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

It's long, long past time that native forest logging ended in this country. It is an industry that slaughters countless native animals, it poisons our rivers and it contaminates the very air that we breathe. It despoils our landscapes and it cooks the planet, all at massive cost to the public purse.

Why are the Labor and Liberal parties so stubbornly defending this destructive industry? It's certainly not about the jobs, because automation has already smashed most of the jobs, and the major parties facilitated that happening. It's actually about pretending to care for working people as a cover for all of the policies they've created over the last 40 years that smash the lives of working people. Major-party politicians come into this place and vote for policies that make the lives of Australian working people worse and more difficult, and then they put on the high-vis and cosplay out into the forests and pretend to care about working people. It's as cynical as it is predictable. There are jobs to be done in our forests on rewilding, on rehabilitation and on looking after the place, not on tearing the place down. Those are the jobs that we should all be prioritising.

Unlike the major parties in this place, the Greens will always advocate for nature and for people because we understand that here we can and must do both.