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

I really welcome Minister Plibersek's commitment at the Biodiversity COP 15 to zero extinctions by 2030, but the government now needs to act to make this commitment real. Critically, the government needs to act to end native forest logging immediately.

I only have five minutes, so I'm just going to focus on one species that we must protect from going extinct. That's the Leadbeater's possum, or wollert. Wollert live in the tall mountain ash forests in Victoria, just east of Melbourne. They are critically endangered, and the mountain ash ecosystem they live in is critically endangered. They are the most carbon dense forests in the world. The threats to wollert and mountain ash are logging, fires and increased fires due to climate change.

In this speech, I want to quote the experts—the scientists who know these Leadbeater's possums and have been studying them for 30 years. They are the scientists from the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University. They did a review of Leadbeater's possum in 2017. It summarised that the retention and recruitment of hollow-bearing trees as the single most important issue for managing the Leadbeater's possum—and many other threatened species. They found that the key habitat resource for Leadbeater's possums, populations of hollow-bearing trees, are in rapid decline. With them, Leadbeater's possum is also declining.

The wollert had a recovery plan between 1998 and 2002 that laid out the actions that needed to happen to stop them going extinct. It hasn't had one since. Why? Because of pressure from the logging industry to keep logging the forests that they live in. At every estimates since I've been in the Senate, and that's now eight and a half years, I've been asking about when we are going to see a recovery plan for Leadbeater's possums. A draft recovery plan was released in 2017. It has yet to be finalised. At estimates last October, I asked again and got the same, lame response: 'The Leadbeater's possum remains a priority species. Minister Plibersek has asked the department to give it urgent focus, and we are looking to finalise the recovery plan as soon as possible.' Minister Plibersek, if you are listening: if you are serious about zero extinctions, there's one action that needs to be taken, which basically is what the recovery plan should summarise—that is, we need to end native forest logging. We need to end the logging of their habitat. We need to end that logging immediately.

The ANU review that was done six years ago noted that the current prescriptions are 'insufficient for the long-term conservation of the species', that the 'majority of hollow-bearing trees are not covered by these prescriptions' and that 'current logging and regeneration prescriptions do not provide adequate protection for existing hollow-bearing trees'. We don't have a recovery plan, because what's been happening has been guided by VicForests and the Victorian government. The review noted:

For the first time, the recovery of a threatened species was tied directly to the maintenance of an extractive industry. The recommendations advised pursuing a range of actions based on unproven recovery measures, while prescriptions likely to be effective in protecting hollow-bearing trees were ignored.

It also noted:

The majority of science conducted by State Government departments and on Leadbeater's Possum, and the resulting reports, generally lacks peer review.

Yet here we've got mountain ash forests. We've got so much to offer in terms of tourism, abundant clean water, carbon storage, recreational activities and biodiversity. But the logging is ongoing—except, however, over the last summer. Because of successful court action by community groups, showing that VicForests has been logging illegally, the logging has stopped. The logging which has been driven by the Maryvale pulp and paper mill for the production of paper pulp has stopped. In fact, it looks like it might stop forever. Media reports in the last days have said:

State government and union sources expect Nippon Paper Group to permanently discontinue production of office paper …

The time is now to be protecting our native forest, to be shifting our timber industry to a hundred per cent plantations, rather than the existing 90 per cent, and to be protecting our precious native forests for everyone.