Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The minister keeps tabling answers, but we still do not have the high-resolution maps that state governments are using, supposedly, to substantiate what is being said. To date, I do not think there is anywhere anyone can go. There are so many people who have been asking to see this information, this data, and it is simply not there. No state government, landholder or parliamentarian can actually interrogate this information that the government claims is there in relation to the maps and where the carbon is on the ground, where the Kyoto forests are and where the deforestation is.

I think it is about time that we had some verification and got hold of some information that makes sense and that we know is true. If we are going to a scheme that expands what we already have—that starts to give credits for avoided deforestation and establishes a national carbon offset standard for enhanced forest management and credits for regrowth forest on deforested land—we want to be able to see the maps of the deforested land right now so we know what we are dealing with. At the moment we cannot get the high-resolution maps to look at it. We keep getting told one thing or another, but I think it is only a matter of time before the international community say to Australia: ‘Let us look at the maps. Let’s actually have a look and see where these Kyoto forests are and where your avoided deforestation claims are going to come from.’ There is a long way to go before we get the ‘robust methodologies’ that the minister is talking about.

We have been told about national carbon offset standards. Presumably, if we are going to provide credits for regrowth forests on deforested land as of 31 December 2008 we have to have maps across Australia for what was forested or not forested at the end of December last year, and in a resolution sufficiently high for people to be able to look at them and say, ‘Yes, that’s right,’ or ‘No, that’s not right.’ Minister, when are we going to get the maps, even for 31 December last year as the baseline, that you were telling Senator Brown and the whole country about in terms of being able to sit down and say, ‘That’s where the forests are now’?