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Wednesday, 6 July 2011
Page: 4140

Senator MILNE (Tasmania—Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens) (12:16): I rise to oppose these coalition amendments, which seek to have logging of native forests recognised as an offset under the carbon farming initiative. It is the complete opposite of the intent of this legislation. What we are seeking to do with this legislation is to provide incentives for people to maximise carbon in the landscape, not to be able to go and log and clear carbon from the landscape.

In fact, the Climate Commission's recent report The Critical Decade says that, if you want to maximise carbon in the landscape, the best thing you can do is protect your native forests, and it made that very clear. That is why this legislation is designed to maximise carbon in the landscape and to minimise the perverse outcomes of seeing business-as-usual forestry getting a double dip by claiming carbon credits for their business-as-usual activities. This is why the Greens opposed the carbon sink forests 100 per cent tax deduction. It is why we have heard the Nationals, as have the Greens, raving in this place about the possible perverse outcomes—

Senator Nash interjecting—

Senator MILNE: That is why, Senator Nash, I have gone to great lengths in this bill to make sure of a number of things. Managed investment schemes are excluded. That is something I argued very strongly for and we got them on the negative list. Plantation forestry is not allowed. I share the concern that Senator Nash has raised very often, and we have spoken on this together at various times, about not allowing plantation forests to march across the landscape and displace agricultural land. That is why there is this test in the legislation that is designed to prevent that happening. We got rid of the managed investment schemes. Now we are getting rid of the ability of the plantation sector or the native forest sector to try and get on the back of legislation that was designed to do the opposite of what they would seek to achieve.

I am very pleased that the legislation, as it stands, will not give credit for projects which involve the clearing of native forests or which use material obtained as a result of the clearing or harvesting of native forests. That is a critical component of the legislation for maximising carbon in the landscape. It gives opportunities to people for genuine environmental plantings and gives people the opportunity to benefit from those environmental plantings but does not allow managed investment schemes in the plantation sector to double dip or business-as-usual forestry to put up their hand for logging companies. It is a nonsense to suggest you should be given a credit for a project that involves destroying a carbon store.