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

It's most 10 years since I gave my first speech in this place and I talked about my work as an activist on forests and climate and my hopes of what could be achieved in my time in the Senate. I said in my first speech:

My agenda for my time here is clear. I want to be able to look my grandchildren in the eye and tell them that it was during my time in the Senate that Australia turned the corner and legislated to begin the shift to a zero-carbon safe climate economy. I suggest some simple steps to start us off: set pollution reduction targets based on science; stop subsidising fossil fuels; create more jobs by boosting clean energy production and energy conservation; start closing coal-fired power stations; say no to new coal and gas exports; and make the big polluters pay for the damage they are doing.

I also said:

I am also hoping to deal with unfinished business and see our forest heritage protected. This means getting timber and woodchips from plantations, not native forests, and no burning of native forests in furnaces for energy. It means creating the Great Forest National Park just to the east of Melbourne. I am here in this parliament for the Leadbeater's possums that live there.

Sadly, progress on these eminently sensible and essential aims has been pretty slow over the decade that I've been here. Domestically, we have seen the closure of some big coal-fired power stations over the decade, and clean energy production has increased, but we are nowhere near close to the hundred per cent renewable energy which is where we should be, and where we could have been if we'd set our minds to it 10 years ago. Inexcusably, we are still opening up new coal and gas mines for export and subsidising fossil fuels to the tune of $11 billion every year, and we are paying the price. The world is paying the price for our ongoing inexcusable addiction to fossil fuels.

As I flew out of Melbourne on Sunday night, smoke blanketed much of Victoria. There's an out-of-control fire in western Victoria that has burned 18,000 hectares and destroyed homes and property. Snow gums on the summit of Mount Cole in western Victoria have been severely burnt. The Mount Cole summit, a precious remnant alpine ecosystem in the west, has not evolved to cope well with fire, and those snow gums will probably die. Yes, trees are likely to regrow there, but it's unlikely to be alpine vegetation that regrows. So there is more loss of biodiversity, another loss to grieve, as the blowtorch of global heating continues to take hold of our planet.

That fire is still burning out of control The forecast for tomorrow is for shocking weather. The warning from Emergency Management Victoria that was issued today is for extreme fire danger with temperatures in the high 30s, along with gusty winds of up to 80 kilometres per hour. My heart goes out to everyone who has lost a home and property, who is currently evacuating, who is worried for their own safety and the safety of their loved ones.

Sadly, fires like these have become more common in Australia and around the world over the last decade. They will become more frequent, more intense, more dangerous and destructive, along with more and more intense floods, droughts, heatwaves and cyclones. Sea level rise is making entire island nations uninhabitable, with associated lives lost, families and communities destroyed, and refugees needing to seek asylum.

Let me list a few of the weather and climate records that have been broken just this month. Perth exceeded its record for consecutive February days above 40 degrees. Temperatures peaked at 41.7 on Thursday last week, taking the total to five days. The planet is on a trajectory to experience the hottest February on record—after a record hot January, December, November, October, September, August, July, June and May. In recent weeks it was on course for a period of temperatures that are a full two degrees higher than pre-industrial levels. The first half of February has been described as climatic history rewritten, not just because of the number of records being smashed but because of the extent to which they've been broken. Sea surface temperature records have been comprehensively smashed as ocean temperatures continue to rise. In the Atlantic, where strong hurricanes form, they've experienced temperatures as warm this February, which is the end of winter there, as are usually experienced mid-summer.

Over the last decade this place's track record on protecting our precious native forests is as underwhelming as it has been on taking serious action on carbon. Our precious native forests are inspiring, wondrous places and the massive carbon stores needed to soak up carbon if we are to have a chance of addressing the climate crisis. They are home to threatened or endangered species, First Nations cultural heritage and totem species. These forests are still being logged. In Victoria last year we had the good news that native forest logging would end. That was good news. It did not happen because of any action in this place; it happened because of the tenacious campaigning of staunch activists over decades. In Victoria, the good news, at least, is that we've got a chance of seeing the Great Forest National Park, which I talked about in my first speech, protected.

Unfortunately, we still don't have a recovery plan for the wollert, or Leadbeater's possum. I have asked at every estimates over the 10 years I have been here. In estimates a fortnight ago I was told the recovery plan was 'this close', but we still do not have a recovery plan for Leadbeater's possum. It just shows the lack of priority that is being given to the protection of our threatened and endangered species.

But at least in Victoria we now know that our forests—other than some ongoing so-called salvage logging in western Victoria, which needs to end—will be protected. It's the same in Western Australia—our forests in Western Australia are also now going to be protected. But in Tasmania and New South Wales the carnage goes on. In January I visited a forest that was home to swift parrots, of which there are only about 600 left in the whole world, yet in the forests I visited there had been a blockade set up by the Bob Brown Foundation. There was a known swift parrot habitat. There was a wonderful tree and a swift parrot nest of the top of that tree that had swift parrots breeding in it, and yet there was still logging planned. Fortunately, there is now a Supreme Court injunction stopping the logging of that forest, but it shouldn't come to that. How is it we are destroying our forests—the homes of critically endangered species of which there are only 600, the fastest birds in the world—and yet the logging continues?

So much of the southern forests of New South Wales were lost in the Black Summer fires, and yet the logging continues. Recently we had the New South Wales EPA put a temporary stop to logging because of the endangered greater gliders. It was admitted that surveys were being done for them only during the daytime, when greater gliders are nocturnal species and come out at night, so surveying for them in the daytime is not very useful. The EPA put a temporary stop to that. Sadly, they are now going to allow the logging of that forest and forests all over to continue. They are no longer even going to pretend that they are surveying threatened species. Rather than doing inadequate daytime surveys, they're doing no surveys at all, with the excuse that they're going to protect a few more trees in the middle of logging coupes. This is not going to protect these threatened species, which are on a trajectory towards extinction. It is just appalling.

Last week I had the absolute delight of being in Tasmania in the Styx State Forest with our Tasmanian Greens leader, Rosalie Woodruff, and two of the candidates for the Tasmanian state election. We were in a magnificent area of forest with trees that were 80 metres tall, home to swift parrots, powerful owls and masked owls. It was an absolutely incredible forest and, fortunately, this forest was protected. It was protected the last time that the Greens were in the balance of power in the state parliament. You need the Greens in parliament in order to protect forests—in this place, in the Tasmanian parliament and in the New South Wales parliament. Labor and the Liberals are on a unity ticket of continuing to destroy our forests.

It is hard not to feel despairing, but after 10 years I know that we just have to keep campaigning. We have to keep being resilient. We've got to mourn our losses and gird our loins and just keep on going, keep on working until we have a safe climate future, protecting our environment that we need.