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

Yes, and nor has the minister, nor the Rudd government nor the Prime Minister himself, allowed there at any time to be entertainment of the Howard government policy—now taken on 100 per cent by the Rudd government—of not just allowing but certifying the destruction of the biggest living carbon banks on land in Australia primarily for export woodchips to be sent to Japan where, primarily, they are used as an energy source for heating and electricity and a by-product is making paper.

We are in this extraordinary position where climate change is agreed by government to be—and the Prime Minister said this just last week—a menace that is hanging over the country, its children and its grandchildren. It is an existential crisis that we face, but the government is authorising the destruction of the biggest hedge against climate change that nature gives us in Australia. It is not just an absurdity but it is an irreconcilable piece of irresponsibility by this government. The minister volunteered that there will be voluntary consideration of projects which have this effect. She was responding to Senator Joyce talking about summer grasses, but I am talking about an already in place hedge against climate change which is massive—the biggest natural one that we know of on land in Australia—and I just want to know if the minister has done the arithmetic on the research which shows what the carbon would be worth if landowners—let us go to private landowners outside the regional forest agreement—want to protect their tall eucalypt forests or rainforests from the option of logging? What is the carbon market going to offer those landholders, and what incentive is the government going to give to landholders in private forests—if governments cannot do it themselves in state owned forests—to forbear logging and burning and converting into massive greenhouse gas emissions the natural forests of Australia?