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

Hemp does. Hemp sequestrates more, but then you have got the problem of what happens in winter. The minister may have anticipated this, but the Green carbon report, from Professor Mackey at the Australian National University, shows that the tall eucalypt forests of the central highlands of Victoria have an uptake of some 20 times the figure used by the Australian Greenhouse Office. They contain massive amounts of carbon and they are holding that back against greenhouse gas emission into the atmosphere. But under federal government authority they are being logged and burnt at a prodigious rate. It is the same for tall forests in Tasmania and southern New South Wales.

The minister just mentioned voluntary action being accredited. I ask: what is the government’s proposal where the destruction of these forests ceases? What is the accreditation that is going to be given to the state or private authorities that protect such massive carbon banks—the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere—from being turned into massive tonnes of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? And what price does the minister think will be in play in protecting those great carbon banks?