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

We've just heard the last Liberal senator and the last Labor senator to make contributions on this matter of public importance describe this motion as insensitive. You know what's insensitive? Hugging lumps of coal. That's what's insensitive. You know what's insensitive? Making slow, sweet political love to the fossil fuel sector in this country, as the Liberal and Labor parties both do. That's what's insensitive. The science is clear: emitting fossil fuels is one of the great drivers of climate change and climate change means we are going to face more fires and they are going to be more deadly and burn more fiercely. That is the fact of the matter.

These recent tragic fires that cost 33 lives, devastated so many communities and killed over a billion animals were still burning when the mendicant logging industry in this country and its shills in the union movement, in the form of the CFMMEU, were out trying to exploit these fires and suggest an increase in logging volumes in Australia. That is what is truly insensitive. The science about logging is clear: it not only destroys habitat for threatened and vulnerable plants and animals, it not only of itself is one of the great drivers of climate change and one of the great emitters of carbon, but it in fact makes forests more vulnerable to fire. Those are the scientific facts.

Curtin University forest and fire professor Philip Zylstra says:

Thinning trees would allow stronger winds access to fires burning beneath the trees. Also the more open a tree canopy is, the more able fire is to spread because the leaf litter will be drier from more light coming through and there will be a more dense shrub layer due to increased light for plants—that will make fires far more intense.

Professor David Lindenmayer, from the ANU, says:

Forests that have been logged and regenerated are significantly more likely to burn at higher severity.

New South Wales forest ecologist Mr Andrew Wong points out:

Logging removes most of the water from the landscape and replaces it with small dry kindling.

He says:

The map of the Border fire—

near Eden—

pretty much overlaps the same area that's been logged.

Make no mistake: logging forests makes them more fire susceptible, so people who support logging in this country support making our communities more vulnerable to the kinds of devastating fires that we have seen regularly.

But there is hope. There are people in this country who are standing up for a better way, and I thank the people who've been arrested in takayna/Tarkine in my home state of Tasmania in the last week—14 brave forest defenders who've stood up for the carbon in those forests, stood up for the threatened species—the beautiful animals and plants that make those forests home—stood up for the Aboriginal cultural heritage in that area and stood up against a mendicant logging industry that couldn't survive without the gross public subsidies that underpin its obscene profits. There is hope, but it will take the Labor and Liberal parties standing up against the big logging and fossil fuel corporates in this country. Tragically, we are still some way from that.