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

We are talking about regional forest agreements and we are talking about logging forests. The primary purpose would not be possible if you did not provide a place for 90 per cent of what you cut down to go. That is the fact of the matter. That is why the woodchip industry has collapsed. There is no market for woodchips. Therefore, there is no viability in logging native forests for sawlog. That is the whole point here.

You are creating an industry to drive and prop up native forest logging. You are destroying habitat, you are destroying carbon stores and you are behaving in a manner that is contrary to all of the science on what we should be doing about global warming, and you are calling it renewable when it is not renewable. It is driving the destruction of forests. That is the point. It is not about the trees being 'cut down anyway'. They are not being cut down now, because it is not economic to do so. What you are doing here is trying to put a dollar value back into logging to prop up native forest logging because it is an ideological obsession of the Prime Minister. Isn't that exactly what is going on here?