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

I appreciate the minister's response. I do have a couple more observations to make and then I will come back to that matter and an ancillary question that I have in regard to it. I understand this is a bill about logging, but it does go to whether or not logging is legal, both overseas and here in Australia, and that, of course, raises threatened species issues. I will just explain why that is.

In Tasmania, as I've just said, there is this beautiful little bird, the swift parrot. In many forest practices plans, which are part of the framework which purports to govern the native forest logging industry in Tasmania, there is a requirement that, if there is a credible sighting of swift parrots, the logging needs to cease. We've seen repeated scenarios where there have been credible sightings of swift parrots reported to people conducting logging in particular coops and that logging has not ceased.

Now, in my argument, that means that that logging is illegal. There are court cases afoot around the country in regard to testing whether logging of particular forests is legal or illegal. There have been plenty of court findings, including in Victoria, where we had the shonky practices of VicForests exposed, that made it very clear that there is a lot of illegal logging that goes on in Australia. That illegal logging has consequences for threatened species, and the swift parrot is one of those species.

The parallel here is that the political stitch-up between the establishment parties in this country is sending the swift parrot sliding into extinction because that stitch-up is enabling the industrial-scale destruction of its habitat by the native forest logging industry. In the same way, the political stitch-up between the establishment parties is tragically sliding the maugean skate into extinction because the major parties, the establishment parties, are united behind the salmon-farming industry in Tasmania.

I want to say this to Mr Haneveer, the editor of the Advocate: editorialising in the way that you did, which is basically an incitement to extinction, and basically cheering on as the maugean skate, which has been with us since the age of the dinosaurs, slides into extinction because of the actions of the industrial salmon farming industry in Macquarie Harbour—doing those things—mean that you should resign. He no longer should sit as editor of the Advocate. If he won't resign, Australian community media should sack him.

It is a disgrace to incite extinction at a time of ecological collapse, just as it is a disgrace to incite the logging and burning of our native forests at a time when the planet's climate is breaking down around us. Whether it be Mr Haneveer or any of the senators who represent the establishment parties in this place, it is time to go, because you are not acting in the best interests of the ecology and the climate that actually underpin human life in this country and on this planet.

So, Minister, the reason I'm asking about the Responsible Wood sustainable forest management standard and whether it meets the PEFC sustainable forest management requirements is that, basically, this legislation aims to prevent illegally logged timber from entering the supply chain in this country. Processors and importers, for that matter, have to exercise due diligence to assess the risk that raw logs actually are from illegal sources. If a raw log is covered by a forest certification standard, then a simplified assessment applies. So the applicable standards named in the draft rules are the FSC forest stewardship principles, the FSC chain of custody certification, the PEFC sustainable forest management requirements, which I'll shorten as the 'benchmark standard', and the PEFC chain of custody standards. PEFC, the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification, is a global network of national standards, represented in Australia by Responsible Wood.

I'll pause here to give a little bit of history, which is that Responsible Wood was formerly the Australian Forestry Standard. I'm not sure if Senator Duniam was around at the time, but I certainly was when, in the early 2000s in the Tasmanian parliament, the Australian Forestry Standard was developed by the logging industry in Australia because they knew they wouldn't be able to meet Forest Stewardship Council certification standards. So they invented their own certification standard: the Australian forestry standard. It was an industry standard designed so that the industry could certify itself. What could possibly go wrong?

Anyway, the AFS, the Australian Forestry Standard, is now Responsible Wood. So the PEFC benchmark forest management standard requires organisations to comply with all applicable laws, and the Responsible Wood sustainable forest management standard is the corresponding PEFC endorsed Australian standard. It's therefore supposed to conform with the PEFC requirements and has been accepted as doing so, but—and here's the nub of the matter, Minister—the Responsible Wood sustainable forest management standard doesn't appear to have an auditing requirement for logging to be legal. That is the crux of the matter.

So the position is that the legislation and the rules taken together require logging to be legal by reference to the PEFC standard. The certificate that would be presented to a processor to verify legality would be a Responsible Wood forest management certificate, which does not, it appears, require logging to be legal. Therefore, my question is: does the Responsible Wood sustainable forest management standard meet the PEFC sustainable forest management requirements, and, in particular, does it require logging to be legal as an auditable condition for forest management to be certified?