia it isn't deforestation. Foresters plant trees. A lot of the native forest that is cleared has so much seed burden in the soil that, when they selectively harvest, the soil movement leads to spontaneous regeneration. I have lived amongst native forest. I have cycled through native forest in my own area. The first time I saw a coupe being cleared, about 1½ kilometres from my home, I was shocked because I hadn't been in a forestry area—I'm talking about 33 or more years ago. I was absolutely shocked. I thought: 'Oh, my God! Now I know what the Greens are going on about! I'm going to sign up.' But I went into the state forestry department, and they sat me down and taught me all about—

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