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

I'm very pleased to be speaking today in support of the Nick Xenophon Team's bill to improve the labelling of palm oil in Australian products. My interest in the issue of palm oil and the impact of palm oil plantations on the world's environment dates back about 25 years, when I visited Sumatra. While there, I took the opportunity to spend a few days going on a walk through the Sumatran rainforest. I distinctly remember the experience of walking along a ridge line which had a national park on one side and unprotected forest on the other. What a contrast between the sounds—the amazing calls of the siamang gibbons and the sounds of vibrant, lively forest, absolutely rich with a whole range of different animal species, on one side and the constant roar of bulldozers and chainsaws on the other! It was a very moving experience.

Later in that trip, I visited the Bohorok Orangutan Centre, an orangutan sanctuary near the city of Medan, where I got to see some of the orangutans that had been rescued from the logging and deforestation activities in the surrounding area. To get up close to these orangutans was incredibly moving, to connect with them and to realise that we humans have no right to be sending such a species to extinction. And that's what the clearing of rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia is doing. It's consigning to extinction these incredibly beautiful, valuable, precious species like orangutans and all the other species that live in these forests.

I came back to Australia pretty fired up. I was already working on Australian forest issues. What could we do about this problem as Australians? This comes to the heart of the bill that's before us today. The very least we can do is give people here in Australia knowledge about the consequences of the food that they eat or the products they use. They should know that, if they use a product or eat a product that contains palm oil, in almost all circumstances—not all, but almost all—it has a direct connection with the clearing of rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia. By eating those products, they are directly connected to the close extinction of species like orangutans. It is due to that connection that there has been such a focus on palm oil in the Australian community, including from organisations that aren't activist organisations, such as the Melbourne Zoo. It's something that we here in Australia can do. We are empowered. We are able to make those consumer decisions.

There is the bigger question of how to stop the deforestation of tropical rainforests. There are so many ways in which we need to address that. Obviously, the most effective way would be for the governments of Indonesia and Malaysia to say that they will stop it happening by legislating and enforcing that legislation so that rainforest deforestation completely ceases. We, as Australians, can apply pressure. Our government can apply pressure to their governments to stop it happening, but that's an ongoing process. It's not easy for Australians to have the ability to suggest to other sovereign governments what they should be doing. Obviously, there are other international agreements, such as the Paris Agreement on climate, where the importance of stopping deforestation is recognised. There is international pressure on countries to maintain their forest cover and maintain the ability of the globe to soak up the carbon that we are polluting our atmosphere with.

For us here in Australia, the best thing that we have is the ability to act as consumers. In order to be able to act as consumers, we need information, and that's what this bill is aimed at providing people: information about whether the products that they are consuming actually contain palm oil. The other bit of information that we need is certification to account for palm oil that has been produced in a sustainable way. I note that there are still some question marks over the certification scheme and whether sustainably produced palm oil is necessarily sustainably produced, but that is an issue that's not covered by this legislation. The very minimum that we can do in order to have a tangible effect is give the citizens of Australia the opportunity to make informed decisions. I reject the arguments being put by the government today that this is too high a regulatory burden. Again, you're weighing up the value of giving consumers this information versus the regulatory burden. Every time we have had debates in this place about better labelling, we have heard the same tired arguments of the government—'It's going to increase the regulatory burden.' I'm sorry, there are things that we do because they are the right things to do. In fact, when those things are finally followed through, you see that the increased regulatory burden is actually very small and that having that regulation has a very significant impact that far outweighs the small extra cost of, in this case, improving labelling so that people know that palm oil is in the products.

I was interested to hear to Senator Farrell's contribution in terms of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's position—that having such labelling will not stop deforestation. Of course it's not going to stop deforestation in itself, but it's a contributing factor. It's something that we, as Australians, can do. It will make a connection between what's happening in Indonesia and Malaysia. It will put out a very public sign that there is no social licence. It will send a very strong message from Australia that we think that palm oil from plantations that have come from deforestation, the removal of tropical rainforest, is not acceptable.

I want to finish my contribution today by drawing the parallel between what's going on in Indonesia and Malaysia, and the deforestation there and the impact on species like orangutans and gibbons, with what is going on here in Australia. We have ongoing land clearing. In Queensland, we have land clearing of 300,000 hectares a year of woodlands. That is impacting species that are just as significant as the orangutans. They might not have the profile of orangutans, but one of them, koalas, absolutely has. Koala populations in Queensland are being devastated because of land clearing. We've got rare birds like the black-throated finch and we've got the endangered mahogany glider. They are being directly threatened by land clearing. They are endangered and being driven to extinction because of the land clearing that is going on here on our shores.

For the same reasons we need to have much better information in the public sphere about the potential here in Australia and we should be legislating to make sure this land clearing stops. We don't hear the same calls for the labelling and certification of food production that's the result of the clearing of forests and woodlands in Queensland. I think we should have a certification and labelling system for the food products, the beef and the lamb, that come from the land that's being cleared in Queensland. There should be similar labelling on Australian products.

We've got the issue of the land clearing in Queensland; we also have the issue of the ongoing logging of our native forests in Australia, where there are other endangered species. These include the Leadbeater's possum as well as the threatened swift parrot in Tasmania. They are being driven to extinction because of the commercial pressures on our native forests. We should have labelling that shows people where the products have come from, so people know that if they're buying mountain ash products, timber products, that are coming from the central highlands of Victoria, they are directly contributing to Leadbeater's possums being threatened and heading to extinction.

At the very least, if we had that labelling, we also need to make sure that certification schemes are meaningful so that people have the information about the wood products that are coming from Australian forests and plantations. It is about the whole issue of giving people adequate information. We know that there are two competing certification systems for wood products in Australia. There's the Australian Forestry Standard, which is hardly worth the paper it's written on. All it basically says is that the forest operations have been conducted in accordance with the current government law. As we know, that allows the ongoing destruction of really rich and diverse forests. The FSC certification, the Forest Stewardship Council, is a much stronger certification. In terms of giving the community information, it is something that people should be looking for. We've got plantation wood products here in Australia that meet the FSC certification. If people are concerned about labelling and if they're concerned about the protection of forests when purchasing wood products, I would encourage them to look for FSC certification rather than anything else.

Coming back to this bill, it is a step forward and it is something that we as Australians can use. It is a relatively small thing for this parliament to agree to. Coming back to Senator Farrell's contribution that it actually won't be very meaningful because the minister already has the power, that the minister may move to allow such labelling—that's the whole point. The minister may move to do it but he or she has not moved to do it in the past. There hasn't been the political will to move on this sort of labelling. So this legislation would shift that from a 'may' to saying, 'This is something that has to happen.' It has to happen in the interests of giving Australians the information they need so that rather than contributing to ongoing environmentally destructive deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia, they can be making choices and decisions when purchasing these products that will be consistent with providing a much more sustainable future for us all. Thank you.