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

In speaking to our amendment regarding the removal of the ability to burn wood from native forests to be eligible for renewable energy certificates, the issue of what is classified as waste is pertinent and is behind our amendment.

Minister Hunt has claimed repeatedly the biomass that is going to be burnt in forest furnaces is just waste, so we are interested in knowing exactly what is the government's definition of 'waste' or 'residue' in relation to the burning of native forest biomass for electricity. As far as we can see, nothing about this proposal to be burning wood from native forests for energy is about waste. Rather, it is about maintaining, entrenching and expanding industrial scale clear-fell logging that would not otherwise have occurred. It is not about branches, bark and treetops, as we have been misled to believe over the last months. If it were it would be restricted to this and would not include whole logs. In contrast, this legislation is all about allowing the burning of whole logs from native forests for electricity—it is so far from being renewable it is not funny.

The statistics on logging in native forests show that in Victoria and New South Wales 70 to 80 per cent of the logs that are coming out of our clear-felled native forests are ending up as pulp logs; they are not being used as sawn timber. In Tasmania, 80 to 90 per cent of the logs are being classed as residual or pulp logs, not as saw logs. Under this legislation all of these logs will be able to be classified as waste. The higher values test would not stop this occurring as you would only have to get a very small amount of revenue from the use of the sawn timber. You could have a massive amount of wood being produced for biomass and that would be acceptable. But we know that in forest operations that are operating for the export woodchipping markets that sometimes the price that has been achieved for woodchips has been down to as low as 7c per tonne. We have discovered that in East Gippsland at times, in sending woodchips to the Eden woodchip mill, that is the price that has been achieved. So you do not have to have a very high-value sawn timber product for the rest of the wood to be considered as waste under this legislation, and hence be eligible to be burnt.

We have been told that we also do not need to worry about this because the last time wood from native forest was eligible to have renewable energy certificates very little of it occurred. We have been told: 'Don't worry about it. There's only going to be a very small amount. It's only about small amounts of timber.' But the big thing that has changed, compared to the 10 years between 2001 and 2011, when we last had wood from native forests being eligible for renewable energy certificates, is the crash in the export woodchipping market. Between 2001 and 2011 we had very healthy markets for woodchips from Australia, but, in the intervening period since 2011, the export woodchipping market for woodchips from Australian native forests has collapsed. That is because there has been a growth in wood from plantation eucalypts, particularly across South-East Asia, that are not only cheaper but also provide better quality woodchips, so there is very little interest now in woodchips from Australian native forests for paper production. The push behind this, and the push behind defining so much of this wood—the 90 per cent of wood that would be coming from our forest—as waste is to find an alternative market for this bulk of the timber that is coming from our native forests.

The other critical factor as to why there is this push to define this as waste and allowing it to be burnt and generating extra subsidies through the production of renewable energy certificates is that we know that native forestry operations across the country run at massive losses. In the last financial year Forestry Tasmania lost $43 million. We have learnt in the last month that in East Gippsland, in Victoria, the logging operations there ran at a loss of $5 million. We are in a situation where we have got no market for the woodchips and logging operations are running at a massive loss. So what do we do? The obvious answer is not to keep on logging those forest given the value of these forests for so many other purposes; the answer is to open them up for recreation and tourism, to protect them for wildlife, and to continue the push and to continue the transition that has been occurring over the last 20 years to move out of native forests and into plantations.

The wood products statistics for Australia for the last two quarters were released just today, and they showed that the shift away from native forest logging and the shift to plantations are continuing apace. We are now in a situation where 85 per cent of the wood products being produced in Australia are coming from plantations—native forest logging is at its end for large-scale production of low-value products—so you can see where this push is coming from, you can see the reason the pressure is on is to prop up an industry that otherwise would be disappearing into history. We are in a situation in which we should be able to resolve the controversy over forests once and for all, to accept that sustainable logging—with good jobs and providing good quality timber products—from plantations is a reality in Australia and to accelerate that transition to plantation-based wood products. But, no, instead of that the pressure is on to continue the incredibly damaging logging of our forests and continue the destruction and devastation of habitat for endangered species—destroying all that for the sake of producing what is a so-called renewable energy source.

We are at a crossroads in Australia. We could be going down the track of acknowledging that and saying, 'No, we do not need to continue to get low-value products from our native forests;' we could be winding down the amount of logging of our native forests and increasingly produce sawn timber from hardwood plantations as well, or we can continue with this incredibly damaging industry that is going to end up destroying the native forests that should be protected, that should be allowed to grow old and preserved for their other values: their values for wildlife, their values for carbon stores, their values for tourism and their values for recreation.

Coming back to the question that I began with, Minister: what is the government's definition of 'waste' and are whole logs going to be included in that definition?