Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about the two biggest threats to our native forests and the communities that rely upon them—Regional Forest Agreements and the burning of native forests for energy. Regional Forest Agreements have failed. They have failed to keep our water catchments full and our water clean. They have failed local communities that could benefit so much from jobs in protecting our land and water, including the management of pest plants and animals, and from jobs in retail, hospitality and accommodation created by nature based tourism. They have failed to keep our unique plants and animals from being trashed and from hurtling towards extinction. As the surest indication that they are not the way to manage our forests into the future, Regional Forest Agreements ignore the value of our forests as stores of carbon, which are vital to the world's efforts to tackle climate change. The government's plans to include the burning of wood from native forests for energy within the Renewable Energy Target will add to this failure.

Since our last session of parliament I have toured the eastern regions of my home state of Victoria, talking with locals about the impact of Regional Forest Agreements. I met some incredible people who are committed to protect their local communities from pollution, environmental devastation and the impact of climate change. In the Gippsland towns of Morwell, Bairnsdale and Orbost community members told me of their concerns about the impact of mining, the leaking tailings dam at the headwaters of the Tambo River, increasing salinity in the Gippsland Lakes and the prospect of coal seam gas in the area. And residents talked to me about the impact that logging was having on the region. The message was clear: for the good of the community we must shift away from clear-fell logging of our precious native forests as soon as possible.

The benefits of doing so are clear. There are considerable possibilities for tourism. One Bairnsdale resident, Peter, talked of his work to develop the opportunities of local, nature based and adventure tourism across Far East Gippsland. Another resident, Robyn, told me of the concerns the community has about the ongoing burns in forest areas, including after-logging operations. As well as the impacts on the forests, residents and tourists alike are discouraged by smoke settling over the area for weeks at a time. At the moment the tall, wet forests of the mountains of East Gippsland, some of the most magnificent forests in the world, are not promoted to tourists. Visiting these forests could be at the top of the tourist checklist for Gippsland, but not if the devastation of clear-felling continues. People do not want to travel through kilometre after kilometre of clear-felled forests, and they do not want to share the roads with massive log trucks headed for the chip mill.

I was so impressed with the dedication shown by the young people I met who are undertaking vital forest ecology survey work as volunteers. One woman, Rena, rediscovered brown tree frogs that had not been seen for 15 years. Through their citizen science program they are conducting forest surveys that should, but are not, being undertaken by the government in areas that are due to be logged, particularly at the moment in the area around Mount Kuark north of Orbost. They have been rewarded with previously unseen footage of endangered long-footed potoroos building nests, and sightings and evidence of three rare and endangered owl species—powerful owls, sooty owls and masked owls. These owls, which rely on hollows in old trees to sleep and breed, are now sadly absent from many other parts of Australia where they used to live because of the loss of old forest that they need.

I had the privilege of being shown around the beautiful Rubicon Valley in the Murrindindi Shire by farmer and tourist operator, Ken Deacon, who has lived in the Rubicon Valley for 40 years. Ken runs horse riding and trail bike riding tours through the forests in the Royston and Rubicon valleys, but he is struggling to cope with the level of logging. There are fewer and fewer areas of unlogged forest for his rides to travel through, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for his business to survive. His is just one of many businesses affected. Camp Jungai and the Rubicon Outdoor Centre are two other small businesses that are losing customers because of the loss of forest from logging, the 24-hour noise of log trucks roaring up and down the valley and concerns about the safety of students whose schools have now decided that it is too unsafe for them to ride their bikes because of the log trucks. The plans for logging over the coming years paint a bleak future for these businesses. The maps are covered by planned logging coupes. The loggers' claim that only a few per cent of the forest is logged each year is laughable. Ken made it clear that we must not let the Abbott government renew the Gippsland Regional Forest Agreement. Instead, these forests should be protected in the Great Forest National Park.

As a farmer, the logging carried out under the Regional Forest Agreement over the past 20 years has impacted every aspect of Ken's life. He has to deal with less water in the Rubicon River, with water flows decreasing by 45 per cent over the last 30 years. The drought had its impact, but when the big dry broke and rainfall returned to normal water flows in the Rubicon continued to decline. As the clear-felled forest in the valley has regrown its water use has increased and less water is flowing into the river. It will take well over a hundred years of no logging for water levels to regain their original levels.

Then we hear that the government not only want to continue the destruction of the Regional Forest Agreement but have reached a deal with the Labor Party on the Renewable Energy Target which allows the burning of wood from native forests for energy. Burning native forests for energy is unsustainable, unhealthy and downright destructive. It produces electricity that is neither clean nor green. Not only will we lose the benefits that these forests have as carbon stores but we will also see huge amounts of carbon released into the atmosphere.

If allowed, it would decrease the renewable energy certificates available for real renewable energy sources and undermine the renewable energy target that we have got left. Over a million Australian households are powered by rooftop solar. What message does it send these people and the solar industry if these pseudo-renewables are included in the renewable energy target? The government is arguing that the wood that would be burnt is just 'waste', but the whole logging operation is what creates this so-called waste. Without clear-felling, there is no waste. When an area is clear-felled, the forest is flattened and burnt, but then only two logs out of every 10 that are removed from the forest get used for sawn timber. The other eight logs end up as woodchips. It is a travesty. The push to allow the burning of native forest for energy is only happening because the market for woodchips from Australian forests is gone. Woodchips from eucalypt plantations in South-East Asia and South America are cheaper and better quality than woodchips from our native forests. The sad fact is that this deceptive label of 'waste' comes from an industry in its death throes taking advantage of a government beholden to the interests of big polluters.

If the government were serious about jobs, it would be winding up the logging of our native forests, supporting the ongoing shift of the forestry industry to plantations and encouraging investment in 21st century energy like solar. Over 80 per cent of the Australian timber industry is already based on plantations. Native forest logging is on its way out. We do not need to put up with this destruction any longer. If you want to burn wood for energy, then burn wood from plantations that you have grown as a wood crop. This is already accepted as true green power. Our native forests, in contrast, are worth so much more for clean air and water, for protecting our threatened animals and for their possibilities for tourism and for their ability to keep soaking up carbon from the atmosphere as they grow old. Including the burning of wood from native forests in the RET would just continue the devastation of our native forests and prop up big corporations at taxpayers' expense.

In conclusion, I think back to the Kuark forest I visited a few weeks ago: its giant trees, extraordinary tree ferns, mosses, vines and the birdsong ringing through it. It is hundreds of years old, but can be destroyed so quickly. Decisions we make in this place can decide its future in just an instant. Please, let wisdom, and the forest prevail.