Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the documents.

Three out of these four Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry documents reporting on progress on the implementation of regional forest agreements in New South Wales—one reporting on RFA implementation in the north-east region, one on the Eden region and one on the southern region—are for the year 2004-05. That is, these reports to the parliament on the regional forest agreements are already four years out of date.

The Regional Forest Agreements Act requires the reports to be tabled in parliament within 15 days of them being provided to the minister. I ask the government to tell the Senate how reports for the year 2004-05—that is four years ago, and there are no reports for the intervening years—could have been provided to the minister only within the last 15 sitting days. I ask the government if it could furnish the Senate with an answer, maybe at the end of question time tomorrow. I put the question to the Minister representing the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry: were these reports in fact furnished to the minister in the last 15 sitting days?

One matter which has not been dealt with here is that a few weeks ago about half the known population of the rare and endangered swift parrot were spotted in eucalypt forests between Tathra and Batemans Bay. That included a hundred birds in the state forest near Bermagui. I have a particular interest in these birds. In fact, I am wearing a representation of a swift parrot on my lapel at the moment. They have arrived in Tasmania near the place where I live. The swift parrot is the fastest parrot on earth. Although the ferry takes all night to cross Bass Strait, the swift parrot crosses it in three hours. There is speculation that their numbers are down to less than 1,000 breeding pairs. The first depiction of the swift parrot after the colonisation of this country by Europeans was in Sydney in 1797. Thousands of these birds came in large flocks to the mainland from Tasmania, and they were spotted in all regions between Brisbane, Toowoomba and Adelaide.

They come to the mainland in winter to feed on the flowering eucalypts and they go to Tasmania to nest in summer and feed on the flowering eucalypts there. The problem, as I have told the parliament before, is that the epicentre of their feeding and nesting range, the Wielangta State Forest in Tasmania, is being logged, along with other nesting sites, such as Bruny Island on the south coast of Tasmania, right up the east coast and elsewhere in Tasmania. In other words, the logging industry, under the regional forest agreements on both sides of Bass Strait, is engaged in destroying the habitat of these birds. If there are no nests, there are no birds. If there are no feeding sites, there are no birds.

Yet logging began last week on this side of Bass Strait in the Bermagui State Forest, in coupes adjacent to where the swift parrots were seen. These birds, by the way, move many kilometres within the space of an hour. If they have been seen in coupes adjacent to those being logged in Bermagui by the New South Wales authorities—under the authority of the Rudd government—then you can guarantee that those logged coupes are part of their habitat and are part of their support system on this planet. The logging plan at Bermagui has no specific provisions to protect forest or trees used by the parrots. It only has generalised provisions, which, in effect, do not save the habitat. The logging rules for swift parrots date back to 1995. We have been expecting a national management plan for the recovery of the parrot, but there is none in place. Their habitat on both sides of Bass Strait is being eroded. Under the Rudd government’s regional forest agreements with several state governments this bird is headed towards extinction. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.