Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This statement from the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources is on today’s announcement by the Prime Minister of what is called a global initiative on forests and climate. It is not anything of the sort. It seeks to paint the Australian government as having taken a lead in funding the start of a program to end the massive loss of forests around the world, as called for by many people, including Sir Nicholas Stern, who is currently visiting Australia.

The amount that the government is putting up is $200 million. As Sir Nicholas Stern outlined yesterday, the amount for halfway achieving the task would be $10,000 million. In other words, this statement of global initiative is actually a two per cent commitment to get half the job done. It does nothing of the sort. This allocation of money is effectively the federal government using $200 million of taxpayers’ money to try and divert attention away from the very learned and frightening forecasts of economic as well as environmental damage which are coming to us now and which will accelerate and accumulate over the coming centuries, according to Sir Nicholas Stern, who is former Chief Economist of the World Bank.

The proposal here is to go offshore to deal with the burning of forests. But the problem is that this same government, since the last election, has put $100 million into promoting the burning of forests here in south-east Australia. The focus of attention on South-East Asia ought to have begun in south-east Australia.

Who promoted that $100 million to accelerate the woodchipping and burning of forests in south-east Australia? It was done under the signature of the Hon. John Howard, Prime Minister. That is what Gunns and others involved in the destruction of old growth forests in Australia wanted of him. There are lucrative profits to be made from exporting woodchips to Japan. They wanted it of him and they are getting it. The crass hypocrisy of the Howard government that is written into all of this is there for everybody to see. It is an astonishing effort by the Hon. John Howard, when faced with growing public restiveness about climate change, to try to buy his way into fooling the Australian public, which will not be fooled but is an active agent that deserves accolades on climate change.

The fact is that the marauding of South-East Asian forests by logging corporations and by slash-and-burn accelerated acquisition of Indigenous people’s forests for agricultural enterprises—including palm oil, which Minister Malcolm Turnbull refers to in his report—has been not only going on apace but also accelerating under the last 11 years of this government. Indeed, it has become such a huge problem that clouds of smoke have been closing Singapore and Jakarta airports and creating massive health problems. Just a year or two ago, the smoke swept down over Darwin and Northern Australia, creating newspaper headlines. What did Prime Minister Howard do then, because climate change was not so much on the agenda? Absolutely nothing.

What the Prime Minister has done in Tasmania, Victoria and south-west Western Australia is put money into those benighted forest authorities like the Lennon government and eventually into the pockets of Gunns Ltd to cut down enormous native forests—the biggest terrestrial living carbon banks in the Southern Hemisphere, which are holding back carbon and greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Some of the bigger trees are dynamited, using explosives as a means of reducing the workforce and increasing the profit line. Then, Gunns moves in and takes what woodchips it wants—more than 80 per cent, and sometimes more than 90 per cent, of the forest is extracted, but a vast amount is left there lying on the forest floor.

At the moment, we are seeing an obscene spectacle: the firebombing of these remnant forests, under the Prime Minister’s authority—his own signature, most recently applied to an amendment to the regional forest agreement this year—along with the Premier of Tasmania, Paul Lennon. They got together to do it. The remains of these tall forests are tall enough to reach up into the arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and would overtower the flagpole on this parliament. The remnants are being firebombed. That happened yesterday and is happening today and will happen tomorrow.

Yesterday, as Senator Milne pointed out this morning, 14 broadscale clear-felled logged areas in Tasmania were firebombed from helicopters or from the ground to create an intensely hot fire to eliminate and eradicate the wildlife as well as the plant life in these forests—and with that goes the destruction of the habitat of rare and endangered species. It is being done illegally. It is a breach of Commonwealth law. The penalty is $5.5 million for those who engage in it, but nothing is being done about it because this government does not observe that law. It does not uphold that law, even though a Federal Court finding before Christmas with regard to Wielangta found that it was wrong. The behaviour at Wielangta was illegal and the logging had to stop because of the destruction of the habitat of rare and endangered species.

The minister claims in his statement that, under the clean development mechanism of the Kyoto protocol, some companies are being paid to actually deforest areas to put in palm oil. It is not true. The clean development mechanism, which is part of the Kyoto protocol—which, by the way, the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources and the Prime Minister reject and will not ratify—is explicit about the need for clean development mechanism funds not to be awarded where native forests are being cleared. In fact, two per cent of the fund goes towards regrowing forests on not immediately previously deforested lands. That two per cent of the carbon credits, awarded under a CDM project allocated to help cover the costs of adaptation in countries severely affected by climate change, enables, for example, the reconstitution of forests. That protocol was entered into in 1997—10 years before this so-called world initiative announced here today.

This government should be ashamed of itself. This opposition, which supports this government in the destruction and burning of forests in Australia, should be ashamed of itself. This minister should be ashamed of himself. The shadow minister should be ashamed of himself. How can members of this Senate and this parliament when confronted with this extraordinary threat—a real one, as outlined by Sir Nicholas Stern in this city yesterday—put their heads in the sand and continue to fund the burning of the great forests of southern Australia, with the consequent injection of millions of tonnes each year of greenhouse gases and particulate matter into the atmosphere, accelerating the economic, social and environmental penalty to this nation now, to our children and to our children’s children? Just today, the government and the opposition, as if to underline their conscious complicity in going in the wrong direction, rejected an inquiry into the impact of sea levels rising in this country, with all the economic and social dislocation that will come out of that. This government should be ashamed of itself. (Time expired)