Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – In closing, I understand that the Leader of Government Business had someone else, probably a political staffer in the minister’s office, write that response to my motion. More importantly to this report, I understand it is not on the Leader of Government Business, particularly, but it was a dreadful and unnecessary attack on an independent and well‑respected scientist and their work. It was revealing, too, in that there was no alternative data, as the member for Nelson made clear. There was no countering of the numbers that have been put forward by Dr Sanger other than to rubbish her. Yet, as she makes clear in the appendix of the report, Forestry Tasmania, for example, sends contractors in to cull after a coupe has been clear-felled, but provides no data to the government or anyone else on how many animals are culled. There is a very clear explanation in there of Dr Sanger’s methodology for drawing on other information sources in order to come up with a quite conservative number.
Just a couple of things. It is nauseating to hear the government, and in fact we hear it from the Labor opposition quite often, talk about our ‘sustainable world’s best forest industry’. It is so great that twice Forestry Tasmania has failed to secure Forest Stewardship Certification. Why is that? Because of the way Forestry Tasmania and its contractors clear-fell and burn old forests in a manner that is driving the swift parrot, particularly, and the masked owl also gets a mention, to extinction. That is why Tasmania’s forest GBE cannot get Forest Stewardship Certification because its logging practices are not sustainable. We have had special investigators sent down to have a look at our forestry operations here. The Forest Stewardship Council has sent specialists down to have a look. They have said, ‘No, you cannot have FSC certification for your mature and old-growth logged products which are driving species to extinction. That is not world’s best practice.’
I note with disappointment that the government appears to have given up on FSC certification. Perhaps it is selling so many millions of tonnes of native forest woodchips to countries like China, where the buyers do not care, that the government does not care anymore either, if it ever did. As for the Regional Forest Agreements, connected to what I just said, the fact is the Regional Forest Agreements have been industry‑driven from the start and they are driving species towards extinction. The Regional Forest Agreement in Tasmania has been responsible for clearing vast areas of habitat. We can have the less than 1 per cent of available land is logged each year, but 6500 hectares of native forest are logged here on this island each year ‑
Mr Duigan – And regenerated.
Ms Webb – They do not get hollows in a hundred years.
Ms O’CONNOR – Sometimes an interjection comes and you think, ‘Thank you’. Unfortunately, the former minister for the environment, who does not have responsibility for the climate portfolio anymore, has not read enough of any of the scientists who were cited in the back of Dr Jen Sanger’s work to understand that when you clear-fell, burn, and then chip a mature forest, and you replant it, it takes more than a century, if not longer, for the carbon that was lost to be restored. You cannot just fell a forest and plant some trees and call it a forest because it makes you feel good. It is not a forest; it is a tree farm.
If Mr Duigan has a good think about the skies down here every single autumn, that is from old forests being napalmed by Forestry Tasmania. That carbon, which Forestry Tasmania refuses to tell us how much is lost, by the way, that comes out of our forests and burns into our skies each autumn is going straight up into the atmosphere to help cook the planet that our children and their children need to survive. No wonder Mr Duigan did not really have the climate change portfolio.
Mr Duigan – Zero-sum gains, through you, Mr President.
Ms Webb – Rubbish.
Ms O’CONNOR – Not only ‑ this is intolerable. Not only did we have the Leader of Government Business come in here and denigrate and sledge a respected scientist, we have got a minister here who until not long ago was a journalist on TV –
Mr Duigan – Like yourself.
Ms O’CONNOR – telling us he understands the science of climate change. Well, not like myself, actually, Mr Duigan, I was an actual minister.
Mr Duigan – Spent 10 years making a television program about forestry.
Ms O’CONNOR – I was the actual minister for climate change for four years, I did not have to pretend I was because –
The PRESIDENT – Order.
Mrs Hiscutt – Mr President, Standing Order 99.8.
The PRESIDENT – Promoting a quarrel.
Ms O’CONNOR – I was part of a government that believed in the portfolio and it is utterly dishonest and unscientific for Mr Duigan to describe native forest logging in relation to the climate as a zero-sum gain. I will certainly be making sure that this Hansard, which demonstrates the casual regard that this government has for scientists, goes out far and wide to the scientific community and to scientists like Dr Jen Sanger who are doing the work the government should be doing getting out there, on the ground, to understand the impacts on our native animals of native forest logging.
But what we have got here – the reason that we do not have data in response to the member for Nelson’s point, is that the government has deprioritised funding for monitoring of native species. It has gutted the threatened species unit over the past 10 years from what it was and the time of the great scientists here who worked inside government like Nigel Brothers and Nick Mooney, Mark Holdsworth and Sally Bryant. Those days are no longer. That is when we had the best available science and understanding of landscape impacts of all manner of human activities. It is when government took seriously its responsibility to native wildlife. We did not hear that from the Leader of Government Business and that is tragic. That is devastatingly sad that we have got a government that has such hostility to native wildlife, hostility to scientists who do not agree with them.
That is sad, it really is. We have got a former not-minister for climate change who thinks native forest logging is a zero-sum gain on the climate. We have got a lot of work to do here because science and evidence are unarguable truths and we should base our discussions in this place on science and not propaganda. That is what we got out of the Leader of Government Business, just then, no substance, propaganda, interjections from the minister for not-climate change that are just rubbish interjections.
I am very glad that the Council has had the opportunity to note this report. I am thankful to the member for Nelson for her considered contribution, and I am letting members know that I will be back to talk about native wildlife at every available opportunity, as you would expect a Green in this place to do.
Motion agreed to; reported noted.
