Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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This bill, the Ending Native Forest Logging Bill 2023, seeks to put an end to the outdated practice of destroying biodiversity by the industrial logging of our native forests, which also, of course, contributes massively to the breakdown of the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.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian government does not support the repeal of the RFA Act. The government has committed to supporting the ongoing operation of RFAs while also strengthening environmental protections. This will be achieved by applying new national environmental standards to RFAs. The Australian government is committed to providing a framework that allows sustainable native forestry to occur. The government is committed to continuing to work with stakeholders towards applying new national environment standards to regional forest agreements. This will support the ongoing operation of RFAs whilst strengthening environmental protections.

Our forest product industries are vital to our regional communities. They directly employ 51,000 people, and tens of thousands more jobs are indirectly supported by this sector, which contributes nearly $24 billion to the national economy each year. The benefits of a competitive, sustainable and renewable forestry industry in our regional communities should not be underestimated. It delivers positive economic, social and environmental outcomes. In addition to employment and income throughout the supply chain, it also underpins the social networks and the fabric of many of our regional towns and communities.

Australia's native forest management is sustainable and does not lead to deforestation. Our native forests are regenerated after harvesting. Repealing the RFA Act and terminating RFAs will not end native forestry, as these are state government decisions. Rather, terminating RFAs will mean forest operations will be subject to EPBC Act assessments, potentially at the coupe level. This may undermine the landscape-scale approach taken to forestry approvals under RFAs.

Repealing the RFA Act will result in industry uncertainty that could lead to job losses and mill closures in regional areas. This, in turn, could compromise the future of many of our regional towns and constrain our ability to prevent and respond to bushfire effects through the reduction of the skilled workforce and machinery required for quick responses to fires and fire mitigation operations. Repealing the RFA Act will lead to increased administrative costs for forestry operators and for governments, and that will result in backlogs and possible delays in forestry approvals and in assessing applications for wood exports.

The Australian government is expanding Australia's plantation forest estate, but plantation wood is not able to replace the high-quality wood sourced from native forests. Because of the choice of species and site and short rotations, most Australian hardwood plantations do not develop the same size, strength and appearance properties as wood sourced from native forests. It would place further pressure on domestic supply chains for products that are able to be sourced only from native forests and create an increased dependence on substitutes—imports—for native hardwoods from places where forest management standards may not be as high and where wood production may be associated with deforestation and illegal logging. These are some of the many reasons the Australian government does not support the repeal of the RFA Act.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise and speak in defence of a very proud and sustainable industry in our country, one that has been the political whipping boy for many a decade, sadly, and, frankly, for no reason other than arguments based on emotion in pursuit of votes in inner-city suburbs where falsehoods are peddled at the expense of science and livelihoods in communities where people are doing the best they can to earn an honest living. These are the people who are in the firing line. These are the people who work in an industry that, as I say—based on science, based on fact—is doing the right thing and should not be targeted in the way that it is.

The net effect, as Senator Urquhart rightly points out, of what the Greens propose to do with the Ending Native Forest Logging Bill 2023 is worse for our environment than they claim. They think that ending native forest logging in this country, repealing the RFA Act and ensuring that every coupe that is ever harvested in a native forest in a sustainable and science-based way is assessed by the EPBC Act is somehow going to protect the environment.

But we saw in Victoria that when a certain retail chain in Australia decided not to stock Victorian native timbers as a result of a court case, a legal question before the courts that had not yet been decided upon, they of course didn't lose demand for the product. They had to continue to stock products that were equivalent to the native forest hardwoods. The only difference was that they weren't coming from Victoria; they were coming from somewhere else, in many cases from overseas.

This is the problem with this argument. When you look around this chamber and the houses we live in and you look at the beautiful staircases, benchtops, coffee tables, window frames and the like, they don't come out of plantation forests, as Senator Urquhart has said. They come out of sustainably managed, science-based management approaches to these coupes—native forests, because of their strength and appearance characteristics. They're not coming out of Australian forests, as we go around the countryside shutting them down based on emotion and not science. They come out of forests overseas, where jurisdictions managing these forests don't care about the environmental outcomes. If we're supposed to be global leaders when it comes to looking after our planet as a developed nation, should we not be guiding others to support science-based best practice management of our resources, including forestry? Should we not be ensuring that we lead the way? And we do lead the way.

But the net effect of this bill before us now is that we stop doing what we do to world's best standard here because we don't care what happens over the horizon, what happens in the Congo basin, where they rip trees out of the ground, never to be replanted. Industries in that part of the world of course have the smell of modern slavery attached to them—but hey, we're okay with that, because it's not our forests that are being harvested; it doesn't matter what happens outside our backyard! This is the net effect of emotion driven, divisive Greens politics, which is what this bill is all about. That is the worst part about it. We can feel good because we haven't cut down our forests, because they look terrible when they're cut down. This inflammatory language around what happens in our forests as a result of sustainable science-based native forest management makes people think that it is a bad thing. I have sympathy for those who over time have fallen for these silly arguments that are not based on science. Bad decisions have been made time after time.

Senator McKim, in his contribution, talked about deals. He talked about dirty deals being done. I gather that's with reference to a bill that's coming before the Senate soon enough. I'll tell you a thing or two about deals. I'm a Tasmanian, and I remember some deals that have been done over time in my home state of Tasmania. They were deals that have been very bad for our environment, very bad for our economy and very bad for our state as a whole. These are deals that are often done, sadly, between the Greens and the Labor Party. I know there are people here who lament those decisions and others who, terribly, celebrate them. The point is: these are the deals that are done based on emotion, based on a political whim and based on the pursuit of votes in inner-city areas, not in the regions, where the people who know how to manage the land are doing the best they can to earn an honest living. That is the point I make.

As I say, the challenge laid down every time we have this debate in this place and in other parliaments around Australia is: tell us where they do it better and tell us where they cut down trees and use them for productive purposes. Trees, of course, are a great carbon sink, especially when harvested sustainably. There is carbon locked up in all of the timber in this chamber, would you believe? It's never going to escape, unless we burn the place down—and there may be some, sadly, who would like to do that. The point is that every time you harvest timber the carbon that has been sequestered by that tree is stored in that felled tree in perpetuity. You plant another tree; it continues to absorb carbon. That is the point of our industry, the forestry industry, being the ultimate renewable and the best 'carbon sequesterer' of all primary industries.

Claims are being made about it being destructive when it comes to the carbon challenge that this world faces. On that, I think it is important for us to focus on the fact that Australia contributes, I think, 1.1 per cent of global emissions. So shutting down the forestry industry, which only, in their arguments, contributes to a portion of that global 1.1 per cent, is not going to turn the dial on what places like the Congo basin do when it comes to ripping trees out of the ground, burning the life out of the ground behind them and never replacing them with a single stick anywhere, at any point in time. That is deforestation.

We don't participate in the act of deforestation here, contrary to the claims that are being made. That is bad for the environment, that is bad for climate change—not the Australian approach to this—and that's why these facts are so critically important. If we were contributing to 70 per cent of global emissions then, sure, maybe I'd listen to what Senator McKim has to say. But the reality is it's 1.1 per cent of global emissions, a small portion of that relating to forestry, yet suddenly we now need to shut down the industry and push it off over the horizon to countries where it will be far worse for carbon emissions, climate change and the environment and far worse when it comes to the economy—in fact, bad all round.

I want to go back to the point around custodians of the land. Foresters are excellent custodians of our land. They know a thing or two about forest management. They don't just run around the countryside and our forests wielding chainsaws, not caring about what they cut down and what they leave. They actually do care about having a sustainable industry, where forests produce the timber they need to have a sustainable industry into the future. They are not in any way reckless or careless about it. They are governed by, at a state level—for example, in the state of Tasmania—some of the most rigid rules around the management of forests, through the Forest Practices Authority. They have to get a forest practices plan before they go into a coupe. It takes into account every bit of cultural heritage, every area of environmental sensitivity and any presence of a threatened species, like the wedge-tailed eagle or similar—a swift parrot habitat might also be identified. Those things are taken into account, and foresters in Tasmania, like they do in other parts of the country, observe those rules. That is why they know how best to manage our forests.

I want to contrast that with something. I was taken down to some very deep dark parts of the Huon Valley in recent times to visit a coupe near the Arve River. This swathe of forest is now under World Heritage wilderness protection. It is protected under the highest level of protection that could ever be afforded a forest on our planet, and we respect that. It is a testament to our native forestry industry doing its best based on science to manage our forests that these forests, harvested once if not twice over modern times, are now protected as part of a World Heritage wilderness area. They're not virgin, pristine rainforests that have never been touched by man. They are former production forests. In fact, mining operations exist in there. There are timber tramways and a range of human objects and interactions that exist in these areas which are now World Heritage. All or a good portion of it has been logged and regenerated by these evil foresters the Greens talk about!

There is one patch, however, that you can see from Google Earth hasn't been managed in the same way, right in the middle of this beautiful swathe of forest in the south-west of Tasmania. You can see from Google Earth that it's a gravel patch. You might have thought it was a former quarry. In fact, no; this was the same as everything else in that part of Tasmania. It was a beautiful forest that had been managed sustainably for productive purposes over more than 100 years. There's an environmental group in Tasmania—Environment Tasmania—that were given a grant by the former Labor government and the then Minister for the Environment, Minister Tony Burke, to go and do what they thought was best for the environment. That gravel pit, part of a World Heritage wilderness area that stands out on Google Earth for all to see as a testament to how inner-city environmentalists would approach forest management, shows you that their denial of forest science doesn't work. Foresters fell the trees. They do a regeneration burn so that the seeds of those particular species can germinate and grow into what now has become a World Heritage wilderness area. This environmental group refused to do that. When they let this coupe sit there for a number of years with this grant of taxpayers' money, the rains came, as they do in south-western Tasmania, and washed away what saplings there were and the topsoil with them. Because they refused to follow the science—science based on the traditional techniques of Indigenous Australians—all that remains today is a gravel pit.

This is the environmentalists' answer for forest management in this country. They say, 'We've got to ban native forestry, because it's bad for the environment, but we will lock up swathes of land managed by native forest loggers for World Heritage purposes.' Those are in contrast with the patch of land that environmentalists manage, which is nothing more than a gravel pit. It does rather point to the fact that everything you heard before from the proponents of this bill is not based on fact. It is not based on science. It is pure ideology and will have bad outcomes not only for our environment, as demonstrated by what I've just said, but for the global environment. We should be global leaders when it comes to that. Of course, shutting down an industry has economic effects. I have before me the packaging of copy paper that we have available to us in this House. Would you believe we don't actually produce copy paper in this country anymore—which is a crime! There are many workers who have worked in mills over many years, proudly using Australian-sourced material to make Australian copy paper. We don't do that here. This package is produced in Indonesia. Would the Greens say that Indonesia does forestry and downstream processing better than here in Australia? Do they look after their workers over there better than we do? No, they don't.

Offshoring forestry and downstream processing is the by-product of supporting bills like this. They don't care. They really don't care where we get our paper and timber from or what happens to the environment over the horizon, as long as their political games are played to the best advantage possible. That's the problem. This is the same party whose leader famously spoke back in 1981 in opposition to renewable energy. Dams in Tasmania produce 100 per cent green energy which is now the envy of the nation as we transition out of coal and gas. Bob Brown, former senator and head of the Bob Brown Foundation said that coal-fired power was the best option. He doesn't believe that anymore, but it does rather prove the point around the arguments that Mr Brown and others in the green movement use. They deploy at a point in time something they think is part of the zeitgeist—popular. They tap into an emotive stream in the community to get a political outcome. That political outcome, can I tell you, Acting Deputy President Sterle, is immensely destructive. It's bad for the environment, as we've just demonstrated clearly. It's bad for the economy. It's bad for climate change. There is no common sense, there is no human decency and there is no scientific basis to what they're proposing here. I implore all senators to vote against this disastrous bill.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And what do the Greens do? After finally showing their true colours as the party of Hamas; as the party of left-wing union thuggery, donations and bribes; as the party of communism; and as the party of environmental destruction in the name of net zero energy, they have a problem. Their traditional base of decent Australians concerned about the natural environment is turning away from the watermelon Greens. So here's the Greens' answer: resurrect a bill which was already defeated because it's a stupid bill, and use this to pretend the Greens still care about our precious natural environment.

The intention of this bill is in the name: ending native forest logging. Regional forest agreements will be made subservient to environmental regulations which will tie logging down in the courts and bring logging to an end—end logging. All those workers, many of them fine union members, will be out of a job. It is logging that produces timber for, amongst other things, the very seats the Greens are sitting in today, right now, which were made from logged native timber—Western Australian jarrah and Tasmanian myrtle.

Putting aside their hypocrisy, it's clear the Greens think their supporters can be gullibly convinced by a superficial virtue-signalling stunt. After all, who would oppose protecting native forests? Actually, the Greens oppose protecting native forests. Greens' energy policies are blasting the tops off mountains in old-growth forests to erect 300-metre-high wind turbines. They're clear-felling thousands of kilometres of forest for access roads and the power transmission lines to get the power hundreds of kilometres back to the city—thousands of kilometres, in fact, back to the city. Thousands of hectares of native forest are being permanently destroyed.

Blasting has released arsenic previously locked in sandstone into our waterways and aquifers. In the case of the Atherton Tableland in pristine North Queensland, aquifers contaminated with arsenic will eventually come to the surface in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef, through underground basins.

Unlike forest taken for logging, forest damage from net zero energy is not regrown. The access roads are required for maintenance for the life of the turbine. The transmission lines are permanent. Unlike coalmines that are remediated at the end of the mine, there's no remediation bond on industrial wind, solar and transmission lines, so these things will be a rusting blight on the landscape for a hundred years, for the community to pay for, for taxpayers to pay to rehabilitate and for farmers to rehabilitate. The Greens are environmental vandals.

I tell you who does support protecting native forests: One Nation. We would end the environmental destruction from net zero energy measures and would restrict solar panels to built-up areas where the energy is needed. We would end any new wind turbine subsidies and instead promote vertical wind technology. One Nation will prevent logging in old-growth forests.

Regional forest agreements are an accord between the federal, state and local governments to supervise the timber industry. This means the Greens believe they know better than the state governments—all six of them—who have been managing their forests for 200 years. Aboriginals have been managing Australia's forests for tens of thousands of years, including through the use of burning off. Each state government consults with Aboriginal communities in the development of regional forest agreements. Aboriginal voices only matter, though, to the Greens when they can be exploited to advance Greens technology and lock Aboriginals into victimhood and dependency.

Generations of ongoing development of forestry agreements, planning out supply and demand, protecting sensitive habitats and protecting old-growth forests—all that great work involving communities, industry and government is torn up and thrown away because the Greens think they know better. They are playing God, playing tsar. What an ego—and to what benefit?

The Greens are proclaiming their love of housing and promising to build more houses than anyone else. The question arises: out of what are they going to build those houses? The Greens want to shut down the Australian forestry industry, the conventional steel industry, the gas industry, the diesel industry and the cement industry. The Greens are proposing to build houses without timber, steel or concrete. Well, the last time I looked, pixie dust was not a building material. Does the CFMEU know they're hopping into bed with a political party that would remove from the market all the materials tradies need to build a new home and build new apartment towers while also removing diesel for tradies' generators and utes, which they now propose to tax out of existence?

I don't want to confuse the feelings coming from my left with facts, yet that's what I do. I deal in facts. At last mapping, there were 131½ million hectares of native forest in Australia, which is 17 per cent of Australia's land area, and there were 1.8 million hectares of commercial plantations, including pines and eucalypts. This is where most logging occurs, yet it's not enough to sustain Australia's demand for timber. There are 30 million hectares of land, most of that privately owned, which can be logged under the careful management of regional forest agreements. Last year, two per cent of those 30 million hectares were logged, meaning Australia is logging 600,000 hectares out of the 133 million hectares available, less than one half of one per cent of our native forests.

What happens when a forest is logged? Is it clear-felled, never to grow anything again? Of course not. Forestry is about renewal. That's the whole point of regional forestry agreements. The logging industry is allowed to go in and take the productive timber, remove the stunted and useless timber and then leave that forest to regenerate for 10 years or so before returning to repeat the cycle. Habitat is not destroyed; it's enhanced. Forests are not destroyed; they're enhanced. Rather than helping our forests, this Greens bill will harm them.

Logging removes the fuel from the forest. It thins the trees and protects native forest from bushfires. There are huge areas of this country that have never fully recovered from the bushfires during the drought because some native forests contain so much fuel they burned like hell. What happened to the wildlife the Greens profess to care so much about? They were incinerated—agonisingly, cruelly incinerated. The damage to native flora and fauna caused in those bushfires resulted directly from restrictions on burn-offs, something sensible forest management would have mediated. They tried to, but the Greens stopped it. This is the problem with communists. They think imperious proclamations are a substitute for good government facts and data. They are wrong.

Let's be clear: it has been illegal to log old-growth forests for the entirety of this century. I know there has been some intrusion into old-growth forests. This bill from the Greens won't deal with that problem, though, because the intrusion is mostly coming from the construction of wind turbines, access roads, solar panels and transmission lines, which the Greens adore and love and drive. Illegal logging, logging that damages old-growth forests, must be prosecuted, and One Nation will prosecute offenders.

One Nation opposes this bill, because we are the party of the environment and we know the current system is best for the environment. As someone who has personally planted thousands of trees, rehabilitated land and protected coastlines, I know One Nation is now the party of the natural environment.

Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I actually agree with a lot of what Senator Roberts has said. 'Hypocrisy green' is thy middle name. Yet again, we see the Greens trying to absolve their guilt by exporting our problems. What we see time and time again is the Greens trying to shut down industry in Australia and trying to shut down productivity in Australia, but they're not actually doing anything to sort out the demand.

There are supply-and-demand scenarios across the board. We shouldn't grow rice in Australia but we can eat rice because it's a healthy food—it's not red meat. So, to lower emissions, we've got to have a vegetarian diet but we can't grow our own rice, so we'll take rice from countries that have lesser environmental records, worse workplace practices and worse chemical usage rather than have a very sustainable rice industry here in Australia. We shouldn't grow cotton in Australia because, apparently, cotton is a very evil crop, despite the fact that it is an annual crop and can be turned off and on depending on the weather conditions for the season. It is sustainable. Australia grows the most water-efficient cotton in the world and it is a natural fibre, but we shouldn't grow it here in Australia because the Greens don't like it. The Greens don't want to see us use our water on growing a cotton crop but they're happy to take cotton from other nations with lesser environmental standards, worse chemical usage standards and worse workplace practices because it makes them feel good. And now, today, we see the Greens, again, trying to absolve their guilt, saying we need to end our native forest logging here in Australia so they can feel good about themselves.

But we're not going to stop needing hardwood timber products—so what is the solution? How do we meet the Greens' demands to fix the housing crisis if we can't access hardwood timber for the housing frames? The only solution is that we import the timber. And where do we import it from? Guess what? From countries that do not have the same environmental standards, workplace standards or human rights standards. They want to shut down one of the world's most sustainable logging industries that is highly regulated, is actually good for the environment and contributes to Australia's carbon capture and storage targets so that they can import timber products from countries that see trees ripped out of the ground, with no requirements to replant them, and native habitats in countries overseas absolutely destroyed. But it's okay, because the Greens can sit back within this place with halos on, telling the government they've got to fix everything from housing crises to food shortages but they can't do it with anything we actually grow and produce in this country; they've got to look overseas.

Who bears the brunt of these misplaced policies? It is Australian consumers that are already paying for this Labor government's failed economic policies. Can you imagine if, after the next election, we are confronted with a minority Greens-Labor government, and what that will lead to? We will see the demise of some of our last remaining highly productive industries because the Greens won't let us dig anything out of the ground, the Greens won't let us grow anything with irrigated agriculture and the Greens won't let us sustainably harvest our timber products.

Let me remind people that in Australia, under our laws, native trees that are harvested must be replanted so that they can be harvested again. It is a renewable product. Trees, as they grow, absorb carbon, and when they are harvested and turned into a timber product that carbon is captured permanently. As Senator Roberts said, across our country there's only about 134 million hectares of native forests. On an annual basis, only 0.06 per cent that area is harvested. That is only six out of every 10,000 trees. This is not an unsustainable industry; this is a highly sustainable industry.

And I repeat, demand for these products is not going down. In fact, demand for these products is increasing. We have a growing population. We have migration through the roof, under the Labor government's policies, and we are struggling to house people. And yet the Greens solution is to cease producing one of the fundamental inputs for housing construction. But not on this side of the chamber, not over here. We support our forestry industry, which employs thousands of people—from the loggers to the truckies that transport the logs to the sawmillers who turn the logs into the end-use products and to the retailers that actually onsell the products. We support them. We stand behind our forestry industry because our forestry industry is sustainable. They use science. They incorporate science into their daily procedures. They measure. They leave the remnant trees behind to ensure that there are enough knotholes and habitat for our native flora and fauna.

In fact, just this morning I heard a report from Coffs Harbour about Forestry New South Wales. They've actually ceased harvesting timber in an area where an emu nest was found. This is a small, isolated emu species. They suspect there are only 50 left in the wild. Forestry New South Wales found a nest where the father was sitting on eggs with the chicks. They ceased harvesting and activity in the area to let those chicks hatch. And while Saving our Species went and harvested a number of the eggs to incubate, hoping they'd hatch, they also left some with the father. I'm very pleased to report that the father sat on three of those eggs, and two of them successfully hatched. And now that emu and his chicks are wandering through that area of forestry because our native timber loggers and foresters care. They care about our environment. They want to make sure they operate sustainably. They want to make sure that we have healthy native flora and fauna in these areas, and that's why they only take six out of every 10,000 trees.

We won't be supporting this bill by any measure. We will be supporting our forestry industry. I urge this chamber to vote against this bill.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to this debate on this very important piece of legislation, the Ending Native Forest Logging Bill 2023. I associate myself with the comments already made by my Greens colleague Senator Nick McKim.

It is 2024. We are facing a biodiversity crisis across the world. The climate is getting worse and worse, there's extreme weather, there's the rising temperature of our oceans and there's the lack of protection of our native animals and plant species. And yet we have laws in this country that allow the continued destruction—the bulldozing, the logging—of our native and ancient forests. It is just appalling that, despite all of the smarts in the world, Australia continues to log our native forests and destroy our ancient woodlands. It's time this ended. If we don't end it now, there won't be much left.

We have iconic species like the koala on the brink of the extinction and, rather than protecting their homes, we have laws in this country that allow the loggers to go in and chop down their homes in our native forests. Australians are disgusted that this happens. They have been disgusted for a number of years—decades. Every time the community is asked whether native forest logging should continue, overwhelmingly the majority of Australians say, 'No. Protect what is there, save it for the future and ensure that it's there for the next generation.'

It's important to save our forests not just because they are part of our natural history and heritage, because they are the homes of our native species and because they help create the ecosystems that underpin all life; they are crucial in our battle against climate change. They are the lungs of the planet. We need our ancient forests and our native forests there to ensure that we can stop the worst of climate change.

Our governments around the country, in states like Tasmania and New South Wales, that continue to allow the logging of native forests in their jurisdictions are doing so at the cost of Australian taxpayers, so, not only is this costing nature, costing climate action and making it harder and harder for us to arrest the dangers of global warming and stop the spiralling, out-of-control extinction of native species like the swift parrot, the greater glider and the koala; it's actually being done at the expense of the economy and at the expense of taxpayer money. It is mind-boggling that any government in 2024 could continue to argue that taxpayers' money should be able to be spent propping up an industry that destroys native forests. It is time that this ended.

This bill is timely because we are in the midst of a debate in this place about Australia's failing environmental laws. The government have put forward an environmental protection agency, but they have no laws to protect nature, no laws to protect our native forests from the bulldozers and the chainsaws and no laws to protect koalas from having their homes logged and destroyed, so what will this environmental protection agency do? It has nothing to implement. It has no laws to oversee that actually look after nature and protect our forests, our wildlife and our woodlands. It will be a missed opportunity if we don't do something now. The government want a cop on the beat for our environment, but they've given the cop no laws to implement. We need to fix that, and one of the key things we can do to fix that is pass this bill today.

The community is shocked at knowing there's a loophole in Australian law that allows—encourages, funds—the destruction of our native forests rather than protecting them. And in whose hands is the power to stop this? This chamber's—right now, today. This is a challenge to both sides. The Labor Party and the coalition talk a big game on nature, talk a big game on industry, talk a big game on futureproofing, but they've done nothing to futureproof the sustainability of our environment, our land, our clean air and clean water while they continue to allow this destruction of our native forests.

While we're debating this issue in the chamber right now, on the other side of the building the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, is on stage having a nice chitchat with the head of the Minerals Council about how to make laws more friendly for the big mining corporations rather than fixing the laws to save our native forests and protect our koalas. That's the priority of this government. The Greens are in here fighting for our forests, and the environment minister is on the other side of the building having a nice chitchat with the mining lobby.

Australians are so disappointed in this government. Your Prime Minister promised to fix Australia's broken environment laws and to do something to make sure stronger laws would be implemented. And you've caved, you've capitulated, you've gone to water because Gina Rinehart wants to keep digging, bulldozing and polluting. You've gone to water because the loggers want to keep the chainsaws going, the bulldozers going and the trees falling. Rather than protecting the environment, the environment minister is hanging out with the Minerals Council. That says everything about the priorities of this government.

Well, the Greens will fight for this. We will take this right through to the election and we will make sure every voter knows that if you care about the environment, if you want to stop the climate crisis, if you want to stop the logging and stop the pollution there's only one option, and you've got to vote Greens. The choice is crystal clear. You can't keep voting for this mob or that mob if you want to save the planet. They're not up to it. They're chicken scared. They've got no spine, and they can't be trusted.

Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the question now be put.

Question agreed to.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the bill now be read a second time.