Opposition Senator:

Opposition senator interjecting—

to the interjector on my right—

796 772 cubic metres of pulpwood—

that is, woodchip.

What we have here is a complete studied ignorance by this Rudd government. In an age of climate change, we are looking, if you accept Sir Nicholas Stern’s asseveration, at a potential price of more than $100 a tonne for the carbon stored by these forests if they are kept standing upright being released at something like $12, $14 or $16 a tonne by the Tasmanian Labor and Victorian Labor governments through the destruction of these forests. That is the royalty that will be gained from selling them into the export woodchip market. It is economically outrageous, it is environmentally outrageous, because we are talking about the destruction of prime habitat of species of Australian plants and wildlife, including rare and endangered plants and wildlife, and it is outrageous from the point of view of greenhouse gas emissions.

But then in the last paragraph comes the clincher from Minister Burke, who after two years should be on top of this portfolio but obviously does not understand it. The Senate asked:

(iv)          Whether ending native forest and woodlands removal in Australia would reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 10 to 20 per cent.

He said, in effect, ‘I have no idea.’ You will see in the document that he said that logging of native forests and woodlands, where it is measured by the government—that is, to create agricultural uses on that land—puts 77 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere each year. Shame on the Bligh government in particular, because it is the greatest creator of destruction of these woodlands, but shame also on the Northern Territory, Victorian, Tasmanian, South Australian, Western Australian and New South Wales governments. The minister went on to say:

According to the National Inventory Report 2007, the area of native forest available for harvest activities—

that is, for logging destruction—

sequestered and stored 36.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2007.

That is, in one year the area of forest now targeted for destruction under the indirect authority of the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Mr Burke, sequestered—that is, took out of the atmosphere—37 million tonnes of carbon dioxide two years ago. That is now stored in these forests. He—along with the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett, the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, and above all the Prime Minister of this country—is prepared to have these forests, which are targeted for destruction, release not only all the carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases stored over decades or centuries in the past but the 36.8 million tonnes absorbed in 2007 and end their career as a massive absorber of greenhouse gases. That is what is afoot here.

This government has legislation before the parliament that it says meets its obligations to reduce greenhouse gases. That legislation in no way deals with this outrageous dereliction of duty by the minister for forestry and the Prime Minister of this country in sending to destruction the biggest carbon banks—that is, hedges against climate change—that we have in terrestrial Australia. This document is an affront to the Senate. It is a record of studied ignorance by the Rudd government in 2009. These forests should be protected by law to prevent the greenhouse gas damage to all our futures that will come from their studied destruction by this government and the several Labor governments at state level which are involved.