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

When the minister waves her hand and dismisses something as serious as this as ‘political’, that there is no substantial argument to it, she is creating a gross misrepresentation of her own intelligence. She knows full well that this is an egregious dereliction of duty by serial governments, with the Rudd government now at the helm.

I asked whether it was right that the Kyoto process—and the minister has said this herself, so she knows it is right—said that as of 31 December 1989 people who logged forests were not going to be accredited with what grew on the places they logged, because that is absurd. It is absurd to give them credit for the plantation that is growing there, which will never get back the carbon and methane that has been lost out of the original, natural forest. Now suddenly in this legislation all those people who were told, ‘You cannot do that because it would be wrong; it would be an immoral accounting trick,’ are being told, ‘We’re going to reward you.’ The coalition may have come in and convinced the government that is a good thing. One should not be surprised, because the logging lobby, the National Association of Forest Industries, with its headquarters just across the road from this parliament has a huge influence on government and the coalition through the CFMEU, which has led to this absurd outcome.

The question I am asking is: what on earth is going to prevent a future government saying, 20 years down the line, ‘This legislation says you can’t get credited for destruction of forests and woodlands that occurred after 31 December 2008.’ What on earth is going to prevent a future Labor or coalition government saying, ‘We’ll ignore that and we’ll count that destruction of forests as being a good thing; we’ll ignore the greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere from that destruction of forests but reward the forest destroyers for the much smaller amount of carbon created through the plantation forests,’ never taking account of the permanent loss of biodiversity that has occurred? I have two direct questions here which the minister might answer. Is the government allowing avoided deforestation credits in this program? Is it allowing offset credits for regrowth on deforested land? I think the minister has already said yes to the second question.