Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

():  The Senate will now consider the proposal, under standing order 75, from Senator McKim, which is also shown at item 12 of today's Order of Business:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Government to cease all public subsidies to the native forest logging industry, and to use all available Commonwealth powers to end native forest logging in Australia.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

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

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Government to cease all public subsidies to the native forest logging industry, and to use all available Commonwealth powers to end native forest logging in Australia.

What we now know is what we've suspected for some time, and that is that Labor and the Liberals are colluding to ensure that Tasmania's precious, beautiful native forest estate is being destroyed and plundered using public subsidies and that some of the logs from that plunder are being shipped across Bass Strait using public subsidies and then being milled in Victorian timber mills using public subsidies. Every step of the way, this mendicant industry is destroying nature, emitting massive amounts of carbon and bleeding the Tasmanian, Victorian and Australian taxpayers. Like leeches on the public purse, this environmentally destructive, socially destructive, climate-destroying industry is bleeding the public purse because it cannot stand on its own two feet to survive. Four Corners last night laid this whole sorry, sordid saga bare, and it is the Tasmanian taxpayers, the Victorian taxpayers and ultimately the Australian taxpayers who are being ripped off every step of the way by this mendicant industry, which would collapse in an instant if the public subsidies were withdrawn from it.

Not only did Four Corners lay this whole sorry, sordid saga bare and make it obvious to the Australian people last night; we were faced with the Tasmanian logging minister—forest minister—Mr Felix Ellis, blatantly lying about what was going on. He confirmed that whole logs were not being exported across Bass Strait from Tasmania's public forests, when, in fact, they are. One of the people who has the contract on behalf of Neville Smith was interviewed on Four Corners and confirmed that Neville Smith was shipping whole logs across Bass Strait, so the Tasmanian forest minister, Felix Ellis, was caught out blatantly lying on Four Corners last night.

Make no mistake: native forest logging destroys nature, and it emits massive amounts of carbon while leeching off taxpayers. The Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme was not designed to be exploited in such a way, and the Commonwealth should immediately close the loophole that is allowing whole logs to be exported across Bass Strait while being subsidised by the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme. They should also prevent diesel fuel credits from being used by the companies that are transporting those logs, I might add.

If state governments, particularly in Tasmania and New South Wales, won't act to stop native forest logging, the Commonwealth government should use all of the many powers that are available to it to shut down native forest logging in Australia. Our native forests are too precious. They are too sacred. They are too beautiful. They are home to too many complex, amazing creatures and fabulous complex ecosystems to keep sacrificing to prop up a mendicant industry that is a destroyer of nature, that contributes so massively to climate breakdown and that bleeds the taxpayer dry at every opportunity. The time to end native forest logging is right now.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) | Link to this | Hansard source

If only life were so black and white as they would have you believe over in the Greens. If only everything were so absolute and so easy. We see the interesting conversations here. We heard the previous speaker talk of complex creatures that are wonderfully magnificent in these forests. But these same creatures, things like the wonderful koala—which we love so much in Australia—become nothing but tree rats when they're on a wind tower location. They need to be eradicated—knocked over the head and got rid of—if they sit where a wind tower should go. The inconsistency here is amazing when we go forward.

We see a fine example of ignoring what happens when you stop logging. I give you the Pilliga example in New South Wales. We lost timber jobs, we lost regional jobs—I see that—and it was all to save a native koala habitat. They estimated there were 18,000 koalas in the Pilliga across New South Wales. I hear you ask: what happened after we shut that down? Let me tell you. Unmanaged, a bushfire went through and destroyed everything because we didn't maintain the fire trails; we didn't have logging trails; we didn't have anything. We now have a functionally extinct koala habitat in the Pilliga. They're functionally extinct. We didn't protect them. We didn't protect the animals. We didn't protect the area. In fact, invasive species of trees have taken over because of these fires. The Pilliga is now nothing like it used to be when it was being managed.

They talk about the massive carbon output of having these things. They don't talk about the carbon sequestration that forests have when they're growing. They take carbon in at a much faster rate when they are growing than they do when they are there. In fact, recent studies have come to show that forests in states of decline can emit more carbon as rotting timbers come out than they soaked up during their life. It is best practice to take timber and let it grow and absorb carbon in the world.

When we see what the alternative is if we don't take Australian hardwoods—there's a joke that goes around in the timber industry. Why does Merbau flow red when it gets rained on when you're building an industry? Because it is the blood of orangutans when they come from Borneo, Indonesia and other sources when they go there. Because if we don't take Australian hardwoods, we take them from Indonesia; we take them from Papua; we take them from Brazil; we take them from other sources—

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Russia!

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) | Link to this | Hansard source

Russia. Let's talk about Russia. What a great interjection! We'll talk about that. We have seen timber being dumped, outside of sanctions, in Australia, by not following process. We are seeing Chinese timbers, LVLs, processed timbers, Russian birch and other things coming here via systems. We are promoting Russian breaches of trade sanctions by stopping Australian hardwoods from being produced. This is the reality of the world and the timber industry. The only thing we are stopping if we stop the Australian timber industry is Australian jobs.

Native animals will still be killed, just not in Australia. We heard that native animals in Australia get damaged by this. We have this great thing called the Great Koala National Park that is being proposed in New South Wales. Timber were happy to work in reserved areas and said: 'Yes, we'll make a koala park slightly bigger than it is now. We'll give you 70,000 hectares more.' But, no, they want more. They want 170,000 hectares. So we've virtually stopped what we call logging on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. But the studies show this: the koalas in the managed forest, where logging activities were being undertaken, were healthier and more numerous than those in the national parks. The national park koalas were malnourished and unhealthy compared to those in the managed area.

We don't want to tell that story, and the truth was said by the previous speaker. They want to ban all native logging full stop. There's not a reason for it. We can cut down trees where we want to build wind towers. We can kill native animals where we want to build solar farms. We can do all of this. We can cause the rest of the world to lose their forests and their animals. We just can't do that in Australia. There are people in this parliament—they are consistent; I get that—who want to see the shutting down of all extractive industries, everything that brings money to Australia, because their agenda is ruining the economy, not protecting the environment. That is the main reason we stand here today, and we see it consistently time after time after time.

You see these ACCUs and carbon credits. Why should money be put aside for forests to just do their thing and grow with no additionality? We are locking up the Great Koala National Park and the areas around the north coast for no reason. The forests are there. They are being managed. We have a healthy koala population. We're living through it. In Tasmania—I'm not going to speak with authority, Senator McKim, on Tasmania. I'll give that to them and the other Tasmanians here. But let's get down to it. The end of all native logging in Australia is the wrong policy. It doesn't take into account the carbon leakage, it doesn't take into account the death of animals right across the world and it doesn't support regional jobs. Just ask the people of Baradine, who have nothing to show for it—no koalas and no timber.

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to echo the words of my colleague Senator Cadell, who's the co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Forestry, Timber and Paper Products and someone who proudly stands up for jobs in our regions. What we have before us in the Senate today is yet another motion that is antiworker, antiregions and antimanufacturing. It's no surprise that it's sponsored by the Australian Greens, who continue to misunderstand the importance of forestry and its industry here in Australia.

Australia is a global leader when it comes to sustainable forest management, something that we have been proud of for decades. Whether it's in plantation or native forestry, our forestry industry harvests timber with a level of environmental care that is unmatched anywhere else in the world. Beyond that, the research and development undertaken by our industry plays a major part in global efforts to improve forest management and to mitigate climate change.

The environmental commitment is most clearly reflected in the Australian Forest Products Association's recent announcement that our forestry industry can achieve net zero emissions by 2029. That's right—this industry so irrationally demonised by the Australian Greens can reach net zero in two decades, ahead of the general economy, if we get the policy settings right. The Building a low-carbon future for Australia report by Forest and Wood Products Australia also shows that this path is real and it can serve our ambition to achieve net zero. Australian forests, both native and plantation, are carbon vacuums. They store around 14 billion tonnes of carbon and they remove 15.8 million tonnes of carbon annually, which is the equivalent of taking 3.4 million cars off our roads each year. Expanding new plantation sites will only increase this capacity. I am just surprised and gobsmacked that the Australian Greens actually are against that.

There's also great potential to boost decarbonisation in this country by encouraging timber use in construction across all sectors: in residential, commercial and industrial. We should back our timber industry not demonise it. Homes that are built predominantly from timber have a 46 per cent lower carbon emission profile than conventional dwellings that are made with steel and concrete. That is the fact. But this commendable vision cannot be achieved without a reliable supply of sustainable Australian timber.

Despite what the Greens might claim, this includes timber both from native forests and from plantations. Of course, plantation timber is critical. That is why the Albanese government is proudly investing in plantation. It is making record investments, expanding our plantation estates right across Australia. But plantations alone cannot meet our current domestic demand on producing the full range of timber that is required by modern construction and forest products industries and a modern economy. If we shut down the Australian native forestry sector, we do not reduce the amount of timber that is used here in Australia. Instead, what we are simply doing is pushing the problem elsewhere, and, as Senator Cadell mentioned, we are effectively replacing Australia's world-class industry with timber that is imported from overseas jurisdictions that have significantly weaker environmental and worker protections than what we have here.

Unfortunately, we are already seeing one of the worst examples of this risk with revelations that there are imports of Russian timber via third countries into Australia, supporting Putin's war efforts against Ukraine. I want to take this opportunity to thank the Ukrainian ambassador for bringing this particular issue to my attention and for his constant advocacy for the people of Ukraine. Timber of Russian origin is being rerouted through other countries to get onto our construction sites and avoid sanctions that we have put in place. This is a serious matter, and it is unacceptable, and I would have thought Senator McKim would be backing that and backing the people and those industries. We don't want this dirty timber in our economy; we want to back local jobs and our regions and support the manufacturing of this great country.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

We are hearing a radical ideology that would try and convince people that we exist outside of nature and that we can somehow destroy the very thing that we rely on and not hurt ourselves. In the middle of the last century, Aldo Leopold, the great forester, conservationist and author, said:

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

These are words that we need to heed more than ever in this country—a country that still does not make decisions like we plan to be here for a long time and that is still willing to turn ancient native forests into woodchips, paper pulp and box liners, a high-volume, low-value product. It is a shame on all of us in this place that we are willing not only to allow that to happen but to subsidise an industry so that that can continue.

Native forest logging belongs in our past. It is no longer profitable. It employs a very small number of people, who can be transitioned to plantations, where there is a great future. There is a demand for timber. Timber for housing and all these other things that both sides of politics tell us we need comes from plantations. The vast, vast majority of native forests go into woodchips. We've got to stop doing this as a country. We are destroying our natural heritage. We are destroying the life that sustains us. Even if you don't care about nature, it's in our self-interest to make these changes. Taxpayers have bankrolled losses and bailouts—more than $1.3 billion in accumulated losses in Tasmania, handouts exceeding $1.5 billion in Victoria and about $1 billion in New South Wales. What a tragic use of taxpayer funds.

Yes, we need a transition; it should have happened a long time ago. With that sort of money, every worker and every community could be looked after. We could get people into plantations and invest in the types of economies of the future—in tourism, in land management, in carbon. Instead, we have this short-sighted clutching to the past and a culture war coming from both sides of politics. We've got to do better.

Josh Dolega (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The central claim of Senator McKim's motion just simply doesn't stack up. To begin with, the Australian government does not subsidise native forestry operations. The day-to-day management of forestry operations is the responsibility of state and territory governments throughout the country.

That said, the government remains firmly committed to a sustainable forestry industry, one that delivers positive economic, social and environmental outcomes that include employment and income for regional communities as well as a sustainable source of wood products to support the housing and construction sector. Australia needs timber to build the homes that Australians need. Demand for wood products in the construction sector is growing, and our domestic forestry industry—native and plantation combined—is central to meeting that demand. With that in mind, ending native forestry does not make housing more affordable or more available. Instead, it makes Australia more dependent on imported timber at a time when global supply chains are already under significant pressure.

Our support for the sector is clear. It's shown through the new $300 million Forestry Growth Fund, alongside our existing $300 million investment that is already expanding plantations, strengthening the workforce and upgrading manufacturing capability. Importantly, this new fund will see the government invest with industry to build a larger, more sustainable forestry industry—one that delivers more secure jobs and higher value outputs. It will secure retooling, training and upskilling for workers across the country.

Ending native forest forestry means more imports, not less logging. There is a key point here that the Greens consistently refuse to engage with: Australia is a net importer of wood products. Plantations alone cannot meet domestic demand. Therefore, native forests remain an important source of wood products that complement our plantation industry. If we shut down Australia's native forestry sector, we do not reduce the amount of timber that Australians use. What we do is instead replace domestically produced, sustainably managed timber with imports sourced from overseas jurisdictions that may have significantly weaker environmental, labour and governance standards than our own. This is particularly concerning given that Australia's native forestry operates under some of the most rigorous regulatory frameworks in the world. Senators who genuinely care about forests should think carefully about what they are actually advocating for.

It's also important to put the facts on the record. Australia has 133.6 million hectares of forest, covering 17 per cent of the country's land area. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization ranks Australia second globally for increases in forest area. In addition, production native forests are currently a net carbon sink, sequestering around 30.2 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2022-23. This government takes its environmental obligations seriously, and the data reflects that commitment.

Beyond timber production, native forestry also plays a vital role in forest management. Forestry workers bring critical expertise, experience and equipment into fire management efforts. This includes hazard reduction burns, frontline firefighting capacity and post-fire recovery work like road clearing. These are highly skilled workforces embedded in regional communities throughout Australia, carrying out work that protects lives and property.

Turning to investment, this government is committing almost $600 million to the sector, and it includes the new $300 million Forestry Growth Fund to implement the industry led Timber Fibre Strategy; $83.83 million to modernise wood processing; $100 million for research and innovation through Australian Forest and Wood Innovations; $73 million to expand plantation estates across all states and the Northern Territory; and $10 million for workforce training. Behind these figures are real jobs and real economic contributions in regional communities. In fact, the native hardwood harvest was $274 million in 2023-24. The Albanese government will continue to support a sustainable forestry industry that delivers for workers, communities and the environment.

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

What Four Corners exposed last night was absolutely shameful. I want to give a special shout-out to Basil O'Halloran, an ex-Greens MP, who was featured in that last night, along with Patrick Johnson, who's also a Greens member, and a number of other people that have spent so many years tracking the movement of these whole logs and saw logs from our beautiful native forests onto the ferry Spirit of Tasmania and across to Victoria under the cover of secrecy and, apparently, to the complete ignorance of the Tasmanian government.

While I'm here, I also want to thank all the forest protesters who, over many years, have done everything they can to try and stop this insane destruction of some of the most carbon-rich, biodiverse forests on the planet. Senator McKim joined the Greens not long after he was arrested in a forest protest at Farmhouse Creek, and I came to the Senate on the back of a long protest to stop one of the world's biggest pulp mills in Tasmania, which would have consumed four million tonnes of our old-growth forest every year for 30 years. It would have literally destroyed the spirit of Tasmania. So we come armed with a lot of knowledge and information on this debate. I think I can speak for Senator McKim, and I know you're going to hear it from Senator Shoebridge and my other colleagues who have campaigned for many years against forestry destruction. I acknowledge the work of Christine Milne, Janet Rice, Bob Brown and many other Greens that have stood up in this place for many, many years and have tried to stop this.

We are in disbelief that this is still happening in 2026, and it couldn't happen without taxpayer subsidies. We found out that $1½ billion went in to transition the Victorian industry away from native forest logging, and now we find out that the Victorian government is buying and paying for logs to come over from Tasmania to be milled—not to mention that the taxpayer is funding the freight charges for these logs on the Spirit of Tasmania, which displaces tourists, who, by the way, come to Tasmania to see our forests, the wilderness and the natural beauty. That is what is the spirit of Tasmania. That is what is rare about Tasmania and needs to be defended.

It's really frustrating to hear from senators who come in here and clearly know nothing about the facts. They say, for example, that the federal government doesn't fund or subsidise forestry. Senator McKim just reminded me that, in the last budget, they put $300 million of taxpayer funds into subsidising native forest logging around this country, and another $28 million in the most recent budget.

Do you know what? When I was campaigning against this giant factory in my valley that would have literally burnt these forests night and day to make paper or toilet paper for Chinese markets from some of the oldest, biggest trees on the planet, back then they said, 'Well, if we don't do it, someone else will.' That's exactly what we heard here today. It's what we heard from the forest industry today. It's the drug dealers' defence: 'Don't buy drugs from the person down the street. Mine are purer than theirs.' It's the same old argument.

We, in this day and age, can use plantation for our timber needs, and the Greens wholeheartedly support the development of the plantation industry, as we have done for many years. Leave our precious old forests alone. We don't have many of them left. The tree that was featured in Four Corners last night would have been around in the age of Napoleon, living and breathing the clean air of the Southern Ocean, and it's gone because some idiot has gone and knocked it down and burnt it. This has got to stop. People are horrified when they come to Tasmania and see this destruction, and I invite all senators to come for a walk in the forest with their Greens colleagues and see the beauty for themselves.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night's Four Corners was genuinely shocking. It was shocking to see the way in which public money that was set aside to end native forest logging was actually being used to subsidise it and to continue it in some of the most destructive logging you could imagine. We know that it's happening across the country, wherever native logging is still running, and it's largely in the beautiful forests of Tasmania and the beautiful forests of my home state of New South Wales—two of the most magical parts of the planet. These are extraordinarily biodiverse forests, part of the great southern forest that used to cover the whole southern part of this landmass. The burning, the napalming, the chainsawing, the hacking, the gouging and the death can only happen with public subsidies—and large-scale public subsidies.

What is really obscene is that, out of the $1.5 billion that was put aside for the Victorian government to stop native forest logging—because, for decades, forest protectors have been going out into those beautiful forests in Victoria, looking up at these majestic, incredible, impossibly beautiful sentinels that have stood there for centuries and said: 'Protect these. Don't log these, don't chop these, don't mill these, don't chip these.' Finally, there was a decision made to stop logging Victoria's state forests and to finally transition them across to protection. And what happened to the money put aside by Victorian Labor? It then found its way into subsidising the same destruction of those same forest giants, those same sentinels of nature, only this time in the Tasmanian public forest.

You couldn't believe this was happening unless you saw how utterly crooked the forestry industry is in Tasmania, how it's protected by a protection racket in the state parliament—by both the Liberals and the Labor Party—and how the same protection racket continues to run in the New South Wales parliament and, it turns out, is still providing that flow of money out of the Victorian parliament. What should be happening with that money is it should be set aside to protect the forests, to plant the plantations and to actually end native forest logging.

In New South Wales forests, the southern forests, there is an extraordinary plan to create a new great southern national park, to link more than 55 current state forests to hundreds of thousands of national parks and create an extraordinary protection area in the southern parts of New South Wales. I want to thank the National Parks Association, the forest protectors and all those campaigners who have been spending years, decades, fighting for that. And why are they fighting for it? They're fighting to protect places like the Glenbog State Forest. Those locals and those campaigners who have been fighting to stop the logging in Glenbog State Forest—beautiful high forests where logging activities bury wombats alive—are still fighting to protect that.

I'd invite anyone to come along to the North Brooman State Forest to stand under 'Big Spotty', one of the tallest hardwood trees on the planet, and to look up at this extraordinary piece of nature. It's only able to be protected because it's in a deep forest with layers and layers of protection.

Come into these forests. Look at these magical parts of our world. Look at them with eyes that actually see nature for what it is. Join with the Greens and join with forest protectors to stop the subsidising and to protect these magical parts of nature.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Senator McKim be agreed to.