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

This bill, the Ending Native Forest Logging Bill 2023, seeks to put an end to the outdated practice of destroying biodiversity by the industrial logging of our native forests, which also, of course, contributes massively to the breakdown of the planet's climate that is happening as we speak here today. This bill seeks to put an end to the practice of logging public forests in Australia by repealing the Regional Forest Agreements Act 2002, closing a massive loophole in our environment laws.

How do we find ourselves here today in 2024 still debating whether industrial native forest logging, a mendicant and massive loss-making industry that only survives because of the rivers of gold that flow into it from Commonwealth and state coffers, should continue? How do we find ourselves in the middle of the twin crises of climate breakdown and ecological and biodiversity collapse debating whether industrial native forest logging should be allowed to continue to massively contribute to both of those travesties? How do we find ourselves here today having to defend magnificent, carbon-rich, biodiverse old growth forests? How do we find ourselves here today having to debate whether trees that were already ancient when Europeans arrived to colonise this country over 200 years ago should be clear felled and fed into the woodchip machines? How do we find ourselves here today debating whether we should keep logging the swift parrot into extinction—that beautiful little bird? How do we find ourselves here today having to debate whether the Leadbeater's possum habitat should continue to be logged or whether masked owl habitat should continue to be destroyed?

I'll tell you how we find ourselves here today, colleagues. It's because the establishment parties in this country—those parties that are becoming harder and harder to tell apart—still support all of those practices: the destruction of nature, the breakdown of our climate and the destruction of the Aboriginal cultural heritage that exists in the very lands and forests that are being logged. They still support the ongoing public subsidies to a mendicant industry for base political purposes and because they are captured by the logging corporations in the same way that they are captured by the big fossil fuel, supermarket and banking corporations—and the list goes on. The agents of corporate profiteering in this place continue to refuse to take action to defend our forests, protect our climate and look after the Australian people and, in fact, people right around the world.

RFAs had a stated threefold purpose. That purported purpose was to protect biodiversity, secure employment and provide resource security, but RFAs have comprehensively failed to deliver on all three of those purported purposes. Firstly, on resource security—an epic fail. They sought to provide resource security by logging in guaranteed volumes of sawlogs and woodchips, but markets have moved on. People now want ethically sourced wood. They want their wood to be from plantations or from recycled timbers and, at the very least, they want their timbers certified by acceptable certification schemes. What they don't want are timbers sourced from destroying native forests. We are in the early stages of a climate catastrophe, and we continue to fell at an industrial scale. We continue to devastate our carbon-rich native forests for low-value products that very quickly release their carbon back into the atmosphere—all made possible by government subsidies.

In terms of employment, again, this is a mendicant industry. In my home state of Tasmania there are more newsagents than there are people who work in the native forest logging industry. This industry can only survive because of taxpayer largesse delivered and facilitated by the establishment parties in this place. In Tasmania, the Liberal state government is trying to open up 40,000 hectares of high conservation value native forests that were actually protected under the Tasmanian forest agreement, an agreement that was ripped up by that very same Liberal government. In Tasmania, we currently see truckloads of unprocessed native forest timber being transported to mainland Australia, again with subsidies from the taxpayer, via the Freight Equalisation Scheme—yet another government subsidy for an industry that is financially unviable.

But the greatest failure of RFAs is their failure and inability to protect biodiversity. RFAs enable a carve-out from our environment laws. Let's be very clear about that. If a forest is being logged under an RFA, it is not protected by the already very weak environment laws that exist in this country. Labor made a promise to the Australian people in the lead-up to the latest election. That promise was that they would fix our broken environment laws. What have they done? They have broken that promise. Never trust Labor on the environment. They've broken that promise, and not only that; you've got the Prime Minister floating the prospect of a dirty deal with the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Dutton, to further weaken our already broken environment laws which even in their current form do not exist to protect our environment but to facilitate the destruction of nature. It is absolutely unacceptable for Labor to break a solemn commitment they gave to the Australian people to fix our broken environment laws. Worse than that, they've started engaging in a backsliding way with the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Dutton, to facilitate further weakening of our environment laws for the benefit of climate and nature destroying corporations. That is what is going on at the moment.

There is a pathway to passing stronger environment laws through this parliament if Labor would get on board and engage in a good-faith way with the Greens and the crossbench. There is a pathway to fixing our broken environment laws so that they actually do the job that most people think they exist to do, and that is to protect nature and our climate. The pathway is for Labor to engage in good faith with the Australian Greens and the crossbench in this place and to actually sit down and work through a proposal that will strengthen environment laws, protect nature and protect us from contributing to the breakdown of the climate. That is what Labor needs to do. Of course, the reason we know that our environment laws need to be improved is an independent review of the EPBC Act led by Professor Graeme Samuel. I do note that the Samuel review recommended repealing the RFA exemptions—that is, bringing logging back within the ambit of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Of course, if it was back within the ambit, at least consideration would need to be given to the fact that, for example, swift parrot habitat in Tasmania is being destroyed—absolutely flattened—and that beautiful little parrot is being logged into extinction. But at the moment, because of the carve-out for RFAs, those matters aren't even considered under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

What we Australian Greens want to see is an end to native forest logging in Australia. It is an outdated practice, it should be condemned to the last century, and it should end. It should end to protect the cultural heritage that exists over all of this country. We still have significant unfinished business in terms of the treaty or treaties with First Nations people and making sure their cultural heritage is adequately protected and respected in this country. Native forest logging should end, because it is a massive contributor to the climate crisis. Native forest logging should end because it is destroying biodiversity in the middle of a biodiversity crisis. Native forest logging should end because it is a crime against nature. What a travesty it is that environmentalists here in Australia are currently being arrested, prosecuted and in some cases jailed for defending our forests. Meanwhile, the people who should be prosecuted—the people who are facilitating the logging of these forests by the ongoing public subsidies into a loss-making industry and by the political protection that the industry enjoys—are not being prosecuted. They're going scot-free and making an absolute motza from the destruction of nature and the destruction of our forests. Native forest logging should end because it is condemning multiple species to a slide into extinction. Native forest logging should end because it is a mendicant industry that cannot survive without massive public subsidies. Native forest logging should end because it's a carbon bomb. What happens after the utter swathe of destruction is cut through beautiful, magnificent forests is that helicopters fly over them and drop napalm-like substances into the forest and it goes up in smoke and flames—a massive carbon belch into the atmosphere.

People are dying around the world because of climate change at the moment. The United Nations is warning that the planet is losing its capacity to sustain human life, and yet somehow the establishment parties in this place still think it's okay to publicly subsidise the destruction of our native forest, the destruction of nature and the breakdown of our climate in the year 2024, when the science is settled.

We know what we're doing. No-one in here can claim that you don't know what you're doing. You all know exactly what you're doing. You're behaving in a psychopathic way, where you are prioritising profit over the potential future survival of these species. That's what you're doing. These are beautiful forests—our magnificent forests. There are the amazing, complex, beautiful creatures that live in them—the complex web of life that is the ecosystem of these forests, much of which is unseen because it is giant fungal networks underground. There are giant populations of things like earthworms and beetles right through to beautiful, precious birds like the swift parrot and the masked owl. This complex, awesome web of life is being destroyed because the Labor and Liberal parties are captured by profit. They are captured by the big forestry corporations, just like they're captured by the big fossil fuel corporations.