Senator BOB BROWN (Leader of the Australian Greens) (2:54 PM) —It would be, if the government was giving equal reward, per ton of emissions, to those people who do not clear their forests, because they are the best of the lot. The woodchip and logging industry has got this government, against the public interest, to fail to reward those people because it involves large areas of publicly owned forest. It is the public, the average person in Australia, who is losing out massively in this whole deal, whichever way you look at it. We know about the $6 billion being transferred out of households across to big industry under the coalition’s pressure, on top of the $16 billion already going to the big polluters. This program is another case where good-hearted Australians, even on private land, who want to protect old-growth forests get nothing and those who log forests and start growing seedlings of some sort get rewarded. That is plainly absurd and it is culpable. It is illogical and unforgivable behaviour from the government in an age of climate change.

Nevertheless, I would like to ask the minister: what is the potential cost in monetary terms of the reward that will go to people who cleared forest over 20 years post-1989, who were told they would never be rewarded but are now going to be credited under this program? Can the minister give an estimate of the potential reward, in a carbon-trading era, that will go to those forest managers? I am sorry I mentioned Gunns before. They are going to be the recipient of a huge windfall before this is through, but mentioning them has upset the minister’s sensibilities so I will just ask a general question. What is the value of this amendment—which the government has accepted from the opposition—going to be in windfall gains to those people who did the wrong thing and cut down standing forests in the last 20 years, knowing full well that that would pour massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere?