David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I stand in support of the Illegal Logging Prohibition Amendment (Strengthening Measures to Prevent Illegal Timber Trade) Bill 2024 and foreshadow that I will move a second reading amendment. In doing so, I would like to call for more to be done. I'd like to highlight the need for native forest logging in Australia to be better regulated and subject to national environmental laws. The exemption of regional forestry agreements from national environmental laws is driving species towards extinction.

This government has an opportunity this week to do a deal with the Senate crossbench, close the loophole and help impacted communities through the transition. It makes no sense to set up an environmental regulator only to stop it looking into native forest logging. I'm calling on the government to set up an EPA with integrity and independence and to give it what it needs to actually protect our environment: the ability to assess all native forest logging in Australia. Most Australians would be horrified that we have native forests being logged without oversight from our national environmental laws.

We know that this has a biodiversity and a climate impact. The climate impact of ending native forest logging in Victoria this year will be equivalent to taking 700,000 cars off the road. Yet we know in Victoria there are pushes to continue native forest logging under the guise of other names. We need to ensure that it, whatever you want to call it, gets assessed by environmental laws. Ending native forest logging in Tasmania would be the equivalent of taking 1.1 million cars off the road every year. Why are we not acting on this given that we're in a biodiversity and climate crisis? Why are we not acting given we know that this is a loss-making industry? It's not profitable. Taxpayers are having to prop up industries in the states that still have large-scale native forest logging. Of all the wood from native forest logging, 90 per cent of it goes to woodchips, paper pulp and box liners. We're talking about turning incredible native forests into a low-value, high-volume commodity.

It is frankly ridiculous that, in 2024, we're not seeing leadership on this from a government that has claimed all sorts of things: no new extinctions, nature positive and 'green Wall Street'—all of these things. What they aren't willing to do, though, is actually start to address the root cause of the biodiversity crisis here in Australia.

As I've said, the forestry industry in New South Wales and Tasmania is losing money. The Victorians wised up and decided that they could actually transition out of it. In Tasmania, total losses are above $1.5 billion since regional forest agreements were signed 20 years ago. You could have a stadium and some change for that, but I'm sure there are a lot more things that Tasmanians would want that money to be going towards. The Blueprint Institute found that, if we ended native forest logging on the north coast of New South Wales, there would be an economic windfall of $294 million between now and 2040, and that's just in northern New South Wales.

We've got an opportunity to stop losing money by cutting down our native forests and to benefit from the economic windfall of protecting them. This doesn't have to be an either/or when it comes to good regional jobs. With a little bit of imagination and with some investment, there can be transition plans for those affected and there can be jobs in specialist firefighting—in all sorts of areas—and, of course, an opportunity when it comes to tourism and carbon storage.

There is a clear need to work with communities impacted by the transition. It's totally inevitable that it will get to a point where Australians say, 'Given what we're seeing when it comes to climate change and given what we're seeing when it comes to biodiversity loss, this is untenable.' If the major parties don't want to do it, I think Australians will deliver a parliament that will force them to do it. I would urge them to get ahead of it and actually tackle this problem.

I think it's now irresponsible to wait any longer. We have an opportunity as a Senate. We have a government that's saying all the right things and a crossbench that is simply saying: 'Just do what you've committed to. Just front up and do what you've told Australians that you're going to do. Follow through with it to protect the people and places that we love.'