Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I speak in opposition to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Bilateral Agreement Implementation) Bill 2014. We have heard a lot in this debate about what impact this legislation is likely to have on a whole range of special places and wildlife that are too precious to lose. In my first speech last week I spoke of the need to create the Great Forest National Park to protect the Leadbeater's possum, Victoria's faunal emblem, so I want to focus tonight on the impact that this legislation would have on these forests and on Leadbeater's possums.

The Leadbeater's possum, or Gymnobelideus leadbeateri, is a tiny possum that lives in the magnificent mountain ash forests of the central highlands of Victoria, right on Melbourne's doorstep, just to the east of the city. Fully grown it is about the size of your hand, with a long club-shaped tail much the same length. It is a magical little animal that Victorians are naturally very proud of. It was presumed to be extinct until it was spotted again in 1961. The possum is now listed as a threatened species in Victoria and is classified as 'endangered' under the EPBC Act. Currently a review is underway to list the species as 'critically endangered'.

The biggest threat to Leadbeater's possums is the loss of hollow-bearing trees due to logging and fires, as the possums need hollow trees in which to build their bark nests. These hollows take more than 150 years to develop in living trees. We are losing them due to logging activity and bushfires. Logging of the mountain ash forests in the central highlands for woodchips for paper production has resulted in the loss of vast areas of Leadbeater's possum habitat. Devastatingly, almost half of their prime habitat and population was lost in the 2009 Black Saturday fires. Their population has dropped to fewer than 1,000 animals. Despite this, the Victorian government failed to adjust the regulations around logging in the remaining half of the possums' native habitat. It has been virtually business as usual, with only small changes to the area available for logging by VicForests.

The scientific consensus is very clear: the species is at great risk of extinction in the near future. Leadbeater's possums need national protection and strengthening, not winding back, of the national legislation that should be protecting them. Professor David Lindenmayer, a world expert on the mountain ash forests that the Leadbeater's possums call home, has called on the Victorian government to expand the current Leadbeater's possum reserve system to include all the remaining habitat in the new Great Forest National Park. This would protect the possums and be a really positive move for tourism, for water protection and for carbon

stores. Furthermore, contrary to the wild assertions of Senator Williams earlier this evening, recent research by Professor Lindenmayer and Dr Chris Taylor has shown extensive logging can contribute to the severity of bushfires in wet forests. Regrown forests are more fire prone than older forests, so stopping logging would mean greater protection from bushfires as well.

The pulp mill that receives the wood from Leadbeater's possum habitat in the Central Highlands is well on the way to using plantation wood. The Greens want to see this transition sped up so that we get clear-fell logging out of our native forests within a few short years. That is how we will be maintaining jobs and protecting our forests. That is the economic and environmental certainty that we should be working towards.

There is incredible community support to protect Leadbeater's possums too, which should be reflected in the national legislation. The Friends of Leadbeater's Possum is just one of the hardworking community groups working to protect the possums. They are a group of volunteers who came together on National Threatened Species Day in 2004 to give a voice to these animals. National Threatened Species Day is on 7 September, this coming weekend, which is going to mark the 10th anniversary of the Friends of Leadbeater's Possum group. I commend their efforts and I will be joining them, MyEnvironment, the Knitting Nannas of Toolangi and other wonderful community groups and campaigners in the forests this weekend to celebrate their efforts with them and keep building the campaign for the protection of these possums.

What is required is the political will to act on the scientific knowledge and community support for protecting these magnificent forests and Leadbeater's possums. This bill is taking us backwards in this regard. We cannot rely on the Victorian government to protect Leadbeater's possums. We need strong national laws to protect these animals. The Victorian government is set to preside over the extinction of our own state faunal emblem by subsidising the ongoing logging of its habitat. Victoria's state owned logging company, VicForests, gets free access to Victoria's forest assets, an economic model that creates a distortion in the market by favouring the logging of Victoria's native forests over plantation forestry. In their 2012-13 annual report, VicForests promised a $1.2 million dividend last year, but they ended up paying nothing. They have not paid a dividend to the Victorian Treasury—that is us, the Victorian taxpayers, since 2007. In fact since 2005, VicForests has accrued operating cash flow losses of $11.9 million on its core forestry activities and investment losses worth $10.2 million. Is this the economic certainty that this legislation is designed to facilitate? As my colleague Greg Barber at the Parliament of Victoria has noted, 'It's a terrible use of our native forests, which have more value in the water they produce and the carbon they store.'

Set against this backdrop of economic madness, the Victorian government has created a veneer of care for Leadbeater's possums. They set up an advisory group but included forestry industry representatives, including the Victorian Association of Forest Industries and the CEO of VicForests, in the group. How could this group provide unbiased advice with those interests involved? The advisory group came up with recommendations which were roundly criticised by expert biologists. The Victorian government's record of environmental vandalism cannot be ignored and it provides clear evidence that the Commonwealth must retain powers to protect our vulnerable species. Otherwise, it will be the 'one-stop chop' not the 'one-stop shop'.

I stand with my Greens colleagues in opposing this bill. This bill winds back decades of hard-fought environmental protections. The poor track record of state governments provided the original rationale for the EPBC Act. So the handover of approval powers is a serious backward step. Successive Victorian governments have not demonstrated any capacity to resolve the conflict between local economic development and the interests of our environment.

This bill also allows local governments and potentially other bodies, such as unelected expert panels, to be accredited to make approval decisions under the EPBC Act. I am very supportive of the work of local governments, having been a councillor myself, but they are simply not equipped to undertake this work with such important national consequences. As for the furphy that the state legislation will have to meet the national standards, as has been asserted in this debate by the government, this legislation actually says, 'The state standards can be reflected just in policy and guidelines, not legislation.' This is a major weakening of our environmental protections.

The Commonwealth needs to strengthen its environmental laws, not hand them over to the states or other bodies. All Australians have an interest in the protection of our native species and biodiversity. For this reason, the Commonwealth must retain strong powers for protection of species of national significance under threat, like Leadbeater's possums.

(Quorum formed)