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

I rise to respond to Senator Colbeck’s analysis of these amendments to the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Bill 2010 and related bills. These amendments are to remove any view that native forest biomass can be used to generate renewable energy certificates. Yesterday Senator Colbeck mentioned that WWF Australia supported biomass energy. The report on Forestry Tasmania’s website is a WWF report, but it refers to biomass in Europe not biomass in Australia and so WWF have put out a clarifying statement which says: ‘No support for biomass burning of native forests’. Let us make it very clear that the European situation is quite different from the situation here in Australia and WWF do not support burning of native forests for biomass in Australia.

Senator Colbeck really let the cat out of the bag yesterday when he talked about the extent to which the Tasmanian logging industry is depending on getting renewable energy certificates as a lifeline for logging native forests. He said here that he would expect they would get something like 3,000 gigawatt hours, but in Forestry Tasmania’s own so-called fact sheet it says that it wants to build a 25-megawatt biomass plant at Southwood and that would generate 160,000 renewable energy certificates a year. So there is a full expectation that they would be getting RECs from their 25-megawatt biomass plant at Southwood.

We have this ludicrous situation where we are logging native forests without the emissions from those native forests being counted because the Kyoto accounting does not require it. So they log the carbon stores, the most important carbon stores. If the government really wanted to move on climate change then it would protect the carbon stores and it would support this amendment to get rid of any possibility that you can log a native forest and use the woodchips to go into a biomass furnace.

What this is going to come down to is the definition of ‘waste’, and that is why it is important to rule it out right now. Thirty years ago, the logging industry argued that the waste from sawmilling would be used as woodchips—that it would merely be the waste; it would not be the predominant industry, just the waste—and that the woodchips would be sent overseas. The upshot was that the native sawmilling industry was overtaken by the plantation sawmilling industry in 1993-94 and completely displaced in the market, and the woodchip industry has been the major driver of native forest logging ever since. The woodchip industry has now collapsed and is looking for a make-work program to continue logging native forests when it needs to get out of native forests and downstream the plantation estate.

At the same time as the government is considering giving a further subsidy to native forest logging via this process, you have a 100 per cent tax deduction on the other side for establishing carbon sink forests. So we now have this ridiculous logic of subsidising logging established carbon stores, subsidising the establishment of carbon sinks over on the other side, subsidising managed investment schemes on the other side, and having photographs taken of putting in a few seedlings as some kind of carbon offset under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, whilst facilitating the logging of the great carbon stores. This is a ridiculous scenario in a climate sense. We should have full carbon accounting. We should have a recognition of the carbon stores. And now is the time to do it, because there is not a single native forest logging industry player around the country who can argue at the moment that there is any profitability, that there is any market, for logging native forests.

The point at which you have no market is the point at which you have opportunities. With this not being removed from the renewable energy target, the logging industry are going to make a pre-emptive strike to maintain this industry way beyond its use-by date via a government subsidy, effectively. It is not just the Southwood mill in Tasmania, the one proposed for Smithton, the Gunns one or those at Orbost and Eden; there is also a proposition for another one in Western Australia. Some 20 mills are on the agenda around the country. On television last week the proponent of the native forest burning furnace at Eden said that they were depending on renewable energy certificates for 50 per cent of their revenue—50 per cent. This is the government funded destruction of native forests, of biodiversity and of wildlife at a time when we have more and more species on the lists of not only threatened species but, in some cases, critically endangered species.

How is this justifiable? When Australia argues that we have the capacity to do full carbon accounting, why are we in the RET negotiations sticking with the old Kyoto accounting? I simply do not understand that and I hope that the minister can explain to me: since we say that we can do full carbon accounting in Australia, why aren’t we arguing for that in international negotiations? Why are we sticking with the Kyoto definition which does not require us to account for the emissions from the logging of native forests? This is a huge loophole and a big problem. So I urge the Senate to recognise that now is the opportunity. If you do not remove this from the renewable energy target bill, you are creating a pre-emptive strike for ongoing logging of native forests where, just as the woodchip industry argued 30 years ago that it was simply dealing with the waste and then rapidly became the industry, now that woodchipping has collapsed the generation of biomass energy from logging native forests will be the industry.

And let us not pretend that this is about sawlog. Let us not even amuse ourselves with that notion or view. It is not. ABARE pointed out and agreed in Senate estimates that 1993-94 was when plantation timber overtook native forests in terms of the generation of sawlog. This is an industry in crisis, with nowhere to go, and the lifeline is here with this renewable energy target, with this burning of biomass—and it absolutely has to be stamped out now. We will end up in the courts here, because there will be a requirement to define what is ‘waste’ for a higher value purpose. Since when is woodchipping a higher value purpose? And there will be no standing up in court trying to argue that going in for a single stem of sawlog is going to result in the generation of hundreds of hectares of clear-felling of native forest as waste. What nonsense. No court will accept that, but of course we could end up with the Commonwealth joining the other state governments in retrospective legislation to suddenly make right what is clearly wrong and unacceptable. Unless we remove this now, we are going to end up in the courts, because there is no way that people around Australia are going to accept logging and burning of native forests—logging the carbon stores, not accounting for the carbon from those stores when they are logged and then trying to pretend that burning those forests is generating green energy. This is creating a major conflict, Minister, and you have the opportunity now to remove it as a loophole and remove any potential for a subsidy going to the burning of native forests for the generation of energy. This is the opportunity and I hope that the Senate will take it.