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

Prime Minister Abbott wants to make our environment laws even weaker, hacking away at vital safeguards and calling it 'cutting red and green tape'. It is selling out our future. We cannot leave protecting Australia's environment up to the states. As my colleagues in this place have pointed out time and time again, if we had given state governments sole control of national environmental law in the past, the Franklin River would be dammed, there would be oil rigs on the Great Barrier Reef, we would have cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park and the Traveston dam would have gone ahead—all with outrageous environmental impacts. The Greens are standing up to the Abbott government's plan to hand off national environment law to the states.

We are also working in our own patches for a clean, green future. In my home state, Victorians have welcomed with open arms my state Greens colleagues' environmental policies and initiatives that we are taking to this weekend's state election, because we know that the health of our economy will be based on how well we shift to a clean energy economy and protect our natural heritage. We understand that a healthy economy, healthy society and healthy environment are completely interconnected; you cannot have one without the other. We need to be building our natural capital rather than destroying it. Shifting to a clean energy economy is a win-win-win—providing jobs, building wealth and creating a safe climate and healthy environment all at once.

Victoria stands to lose so much from climate change, and we do not see our federal government standing up against the threats. Our farmers are facing a bleak future, with the threat of worse and more prolonged droughts. This summer is looking like it is going to be particularly grim. Global warming threatens to reduce Australia's livestock carrying capacity by in the vicinity of 40 per cent. Crops like canola, wheat and barley will be absolutely challenged by increasing temperatures. Heat waves are going to hit Victoria like never before. People living in Melbourne and other urban centres are going to suffer health threats. Excessively hot days will take a huge toll on our community's most vulnerable. The young, the elderly and the sick suffer most on hot days, and this is worsened in the centre of our cities. Heat-related deaths will increase, and we need a plan that is going to effectively mitigate this threat.

The increase in prevalence and severity of extreme weather associated with climate change is going to place a huge strain on Victoria. No-one wants to live through bushfires like those we saw in 2009. While Prime Minister Abbott and his government insists on wrecking our land, our water and our environment, the Greens in Victoria have a set of ideas that respond to 21st-century challenges. We have a plan to retire dirty coal plants and create jobs as we shift to renewable energy. In Victoria, we have the dubious honour of producing the dirtiest energy. But we do not need so many brown coal electricity generators. Renewable energy has been doing its job, and we now have an excess of electricity in the grid. So shifting and really encouraging that transition to clean energy generation makes sense for our environment and it makes sense for jobs. More people are employed putting solar panels on roofs than in the entire coalmining industry. Clean energy is not a threat but an employment opportunity right around Victoria for places like Anglesea and the Latrobe Valley.

We can shift our energy mix to wean Victoria off coal. We support communities threatened by mining companies and want a permanent ban on fracking, onshore gas and new coalmines in Victoria, because Victorians want to see a fast shift away from fossil fuels to a clean energy future. We plan to support the growth of wind farms, creating jobs and investment in our regional areas. And we want to establish the Great Forest National Park, just east of Melbourne, for all Victorians to enjoy, rather than leaving it shut off for all but those who drive the loggers' trucks. This important plan will protect the habitat and ecosystem of our animal emblem, the Leadbeater's possum, which we expect is going to be reclassified as critically endangered next month. We need the national park for tourism, for regional revitalisation and for opening up Victoria's forests for generations to enjoy. I must address the furphy that by establishing national parks you are increasing bushfire risk. The science shows very clearly that, if you leave forests to grow old, they are less susceptible to fire, and that younger forests, such as those created by regeneration after clear-fell logging, are much more susceptible to fire and are putting our communities at risk.

The good news is: we have enough plantation estate to serve our wood products industry. Already, over two-thirds of Victoria's wood production comes from plantations, and it is increasing every year. Only 10 per cent of forest industry jobs in Victoria are in native forests, and they are in decline. The growth for our timber industry is in plantations. We can all agree on this. The way to end the rancour and the division is to accept that we need to move industrial scale logging out of our native forests and we need to base our wood products industry on plantations. But we are going backwards. What is left of our native forests is under threat. The Prime Minister and his government are falling into lock step with their Victorian mates who want to perpetuate the destruction of our native forests and subsidise those who do this dirty work. The government's direct action policy is, sadly, set to do just this. The clean energy package which it replaced specifically did not allow the use of wood from native forests to be used as part of a carbon farming initiative or to be eligible for renewable energy certificates—for good reason.

Woodchipping has been cast as an industry that uses 'waste' wood, but, in reality it is the tail that wags the dog. Twice as many logs get sent off as chip logs as sawlogs. Over 80 per cent of the volume of wood that comes out of our forests ends up as woodchips. And now, just as the global market for Australian woodchips is in decline—as we have been outcompeted by plantation chips from elsewhere in the world—the woodchip mill in Eden is about to stop taking chips from East Gippsland, as forest furnaces to burn native forest wood are set to take over. We have already seen what is likely to be in store. Brickworks, the Liberal Party's very large donor, announced—immediately after the announcement of the direct action package—that they were very interested in the potential of using native forest wood to feed their kilns. This is not renewable energy. This is not something that should be supported under a carbon farming initiative aimed at reducing the impacts of climate change. In using native forest based wood and perpetuating industrial scale logging of our forests, it is going to increase the impact of climate change and reduce our carbon stores. It is going exactly in the wrong direction.

The carbon density of Victoria's forests is incredible, which is why they are so important as carbon stores. We have centuries-old trees that rival California's redwoods in their size and in their environmental significance. Our mountain ash is the tallest hardwood tree in the world. It grows extraordinarily quickly, reaching its maximum height in 200 years—five times faster than the redwoods—but it is as carbon stores that our mountain ash forests are the world's best. They store three times as much carbon as the forests of the American Pacific Northwest. These forest ecosystems, just to the north-east of Melbourne, do the heavy lifting in maintaining our carbon stores.

Beyond Zero Emissions had a session here at Parliament House today and said that protecting our native forests, leaving them to recover, is the best thing we can be doing to sequester carbon in Australia. We have got only one per cent of our original forest cover left in Victoria, yet our governments federally and in Victoria are standing by while our money is being spent on subsidising the clear fell logging of these forests. Together we can protect what we love about Australia. We must protect our land, our water and our natural wonders so that we can have them to share for generations to come.