David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I endorse the words of my colleagues, particularly Senator McKim, who led for us on this, and Senator Hanson-Young and others. There's a time to stop native forest logging, and that time is now.

This bill, the Illegal Logging Prohibition Amendment (Strengthening Measures to Prevent Illegal Timber Trade) Bill 2024, in pretending Labor cares about forests while at the same time greenlighting the wholesale industrial destruction of our native forests, is a pretty obscene bit of narrowcasting from Labor. We've seen it time after time—bringing in a piece of legislation that pretends to put in an environmental protection authority but doesn't create an independent one, that pretends to do something on illegal logging while signing off on yet another round, years and years more, of destructive native forest logging. It can only happen because the Commonwealth government gives state and territory governments, but particularly state governments in New South Wales and Tasmania, an exemption from federal environmental laws to go in and destroy critical and endangered habitat. That's the only reason native logging can continue in New South Wales and Tasmania: the Albanese government continues an exemption put in by the Howard government to let logging destroy endangered native species and destroy critically endangered habitat. We could remove that exemption and end native forest logging this week in parliament, if Labor had a backbone, because there is an absolute progressive majority in this chamber to do it.

Why do we say, 'End native forest logging'? We say it because of the incredible natural values in our forests. We live in this most extraordinary place. You can go for a bushwalk in Australia and, in a couple of hundred metres, pass through diversity that you'd have to cross the whole of Western Europe to see. You can go from rainforest to dry eucalypt forest to wet sclerophyll forest. You can have this extraordinary adventure in nature in a couple of hundred metres, walking in our extraordinary forests. You'd literally have to cross the whole of the North American continent to see that kind of diversity. And this government thinks it's reasonable, thinks it's okay, to agree to its wholesale destruction. It does your brain in.

Last month I was fortunate to be with some of our extraordinary campaigners down on the South Coast of New South Wales—I'm biased; I think it is one of the most beautiful parts of the planet—surrounded by these ancient forests that stretch across that beautiful southern part of my home state of New South Wales. I was in Mogo State Forest with some of our local council candidates for Eurobodalla Council. I was down there with Colleen Turner, Joslyn van der Moolen and dozens and dozens of forest protectors. We were there in Mogo State Forest because the New South Wales Labor government, with the tick of approval from the Albanese government, wants to get in there and destroy that part of Mogo State Forest—beautiful dry eucalypt forest. When forest protectors went in and put an infrared drone over the forest that Forestry Corporation of NSW wants to log, they found, in just a couple of nights, a greater glider hotspot. They found 10 greater gliders in the forest that Forestry Corporation want to destroy. I don't know if anyone in this chamber, outside of the Greens, has ever actually seen a greater glider. They are extraordinary creatures. They have beautiful fluffy ears. You can hear them glide in the forests at night. They go from tree to tree—they're quite big creatures; they're like super-sized possums—and you see them if you're spotlighting for them at night. You can hear them crash from tree to tree as they move across their favourite parts in the forest. They are an endangered species, and the local community campaigners, the forest protectors—not Forestry Corporation of NSW—found 10 greater gliders in this little patch of forest that Forestry Corporation wants to destroy. And it's wholesale destruction; they chop down every decent tree and go in afterwards and napalm the remaining forest litter on the ground in that part of the forest.

This forest is in a part of the state that got smashed, utterly smashed, by the summer bushfires a few years ago. The locals are saying: 'This bit of forest survived. This bit of forest, with this extraordinary diversity, survived.' So much of the forest around Mogo State Forest and the surrounding areas got smashed in those fires. We've got this extraordinary hotspot for greater gliders. In fact, one of the beautiful gum trees in that bit of Mogo State Forest is a 62-metre-high spotted gum. It has a seven-metre circumference on it. And Forestry Corporation of NSW wants to clear-fell the entire forest and leave it completely vulnerable, as well as killing all of the habitat trees for those greater gliders. It is utterly, utterly shameful.

The locals are distraught about it. They can't believe that a Labor state government and a Labor federal government are green-lighting the destruction of their beautiful Mogo forest. They cannot believe it. In fact, just before the fires ripped through other parts of that forest down there, local forest protectors spotted platypus in the rivers. There are platypus in the rivers and greater gliders in the trees, yet Forestry Corporation of NSW, with the support of state and federal Labor, went through the forest—they didn't see a single glider, didn't see a platypus and didn't see a habitat tree—and slated the entire chunk of forest, about four different compartments, for wholesale logging. Locals cannot believe it.

They also can't believe it because it's the same forest that their local council has identified for the extraordinary, 70-kilometre Mogo mountain bike trail network. All the locals are excited about the jobs that could be in the forests through having this amazing mountain bike network on some of the converted forestry roads and tracks. They're excited about the investment in ecotourism and about the protection of their forest. Yet, right smack bang in the middle of the proposed new Mogo mountain bike trail network, the New South Wales government, under Labor, wants to destroy the forest. Locals just cannot believe the environmental and economic vandalism in their local area.

They also note that these mature forests were the thing that stopped the big fires. The mature forests, with their moist understorey, were what stopped the big fires and will stop the next big bushfire. If these forests get logged—and I can tell you now that forest campaigners like Colleen, Joslyn and others are going to be in there doing what they can to protect these forests and stop them being logged—we know what will happen. The whole forest will dry out. It will be replaced with spindly saplings, and it will be ripe and primed for the next big fire, which will tear through those forests and destroy homes, like we've seen time after time with recently logged forests. The locals know that for their own safety, for the planet's safety, protecting these forests is absolutely essential.

So I join with my colleagues to say to Labor: 'Grow a backbone. You know it's right to protect native forests from logging. You know that it's essential for climate. You know it's essential for our native species. You know it's essential for keeping communities safe from the next big bloody fire that's coming.' Surely even Labor could realise that it's wrong to log forests that are chock-a-block full of endangered greater gliders. Surely even Labor can see that that's wrong. And if you see it's wrong, do something about it: join with the Greens, join with the progressive majority in this chamber and finally end native forest logging in this country.