George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for the Arts and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table a ministerial statement made by the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources (Mr Turnbull) on global initiatives on forests and climate and seek leave to have the statement incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The statement read as follows—

The forests of the world are the ‘lungs of the earth’. They breathe in the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, they store the carbon they need for their growth and they emit the oxygen which we need for life.

Mr Speaker, we need to breathe new life into the lungs of the world.

We need to give the world a breathing space.

And we will do so.

Around the world these lungs of the earth are being ripped from the forest floor at a rate of 71,000 football fields every day. In just the past hour forests covering the area of 3,000 football fields has been lost.

The world’s forests play a vital role in addressing climate change because they store vast amounts of carbon for long periods of time. The carbon currently stored in forests around the world exceeds the levels of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere. Dense tropical forest areas contain particularly high levels of carbon. As forests are unsustainably logged and as they are burned, they release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. Deforestation is also contributing to global poverty.

Around 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions (about 6 billion tonnes per year) currently come from clearing the world’s forests - around 13 million hectares or an area twice the size of Tasmania. This is second only to the emissions produced from burning fossil fuels to produce electricity, and more than all of the world’s emissions from transport.

Globally, more than 4.4 million trees are removed each day - 1.6 billion trees each year – and almost 1 billion of these are not replaced.

This must be turned around. And it can be. Countries can turn their forests, very quickly, from being net emitters of carbon to net absorbers of carbon. Up until the 1930s it is estimated that North America and Europe accounted for the bulk of carbon emissions from deforestation. Within 30 years their forests had become net absorbers of carbon, carbon sinks, as a result of tree planting and natural regeneration.

But today, deforestation is greatest in Africa, South America and South-east Asia. It is driven in large part by a demand for agricultural land in developing countries but is also a result of unsustainable forest practices and in particular, illegal logging.

Illegal logging is a serious issue for industrialised as well as developing countries. It degrades the environment, endangers plant and animal life and adversely affects the social and economic wellbeing of local communities.

The World Bank estimates that illegal logging costs the global market more than $US10 billion a year. Further the International Tropical Timber Organisation estimates that nearly 82 million hectares or 85 percent of natural forests around the world are not being managed in a sustainable way.

Sir Nicholas Stern in his report on the economics of climate change last year also noted that the emissions from deforestation globally are significant and that action to address this is needed urgently.

The Australian Government has been working with countries around the world to improve forest management practices and combat illegal logging but a renewed effort is needed to curb the emissions from deforestation around the world.

Today the Australian Government announced a major international initiative to do just that.

The new Global Initiative on Forests and Climate will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries through reducing illegal logging and destruction of the world’s remaining great forests; increasing new forest planting; and promoting sustainable forest management practices worldwide.

The Australian Government will contribute $200 million in funding to the Initiative and work closely with developed and developing countries, businesses and other international organisations to reduce emissions from deforestation and to help manage the world’s forests in a sustainable way.

This funding of $200 million will be committed to working with developing countries to:

• build technical capacity to assess and monitor forest resources, and to develop national forest management plans;
• establish effective regulatory and law enforcement arrangements to protect forests, including through preventing illegal logging;
• promote the sustainable use of forest resources and diversify the economic base of forest-dependent communities;
• support practical research into the drivers of deforestation; and
• encourage reforestation of degraded forest areas.
• The funding will also support:
• positive incentives for sustainable forest practices in developing countries and reducing net forest loss;
• the development and deployment of the technology and systems needed to help developing countries monitor and produce robust assessments of their forest resources;
• piloting approaches to providing incentives to countries and communities to encourage sustainable use of forests and reduce destruction of forests;
• collaboration with the Global Forest Alliance of the World Bank and the International Tropical Timber Organisation on deforestation projects; and
• cooperation with governments and businesses in other developed countries to build support for and expand the reach of the Initiative.

As the world continues to develop and deploy the low emissions energy technologies needed to achieve the deep cuts in greenhouse emissions needed in the future, reducing deforestation (combined with planting new forests and encouraging sustainable forest management) is one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce global emissions now.

Australia is well placed to lead the Global Initiative on Forests and Climate. Australia has a strong record in sustainable management of our forests.

We have put in place a world-class regime for sustainable land use and forest management, including through Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs), the National Framework for the Management and Monitoring of Australia’s Native Vegetation, and the National Biodiversity and Climate Change Action Plan.

This Government has made multi-billion dollar investments in environmental programmes and scientific research. For example, over the life of the Australian Government’s Natural Heritage Trust and the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality programmes, we will invest $3.7 billion to address pressing environmental problems, including habitat restoration and sustainable forest management. Over the past 11 years, the Australian Government has invested a total of almost $20 billion on environmental activities.

As a result of these efforts, we have substantially reduced broadscale land-clearing of woodlands in agricultural areas, for the benefit of both our climate and our biodiversity. In 1990, greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation were 129 million tonnes. These will fall by 65 per cent by 2010.

Since 1990, more than 1.1 million hectares of new forests have been planted in Australia. By 2010, new forest plantings will remove 21 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.

Our forest management is world-leading. Some 13 per cent of Australia’s native forests – more than 22 million hectares – are protected in conservation reserves, including World Heritage sites and forested land under Indigenous ownership. Almost half of Australia’s tropical and temperate rainforests are protected.

This includes more than 2.9 million hectares of forest (including 90 per cent of our high quality wilderness and 68 per cent of old-growth forest) added to conservation reserves since 1996 through our RFA system.

This system has achieved a balance between the long-term protection of our unique forest biodiversity and providing a sustainable future for forest industries. We have overcome past unsustainable forest practices, while supporting the growth of internationally competitive and sustainable forest industries which currently employ more than 83,000 people and have an annual turnover of more than $18 billion.

Australia has been pressing for urgent global action on forests and climate change for many years. Since Kyoto negotiations began a decade ago, Australia has led the push for effective international action on deforestation.

There are few frameworks internationally that address emissions from deforestation. It is a fact that the Kyoto Protocol provides no incentive for developing countries to reduce deforestation, yet this represents one of the best opportunities for real progress over the two next decades.

This deficiency in Kyoto has been widely recognised. The Humane Society’s Michael Kennedy recently wrote “The Kyoto Protocol, through this CDM funding, is effectively financing…massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.”

This Global Initiative will do for the planet what Kyoto couldn’t. It is often forgotten that the earth’s carbon is cycled between the ocean, biosphere and atmosphere. Reducing the amount in the atmosphere is not only possible via reduced emissions but also through increased uptake in the terrestrial biosphere.

Let there be no mistake - successfully addressing deforestation and forest management is an essential part of any effective global response to climate change.

If we could only halve the current rate of global deforestation, and our goals are much more ambitious than that, this new Global Initiative on Forests and Climate could lead to reductions in annual global greenhouse gas emissions of 3 billion tonnes a year – or around 10%.

This would lead to global emission reductions five times greater than Australia’s total annual emissions and almost 10 times as large as those achieved under the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which will only reduce annual emissions by 1% by 2010.

Through this initiative we will work with like-minded countries, such as the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Indonesia, and international organisations and businesses to reduce emissions from deforestation and to sustainably manage the world’s forests.

We will also work closely with the World Bank which has stated its intention to expand its efforts on deforestation.

Through working together – with developed and developing countries across the world – we can harness the collective effort and resources to make a potentially massive contribution to addressing climate change and sustainable forest management.

As part of the initiative Australia is announcing today, we will be offering to nearby developing countries access to high-quality satellite measurement data on their forests and the technical help to use it to underpin sustainable forest management.

We have the forests, we have the history, we have the runs on the board and we have valuable experience to share. Through this initiative, Australia is delivering practical action that will make a real difference to global greenhouse gas emissions.

The Global Initiative on Forests and Climate builds on the Australian Government’s comprehensive climate change strategy that:

• is supporting world-class scientific research to build our understanding of climate change and its potential impacts, particularly in our region;
• has Australia tracking well to meet our Kyoto greenhouse gas emissions reduction target;
• is supporting the development of the new low emissions technologies Australia and the world will need in the future, including renewable energy technologies and clean coal;
• is identifying those regions and industries that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and helping them adapt to those impacts; and
• is continuing the push for an effective international agreement that will see all major greenhouse gas emitting countries reducing their emissions.

This strategy is underpinned by an investment of more than $2 billion, which in turn is leveraging more than $7.5 billion in additional investment.

The Australian Government is committed to addressing climate change and to making a significant and material difference to the global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Today’s announcement represents a quantum step in the international effort to addressing this serious environmental challenge. This is an initiative that the entire world can embrace because it is one that will make a difference.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This statement from the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources is on today’s announcement by the Prime Minister of what is called a global initiative on forests and climate. It is not anything of the sort. It seeks to paint the Australian government as having taken a lead in funding the start of a program to end the massive loss of forests around the world, as called for by many people, including Sir Nicholas Stern, who is currently visiting Australia.

The amount that the government is putting up is $200 million. As Sir Nicholas Stern outlined yesterday, the amount for halfway achieving the task would be $10,000 million. In other words, this statement of global initiative is actually a two per cent commitment to get half the job done. It does nothing of the sort. This allocation of money is effectively the federal government using $200 million of taxpayers’ money to try and divert attention away from the very learned and frightening forecasts of economic as well as environmental damage which are coming to us now and which will accelerate and accumulate over the coming centuries, according to Sir Nicholas Stern, who is former Chief Economist of the World Bank.

The proposal here is to go offshore to deal with the burning of forests. But the problem is that this same government, since the last election, has put $100 million into promoting the burning of forests here in south-east Australia. The focus of attention on South-East Asia ought to have begun in south-east Australia.

Who promoted that $100 million to accelerate the woodchipping and burning of forests in south-east Australia? It was done under the signature of the Hon. John Howard, Prime Minister. That is what Gunns and others involved in the destruction of old growth forests in Australia wanted of him. There are lucrative profits to be made from exporting woodchips to Japan. They wanted it of him and they are getting it. The crass hypocrisy of the Howard government that is written into all of this is there for everybody to see. It is an astonishing effort by the Hon. John Howard, when faced with growing public restiveness about climate change, to try to buy his way into fooling the Australian public, which will not be fooled but is an active agent that deserves accolades on climate change.

The fact is that the marauding of South-East Asian forests by logging corporations and by slash-and-burn accelerated acquisition of Indigenous people’s forests for agricultural enterprises—including palm oil, which Minister Malcolm Turnbull refers to in his report—has been not only going on apace but also accelerating under the last 11 years of this government. Indeed, it has become such a huge problem that clouds of smoke have been closing Singapore and Jakarta airports and creating massive health problems. Just a year or two ago, the smoke swept down over Darwin and Northern Australia, creating newspaper headlines. What did Prime Minister Howard do then, because climate change was not so much on the agenda? Absolutely nothing.

What the Prime Minister has done in Tasmania, Victoria and south-west Western Australia is put money into those benighted forest authorities like the Lennon government and eventually into the pockets of Gunns Ltd to cut down enormous native forests—the biggest terrestrial living carbon banks in the Southern Hemisphere, which are holding back carbon and greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Some of the bigger trees are dynamited, using explosives as a means of reducing the workforce and increasing the profit line. Then, Gunns moves in and takes what woodchips it wants—more than 80 per cent, and sometimes more than 90 per cent, of the forest is extracted, but a vast amount is left there lying on the forest floor.

At the moment, we are seeing an obscene spectacle: the firebombing of these remnant forests, under the Prime Minister’s authority—his own signature, most recently applied to an amendment to the regional forest agreement this year—along with the Premier of Tasmania, Paul Lennon. They got together to do it. The remains of these tall forests are tall enough to reach up into the arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and would overtower the flagpole on this parliament. The remnants are being firebombed. That happened yesterday and is happening today and will happen tomorrow.

Yesterday, as Senator Milne pointed out this morning, 14 broadscale clear-felled logged areas in Tasmania were firebombed from helicopters or from the ground to create an intensely hot fire to eliminate and eradicate the wildlife as well as the plant life in these forests—and with that goes the destruction of the habitat of rare and endangered species. It is being done illegally. It is a breach of Commonwealth law. The penalty is $5.5 million for those who engage in it, but nothing is being done about it because this government does not observe that law. It does not uphold that law, even though a Federal Court finding before Christmas with regard to Wielangta found that it was wrong. The behaviour at Wielangta was illegal and the logging had to stop because of the destruction of the habitat of rare and endangered species.

The minister claims in his statement that, under the clean development mechanism of the Kyoto protocol, some companies are being paid to actually deforest areas to put in palm oil. It is not true. The clean development mechanism, which is part of the Kyoto protocol—which, by the way, the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources and the Prime Minister reject and will not ratify—is explicit about the need for clean development mechanism funds not to be awarded where native forests are being cleared. In fact, two per cent of the fund goes towards regrowing forests on not immediately previously deforested lands. That two per cent of the carbon credits, awarded under a CDM project allocated to help cover the costs of adaptation in countries severely affected by climate change, enables, for example, the reconstitution of forests. That protocol was entered into in 1997—10 years before this so-called world initiative announced here today.

This government should be ashamed of itself. This opposition, which supports this government in the destruction and burning of forests in Australia, should be ashamed of itself. This minister should be ashamed of himself. The shadow minister should be ashamed of himself. How can members of this Senate and this parliament when confronted with this extraordinary threat—a real one, as outlined by Sir Nicholas Stern in this city yesterday—put their heads in the sand and continue to fund the burning of the great forests of southern Australia, with the consequent injection of millions of tonnes each year of greenhouse gases and particulate matter into the atmosphere, accelerating the economic, social and environmental penalty to this nation now, to our children and to our children’s children? Just today, the government and the opposition, as if to underline their conscious complicity in going in the wrong direction, rejected an inquiry into the impact of sea levels rising in this country, with all the economic and social dislocation that will come out of that. This government should be ashamed of itself. (Time expired)

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the statement which has been tabled in the Senate by Mr Turnbull in relation to the government’s announcement today. Obviously, given the short time the opposition has been provided with to consider this statement, I am not going to comment on it in great detail, but I do want to make a number of comments given that the Senate is taking note of the statement.

What we have before us today is a ministerial statement which commits $200 million to a so-called global initiative from a government whose response to climate change can be characterised as one of scepticism and inaction. They are now desperately scrambling to try and demonstrate to the Australian people that they actually care about climate change and that they want to do something about it. That is the context of this announcement and, frankly, it is the context of a range of announcements we are likely to see from the government between now and the election. We know the truth from previous statements by the government: the government is filled with ministers and backbenchers who do not regard climate change as a significant issue; it is filled with people who believe that this is an issue that can be doubted; it is still filled with members who are climate change sceptics. That is the reality.

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Minister for the Arts and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s not true.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection. The minister, Senator Brandis, says, ‘That’s not true.’ I would invite him to consider some of the previous statements of the Prime Minister and the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources on this issue, including the dismissive way in which the film An Inconvenient Truth was discussed, and some of the dismissive statements of senior members of the government on these issues. The reality is that they are shifting position from climate change sceptics to believers, not because they actually do believe but because they think it is politically necessary. We know one thing about this Prime Minister: he is a very clever politician. That is what marks the government’s approach to climate change: clever politics, but lacking in substance.

It is interesting to read Minister Turnbull’s statement, because he refers to Sir Nicholas Stern. We saw the papers and some of us saw the television news. There has been quite a lot of media interest in Sir Nicholas Stern’s visit to Australia. His report can, I think, be regarded as having shifted this debate internationally quite significantly. It is interesting that on the one hand, on page 2 of this statement, we have Minister Turnbull referring to Sir Nicholas Stern in a way that says: ‘He said this, so therefore we should do it.’ Isn’t it interesting how selectively the government chooses to take Sir Nicholas Stern’s advice? On the one hand they want to use him in a ministerial statement in this way, as justification or to add support to the position, but they do not want to take his advice when it comes to ratifying the Kyoto protocol—something which Sir Nicholas Stern spoke to the Press Club about at some length in terms of the way in which the government’s position has been commented on, indicating that it was not a position that made Australia a world leader. They do not want to take his advice on the Kyoto protocol or on implementing market mechanisms to drive reductions in carbon emissions, such as a carbon trading scheme—the government do not want to take Nicholas Stern’s advice on a whole range of issues—but they are happy to put his name in a statement, selectively, to support one aspect of what is clearly a clever political announcement.

The reality is that the government has been sceptical of climate change, and that, unfortunately, has affected its response. It is now responding only because it recognises that the people of this country recognise that this is an issue that requires urgent political leadership—which, I am sad to say, has been significantly lacking by the Howard government.

One of the things that the government does—and we saw it in question time again from Senator Abetz; he seems to have a few standard lines that he trots out on this—when criticised about climate change is to refer to the Australian Greenhouse Office. That was a good initiative when Senator Hill put it in place. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when he and Senator Minchin argued in cabinet about that issue, because everyone knows that Senator Minchin is one of the great climate change sceptics within the government. Anyway, Senator Hill might have won that first round, but what have we seen since then? I have some knowledge of this because, as a backbencher, I in fact attended the environment estimates. Many of the programs within the Australian Greenhouse Office were characterised by underspending and that great term ‘rephasing of funding’, which is public servant or government speak for: ‘We haven’t been able to actually spend the money, so we’re going to put it out to another year.’ That was what characterised a range of programs funded through the AGO and the department of the environment.

We have also seen—and the government do not mention this when they seek to put forward the AGO as their great emblematic answer to climate change—the AGO downgraded and moved into the department. I would invite those who want to look at the government’s record on these issues to consider the approach the government have taken to the funding of research into renewables, particularly solar energy. This has certainly been raised with me by a number of scientists in the area, in that the government’s record, in terms of supporting solar research and commercialisation initiatives, has been extremely poor. The reality is that the government do not have a coherent position in relation to climate change. What they have is a cobbled together range of political announcements. One only has to look at the buffet of positions they have had in relation to carbon trading over the last two years. Have a look at what the Prime Minister, Senator Minchin and Senator Ian Macdonald said, and then look at the current lines. The reality is that they have refuted the prospect of a trading scheme out of hand—they said, ‘We have to have the international framework in place first’—and now they are countenancing the possibility, or some of them are, of a national scheme as part of the move to an international scheme.

This government has no clear position. Only now, because they are under political pressure in relation to climate change, are they undertaking consideration of this through the prime ministerial task force—many years after many people, including the opposition, members of the Australian community and members of the business community, have been calling for this sort of action to be taken.

So, when Australians read the minister’s statement about it and see in press clippings various articles about it—because I am sure that Mr Turnbull, who loves the camera so much, will be out spruiking this as much as possible—I would invite them to look at all that this government is not doing in relation to climate change. This government has an incoherent and ad hoc approach to climate change that is driven by politics and not by substance. And I suggest that, as time goes on, the Australian people are becoming more and more aware of the way in which these clever political announcements do not address the substantial issues and substantial challenges this nation faces into the future.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of the minister’s statement, and this follows from remarks I made following question time. I would like to point out to the Senate that, when the Kyoto protocol was negotiated, there was a considerable debate globally about whether, under the flexible financial mechanisms of the protocol, protection of forests could earn carbon credits. It was determined that that would not be included in the protocol for several reasons.

The first reason was: how could you guarantee permanence? Someone might say they would protect their forest, but then a fire or disease might go through that forest, it might be illegally logged, and so on and so forth; you could not guarantee the forest was permanently there. The second reason was leakage. You could protect some of your forests, but if that meant that the whole logging effort went into the rest of those forests, then you would have leakage and you would have no more improvement. You had to prove additionality—that the efforts to protect forests were additional to what you were going to do anyway, and it was deemed too technically difficult to be able to do those things. And so, under the flexible mechanisms of the Kyoto protocol, they decided to go with reforestation and afforestation. But the key thing is: you only got credits for reforesting or afforesting land that did not have forest on it in 1990. So I suggest the minister goes back and studies that more carefully before he becomes an expert on the Kyoto protocol and what perverse incentives apply.

It is certainly true that the efforts under the protocol to reduce carbon dioxide emissions have led to the development of biofuels, and that the push for biofuels globally is driving deforestation and conversion of forested areas to palm oil plantations and soya plantations and so forth. But that is not under the mechanisms for reforestation and afforestation under the protocol; it is a perverse outcome of the fact that countries are trying to reduce their emissions by switching to biofuels. That is why, if you were really interested in this, you would put money into lignocellulose research, which would mean you could protect your forests, stop the conversion of forests for biofuels and still get biofuels from lignocellulose products.

I want to talk particularly about the claims that the government is making in relation to the regional forest agreement. I see that the claim is, once again: ‘We have a world-class regime for sustainable land use and forest management.’ I note, from the agenda for the Cairns meeting, that Australian representatives went along to tell the 58 countries’ representatives gathered there what a fabulous sustainable forest and land management regime we have—not admitting, of course, that last year a federal court found that logging in Tasmania was illegal because it did not conform to the requirements of the regional forest agreements to adhere to provisions to protect threatened species. Instead of moving to do that, the government just changed the words to make legal that which was illegal. And one could not help thinking today, when they declared the logging in Indonesia illegal, that, if they applied the same mechanisms, then they would just get Jakarta to change the law to declare that all that is illegal is now legal, which is what we did in Australia. So do not be surprised if other regimes do exactly the same and then point the finger at us and say, ‘Well, that is what you did in Australia, so why wouldn’t we do it here?’

Furthermore, I note the minister’s saying that, since 1990, more than 1.1 million hectares of new forests have been planted. Again, I think Minister Turnbull needs to go and study what a forest is. What have been planted are tree lots. They are monoculture plantations. They are not forests. A forest is a complex and diverse ecosystem. A monoculture is no different from any other agricultural crop, except that it is longer standing than an agricultural crop and, in many cases, has worse biodiversity outcomes because of the chemical regime used in its establishment, and because of the amount of water it takes up. So let us not have a nonsense statement like, ‘We have planted 1.1 million hectares of new forests.’ No; we have planted trees in tree lots or plantations.

Saying that they will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is true, but what is not being acknowledged is the amount of carbon we are losing from the clear-felling and burning of old-growth forest. In an old-growth forest, you not only have the carbon above ground; you have vast amounts of carbon below ground in the soil carbon, accumulated over hundreds of years. The equation is: it is, by many, many factors, an advantage to preserve old-growth forests rather than convert them. And you will find that to be true.

I noticed earlier, when Senator Bob Brown was speaking about the dropping of incendiaries in Tasmania and the idea that explosives are being used in logging, that Senator Parry had an amused look on his face. Perhaps that is because he does not know that in Tasmania some of those big old trees are so substantial that the forest industry actually places explosives in the base of them and blows them out of the ground, shattering them to smithereens. They are not used for furniture and sawn timber as the government would have you believe. They are shattered into fragments everywhere and then pushed up into rows and burnt, because often they are not even deemed suitable to send off to the woodchippers.

One good thing has happened recently. I note the government has been touting the technology in which you can get DNA from wood and you can determine where, which forest, it came from. I really look forward to DNA tests being done at the woodchip mill in Tasmania. I hope that some of the money that the government is going to use to get rid of illegal logging will be spent on determining the DNA of the wood that turns up at the export woodchip mills, because that will prove, once and for all, what we are saying—that the trees going through the woodchippers in Tasmania are from old-growth and high-conservation-value forests.

It was an absolute disgrace in here yesterday when the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry made a complete fool of himself by standing up and trying to ridicule my colleague from Tasmania Peg Putt, the leader of the Greens there, who was talking about regrowth forests being areas of high conservation value. Apparently the minister did not realise that, under the dodgy definitions we now have, a regrowth forest can be defined as one which a fire went through some 100 years ago. It does not necessarily have to have been logged. Apparently the minister for forests has yet to catch up on the detail in his portfolio and is unaware of that.

The final point I would like to make is in relation to how, in the ministerial statement, the minister talked about Australia taking on leadership. He said that we will work with like-minded countries such as the UK, the US, Germany and Indonesia and international organisations and businesses and so on. That is because that is what is already happening. The fear I have with Australia rushing out and pre-empting the global negotiations looking at market based mechanisms, as well as non-market based mechanisms, post 2012, is that it is going to frustrate and annoy the other countries involved in the process that are working very hard. Papua New Guinea, Costa Rica and Brazil have put forward proposals for the 2012 treaty—a legally binding treaty—to include protection of forests as gaining carbon credit under a post-2012 regime.

I asked the minister in question time whether Australia, with its new-found enthusiasm for stopping deforestation, got in touch with PNG to back that proposal that they have taken to the world community to say Australia wants to protect PNG’s forests and that Australia will work with PNG and Costa Rica to make sure that the proposal gets up. No, that will not have happened, because Australia does not want to see all of PNG’s forests protected at all. That is why the thrust of this is about tree planting and forest management; it is not about protection of old forests. Australia wants to facilitate the logging and so-called management that we see in Tasmania’s forests, which are losing so much carbon every year from conversion of old growth, and they want to take forest practices, like dynamiting old trees, into areas such as PNG under so-called forest management. Can we get a sense from the Australian government whether, when we go to Bali in December this year, Australia will back PNG and Costa Rica in getting forest protection and whether Australia will agree to a legally binding treaty post 2012 that does exactly that?

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to make a brief personal explanation as I claim to have been misrepresented.

Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable senator may proceed.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I claim to have been misrepresented by Senator Milne during her last speech. I gave her the respect of not interrupting her during her answer, but the facial expression that she attributed to me in her comments is incorrect. I think it needs to be clearly stated on the record that that was her interpretation and that the facial expressions that she described do not necessarily reflect what the facial expression was actually meant to be.

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the statement by the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources today. I doubt that I have ever seen such a cynical exercise. The government is obviously showing signs of panic. Could it be a response to the fact that Sir Nicholas Stern was here in Canberra yesterday—speaking at the Press Club and making a great deal of sense—that there was suddenly an announcement made to suggest that this government is serious about not only climate change but also forests? I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.