Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

All I can say is that it must be a miserable existence to be a Green because you can never make them happy. Here we are today, the government has announced a $200 million scheme to ensure that we do something to preserve tropical forests in this region, in the Asia-Pacific, to ensure that we minimise the deforestation and that we make our contribution to sustainable and manageable forestry to do our bit to end illegal logging, and all the Greens can do is get up and complain. I feel sorry for the Greens that their lives are so miserable that they are never able to see any good in anything that anybody else does.

I think the Greens should have stood up today and applauded the government for making an investment of $200 million in this very exciting and very important initiative, a global action on forest and climate change package, which is our demonstrable contribution to ensuring that we do our bit to reduce the CO emissions that are occurring as a result of deforestation. As Senator Milne perhaps knows, deforestation accounts for some 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, so this is a significant and major announcement on our part. It is very pleasing for me, as the finance minister of this great country, to observe that we are in a financial position to make these sorts of international commitments as a result of our successful management of the Australian economy. Unlike many economies in the world which are running deficits and not doing well at all, we are able to make a substantial investment of this kind in reducing the deforestation in our region, most particularly in Indonesia. I call on the Greens to get up and applaud a great investment by the Australian government instead of whingeing, complaining and never being happy,