Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

When I was speaking on this legislation yesterday evening, I was reflecting on the native forest logging industry—how it does not have a social licence and how it is a massive carbon bomb that is playing a large role in driving climate change and the breakdown of our climate, which in turn is, tragically, turning our planet into a place where future generations will find it impossible to enjoy the same levels of prosperity that we do today and who may, even yet, end up inheriting an uninhabitable planet because of the greed and the psychopathy of current generations, particularly those who represent the major parties in this place.

I want to make a few points about the native forest logging industry, particularly in Tasmania, and this is relevant in terms of the amendments that the Greens have secured to this legislation. Recently, thanks to the Bob Brown Foundation, we've seen the most distressing photos of a juvenile Tasmanian devil that was crisped—burned to death, dying in agony—in a logging burn in Tasmania. This one devil is symbolic of the millions of mammals that have been slaughtered by the native forest logging industry, either by being burned alive and dying the most agonising death or by being deliberately poisoned and dying the most agonising death. It is time the industry was held to account for this utter, abject animal cruelty—and that's just the mammals, let alone the insects and other invertebrates that are just destroyed in massive numbers by this industry. It is a biodiversity harvester. It is trashing Tasmania's biodiversity, not to mention trashing our clean air, not to mention trashing our beautiful landscapes, not to mention poisoning our beautiful rivers and waterways, not to mention poisoning our estuary systems, not to mention the massive amount of carbon it emits into the atmosphere. It's time to end native forest logging. It no longer has a social licence, and it is a mendicant industry that costs the taxpayer tens of millions of dollars a year even in my home state of Tasmania.

I'll give you a tip, colleagues: if you pulled the public subsidies out of the native forest logging industry it would be gone overnight, because it cannot survive without massive public subsidies—money that should be going into making sure everyone has a home, making sure we've got a health system that can properly look after people and a public education system where schools don't have to sell lamingtons to buy textbooks. Those are the things that that money should be going into, not propping up an environmentally destructive industry of climate criminals who have once again got their hands out for tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds.

The Greens have secured, as I said, an amendment that ensures coal, gas and native forest logging are prohibited investments under this legislation. It's worth pointing out that this is the same amendment put in place by the Greens for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. This is the same amendment put in place by the Greens for ARENA. Those amendments prevented the CEFC and ARENA from being used as slush funds for coal and gas by the coalition government that we have now, thankfully, seen the back of.

The amendments negotiated to the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill by the Greens ensure that the NRF will be focused on the task of rebuilding a genuine manufacturing base, not propping up coal and gas corporations and native forest logging. That is critical because the Greens want the moneys appropriated for the National Reconstruction Fund to be used to accelerate the transition in Australia away from coal, gas and native forest logging—those environmentally destructive industries that are contributing so massively to climate change.

We want to see these funds used to drive the transition away from those industries into the industries of the future, into industries that can help us become a world leader in transitioning to a net zero emissions society; that's what we need to be. Of course, there will be opportunities for those countries and jurisdictions around the world that can lead that transition, and we genuinely want the funds used in this legislation to drive and to accelerate that transition. We've also secured an amendment in this legislation that would mean that investments made by the National Reconstruction Fund board must align with legislated climate targets and any future updated commitment by Australia under the Paris Agreement.

Interestingly, the Greens took a policy to the last election to create a $15 billion Made in Australia Bank and manufacturing fund. Because of the amendments we have secured to this legislation, the National Reconstruction Fund reflects most of the core spirit of the Greens' Made in Australia Bank. I want to be very clear: the Made in Australia Bank was planned, with one of its primary tasks being to decarbonise Australia's existing manufacturing base. The amendments we have secured to the National Reconstruction Fund legislation will assist in achieving that aim.

Something that not a lot of people know is that, currently, Australia ranks 91st in the world for economic complexity. That's because, over the years and decades, we've traded off a self-reliant manufacturing base for an economy that is, to far too great a degree, reliant on the extraction and export of fossil fuels. You can see that in the gas industry today. The gas cabal in this country are effectively given the resource for next to nothing. They emit large amounts of climate-destroying carbon and methane and other greenhouse gases as they extract and convert the gas for transport. Then the overwhelming majority of the gas ends up exported to other countries around the world, while the gas price remains stubbornly high in this country, contributing to the cost-of-living crisis faced by so many Australians.

Because we are ranked so low for economic complexity and because the fossil fuel cabal owns the major parties in this place, through the institutionalised bribery of political donations, we are far too deeply reliant on a globally integrated open market economy, and therefore shocks abroad reverberate to far too great a degree throughout the Australian economy. We can see that today, as we have just gone through 10 consecutive interest rate rises in a row by an out-of-control Reserve Bank and a government that is pretending that it's all too difficult and it can't itself do anything to address inflation, which is of course an absolute load of neoliberal rubbish. By the way, it has never happened before in Australia's history that the RBA has raised interest rates at 10 consecutive board meetings.

What we are seeing is real wages decreasing at the fastest rate on record in Australia. Inflation is up, and we are overexposed to global supply shocks because of the factors I mentioned earlier. That means that, along with those global supply shocks that we are overexposed to—many of which are climate related, many of which are pandemic related, many of which, such as the war in Ukraine, are geopolitics related—plus this government's refusal to rein in the rampant profiteering that is going on from big corporations at the moment, who are using the cover of the global supply shocks to put up their prices higher than they otherwise would be able to, what we are seeing is an inflation spike. Then we get the Reserve Bank coming in and raising interest rates, putting massive strain on mortgage holders and renters, because this government is just putting the whole problem in the too-hard basket.

Well, here is a little shopping list of what this government could do. Firstly, they could put in place a corporate superprofits tax that would disincentivise corporations from price-gouging. Then they could remove the stage 3 tax cuts from the top end, walk away from the $368 billion of nuclear submarines that we don't need and that will actually make this country a more dangerous place to live, and they could use those savings to invest in programs that would actually help people with the cost-of-living crisis in a non-inflationary way—for example, put dental and mental health into Medicare. There would be no inflationary impact, but it would actually do something meaningful to help people, families with kids, struggling with the cost of living. They could make child care free. They could build more affordable homes so more people would have a home. This government has been very happy to intervene in the gas price, but it's stubbornly refusing to intervene in the rental crisis. It could do something to freeze rents. These are all Australian Greens policies, I might add. Finally, they need to raise income support, because people on JobSeeker are literally starving, and poverty is a political choice being made by the Labor Party.