Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, would like to make a contribution on the minister’s response to the question by the Greens. It gives me a good opportunity to briefly discuss this. I suppose I agree with Senator Brown in the context that I am not sure that the minister really is across what is going on in this portfolio with respect to sequestration of carbon in forests and timber products. I also note that Senator Brown is only prepared to tell half of the story when it comes to this issue. I have been very interested over the last few months in the conduct of the inquiry into climate change and in discussions that I have had on the measurement of carbon in forests and sequestration of carbon in solid timber products. Senator Brown, when he talks about the release of carbon dioxide from the harvesting of native forest, talks about it in the context of the current Kyoto accounting rules, where the assumption is that when you harvest a tree all of the carbon contained in that tree is emitted immediately, including the carbon in the roots. So, if you harvest a tree, the assumption for the current Kyoto accounting purposes is—