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

Tasmania's forests are some of the most carbon-dense in the world. They are also, of course, beautiful, worthy of protection for their intrinsic values and worthy of protection just for their own sake. They are home to countless threatened species and countless other species that live in our forest ecosystems in Tasmania. Today, a report was published from the Tree Projects, the Tasmanian Climate Collective and the Wilderness Society that shows native forest logging in Tasmania is the highest emitting sector in our entire state.

Just so folks can understand what a mass emitter of carbon that the logging of Tasmania's native forests estate is, it emits 2½ times the carbon-equivalent emissions of the entire transport sector in Tasmania. Annual emissions from native forest logging in Tasmania between 2020 and 2024 averaged nearly 4½ million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. The 4.65 million tonnes of carbon emitted by forestry in 2022 was equivalent to the annual emissions of over a million cars, roughly double the number of cars on Tasmania's roads.

We all know the vast majority of Tasmania's native forests that are logged end up as wood chips, and they end up as so-called waste on the forest floor. About 60 per cent of forest biomass in a destroyed, logged ecosystem remains on site. Branches, stumps, the smaller trees that are piled up with bulldozers into wind rows are then burnt, emitting mass amounts of carbon that blackens Tasmania's skies and for that matter blackens the insides of the lungs of many Tasmanians who are unfortunate enough to have to breathe in that pollution. The emissions from those industrial logging burns alone produce 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalence annually. They are carbon bombs.

A recent UNESCO report noted Tasmania's World Heritage forests removed more carbon from the atmosphere than any other wilderness UNESCO site. Tasmania's forests are massive carbon banks and, if left undisturbed, will continue to draw down carbon from the atmosphere, helping us in the fight against dangerous climate breakdown. If Australia takes its emissions reduction targets seriously, if it takes its global leadership role on climate change seriously, if it takes its net zero commitments seriously, it must tear up the RFAs and end native forest logging now. The Liberal and Labor parties are in lock step on forest destruction in this country. It's time to break the political duopoly. It is time to end native forest logging not just in Tasmania but right around the country.

This Sunday, 7 September, is Threatened Species Day. This is a day to commemorate all Australian plant and animal species that are listed as threatened, and it's held on the anniversary of the death of the last Tasmanian tiger, which died from exposure at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart in 1936. Australia has one of the world's highest rates of extinctions, with 100 species of flora and fauna lost since European colonisation. Earlier this year, Australia's tally of ecosystems, plants and animals recognised nationally as being threatened with extinction reached 2,245.

We all recall the Labor Party coming to government just over three years ago, promising, firstly, to strengthen Australia's environmental laws and, secondly, promising no new extinctions under their watch. However, what we saw from Labor in the last term was a weakening of Australia's environment laws—a weakening of the EPBC Act at the behest of the foreign owned multinational salmon-farming corporations in Tasmania. This weakening will allow for the continued drive into extinction of the Maugean skate, which has as its only home anywhere in the world Macquarie Harbour, on the west coast of Tasmania. This ancient species has its very existence threatened by salmon-farm corporations operating in Macquarie Harbour.

Just recently, we've seen Minister Watt green-light a massive industrial wind farm on Robbins Island, off the north-west coast of Tasmania. It's a critical habitat for the only naturally occurring disease-free Tasmanian devil population anywhere in the world and also a critical habitat for migratory birds. Robbins Island has been identified by the Commonwealth as being suitable for international Ramsar listing. It should be listed as a Ramsar site, and it is an absolutely inappropriate place for the kind of development that is being proposed. Of course we need more renewable energy, but it's got to be the right project in the right place—and that is the wrong project in the wrong place.

The report released today by the Tree Projects, the Wilderness Society and the Tasmanian Climate Collective identifies and warns of the increased use of biomass as an energy source in Tasmania—in particular, biomass sourced from materials from Tasmania's native forests. Let's be very clear about this: if you log native forests and feed the results of that logging into a biomass generator or into an industrial process, that is not renewable energy. That is not renewable energy.

There are five current and proposed projects in Tasmania alone that require wood biomass as a fuel or a carbon source, but there are only enough sustainable, plantation based sources to meet 35 per cent of the biomass needs of those facilities. That means the rest will have to come from Tasmania's world-class, high-conservation-value native forests. These projects will perversely be greenwashed as renewable-energy powered—but they are not renewable-energy powered.

I want to talk about one of those projects, the Railton cement works—astoundingly, the recipient of over $50 million from the federal Labor government under a project designed to reduce emissions. Taxpayer subsidies are going to go to the Railton cement works, when we know that they are going to take timber from Tasmania's native forest estate. Logged native forests are going to be fed into the cement works at Railton under the guise of renewable energy, with a taxpayer subsidy.

We all know that the Tasmanian native forest logging industry is a mendicant industry. It cannot survive without significant taxpayer subsidies. And, again, it is the political duopoly in this place—the Labor and Liberal parties—that are supporting the logging of our native forests.

Let's be very clear about what else is going on here. A year ago, Coles and Woolworths made a promise to Australians that they would stop selling beef linked to deforestation by the end of 2025. To its credit, Coles does appear to be keeping to that commitment, but Woolworths did a complete 180 last week by listing beef as a low-risk commodity, thereby walking back its commitment to deforestation-free beef. I want to be very clear. Woolworths must recommit to deforestation-free beef and cease its walk-back of its previous commitments.

Land clearing and habitat loss is now our biggest driver of animal extinction. The koala, the greater glider, the grey-headed flying fox, the pink cockatoo and many others that are being driven towards extinction. Last year we saw Labor undermine global efforts to fight deforestation by working to delay European Union antideforestation regulations. Woolworths, today's greenwash people: get with the program and recommit to deforestation-free beef.