Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I did say that I would give you something to interject about, Senator Singh.

I have to say at the outset that it really mystifies me why the Labor Party appears to be so opposed to this. The Labor Party themselves, when in government, and the rural affairs committee in the House of Representatives, chaired by former member for Lyons Dick Adams produced a very good report called Seeing the forest through the trees. One of the recommendations in that report was that native forest should continue to be able to be utilised in the generation of renewable energy, as it was then under the regulations that stood at that point in time. Because of a deal done with the Greens, and because of the Labor Party not having the strength or the courage to stand up to the Greens in the circumstances that they were in in government at the time, the Labor Party brought in regulations to prohibit the use of native forest residue to be utilised and to qualify for renewable energy credits.

There are claims being trotted around here by organisations such as The Wilderness Society, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Environment Tasmania that this will bring devastation to the environment and to native species around the country. Yet that is not what happened when these regulations were in place previously. It is not what happened at all. So the suggestions of devastation from the Greens demonstrate that nothing has really changed about the Greens.

The Greens will say absolutely anything to justify a particular cause at a particular point in time. We have had plenty of evidence of that. Obviously, they are doing it now; they are trying to demonise this particular initiative that the government has put forward. I recall that in the 1980s the Greens were actually campaigning against renewable energy in Tasmania. Bob Brown, who later became a senator and spent some time in this place, was campaigning against hydro-electric development in Tasmania. What was he suggesting as an alternative? Bob Brown, at that point of time, was actually suggesting the construction of coal fired power stations in Tasmania as an alternative energy source to renewable hydro-electricity.

Senator Wright and Senator Singh were having a bit of a debate about how much renewable energy is produced in what states. I think that the correct number is that Tasmania produces something like 40 per cent of Australia's renewables through our hydro-electric schemes. As I said, the Greens campaigned against those schemes and proposed the construction of coal fired power stations in Tasmania. I wonder what might happen to someone who proposes that now. But that is what the Greens did, demonstrating that they will say anything in their cause at a particular point in time. It does not have anything to do with fact or science; that is just the way that the Greens work, and so it is with this particular issue. The science is really quite clear in relation to using forest residues as a source of renewable energy, and you do not just have to take my word for it. In Europe, the WWF, along with the European Biomass Association, have a target of 15 per cent of energy from renewables coming from biomass by later this decade. So the WWF is on the program in relation to this.

I have a document here that was published in Future Science. It is not just one piece of science but a compilation of global science, and it looks at life cycle impacts of forest management and wood utilisation on carbon mitigation. It says:

If the Greens are looking for a source of a reduction in emissions when compared to utilising coal, a compilation of science published in Future Science says that you can reduce your emissions by 96 per cent by using residual forest biomass as a feedstock for utilities.

Now, do the Greens support reducing emissions or don't they? I think that is a very good question, because the IPCC also promotes using biomass as part of the process, using sustainable forest management as the basis of that process. And that is what we are talking about here in Australia. We are not talking about mass entry into the forests, to utilise them for generating energy; we are talking about using materials that come from forest operations that would otherwise occur and using the residues from that process to generate energy. It simply makes sense. In fact, the IPCC states:

In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit.

That statement comes from the IPCC. Yet the Greens like to quote the IPCC ad nauseam when criticising the coalition or anyone else who does not agree with their view of the world. But of course it becomes inconvenient for them when they are dealing with this particular matter. The process is also supported by the FAA; it is supported by CSIRO. So there are multiple sources to support the basis of utilising native forest residues, utilising biomass, to generate energy based on sustainable forest management principles. And that is exactly what we are talking about. The regulatory regime that we are proposing under this legislation mirrors the regime that previously existed and that did not lead to wholesale harvesting of the forest for generating energy, using biomass. It did not. Why? Because the principles of sustainable forest management were at the forefront of that regime. We have in our systems a high-value test that says that the primary purpose for harvesting cannot be for generating energy.

The Greens utilise the Dirtier than coal report, out of the UK, which is a critique of the UK bio-energy strategy that allows burning whole trees for energy production. It completely dismisses or, more to the point, does not take into account the strategies that we have here in Australia, which are based on sustainable forest management. We do have good forestry management in this country. The reality is what the Greens are trying to do: their objective is to kill the entire native forest industry in this country. Their objective is to close down the entire native forest industry in Australia, firstly, on public land and then on private land. That is their objective. They want to take away any opportunity that industry has to utilise the residues because they know that if they destroy the utilisation of the residue stream they bring down the entire industry.

So this has got nothing to do with renewable energy; it has to do with an economic attack on the forest industry. They use conservation as an excuse, but they conveniently forget that we come from the premise of utilising residues from sustainable forest management. And I really do not understand why the Labor Party are not on board with this. The report of the committee, chaired by their own Dick Adams—a bipartisan committee and a bipartisan report, supported by both Labor and the coalition—recommended this. Two days later, at the behest of the Greens, the regulations changed. The suggestion that this is a last-minute entry into the negotiations would be one of the biggest furphies perpetrated by the Labor Party in recent times. The Labor Party knows that this has been a part of coalition policy right through the last election. The Labor Party knows that we worked with the then crossbenchers in the House of Representatives to have the regulation that they brought in overturned, at the behest of the Greens. The vote in the House of Representatives was tied; it was lost on the casting vote of the Speaker. So the suggestion by the Labor Party that this is a last-minute entry into the process is quite simply dishonest. But why would you expect anything else from the Labor Party?

This provision quite sensibly provides, based on sustainable forest management, the opportunity for an alternative revenue stream, an alternative use of native forest residues for the Australian forestry sector. It provides a way forward, particularly perhaps in the southern forests of Tasmania where the industry has no outlet for the utilisation of its residues. There are mountains of it piling up in the south—