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senate vote 2023-02-07#6
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2023-02-10 11:12:35
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Title
Matters of Urgency — Global Biodiversity Framework- Matters of Urgency - Global Biodiversity Framework - End native forest logging
Description
<p class="speaker">Dean Smith</p><p>The Senate will also consider the proposal from Senator McKim.</p>-
- The majority voted against a [motion](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?gid=2023-02-07.150.8) introduced by South Australian Senator [Sarah Hanson-Young](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/senate/sa/sarah_hanson-young) (Greens), which means it failed.
- ### Motion text
- > *That in order to meet the targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework agreed to at COP15 in December 2022, including conserving 30% of land and sea and halting
- extinction by 2030, the Government must put an immediate end to native forest
- logging and the destruction of habitat for new coal and gas projects.*
<p class="italic">Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today the Australian Greens propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:</p><p class="italic">That in order to meet the targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework agreed to at COP15 in December 2022, including conserving 30 per cent of land and sea and halting extinction by 2030, the Government must put an immediate end to native forest logging and the destruction of habitat for new coal and gas projects".</p><p>Is the proposal supported?</p><p> <i>More than the number</i> <i> of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—</i></p><p>I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today's debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.</p> <p class="speaker">Sarah Hanson-Young</p><p>I rise today to speak in favour of the motion we have before us. The Australian government has taken a big step to agree, alongside other nations, to halt extinction right around the world, to protect our environment and to look after our oceans. At the end of last year, at the Montreal biodiversity framework COP15 meeting, Australia participated, in goodwill, alongside all the other nations. Australia signed up to these agreements. We had diplomats there. People spent time debating proposals and clauses line after line after line. The meticulous detail and effort that was put into these agreements was extraordinary—and I'd like to say thank you to all those public servants who put in so much effort. But none of this will mean dot until we start actually protecting the environment we have back here in Australia.</p><p>You can't say one thing in Montreal and come home and do another thing here in Australia. If we really are genuinely serious about halting the crisis that faces biodiversity globally and here in Australia, we have to stop destroying our forests, we have to stop destroying our critical habitat and we have to start protecting those very precious places that make our country one of the most beautiful places on earth.</p><p>It is madness that we live in a country in 2023 that allows the destruction of our ancient native forests. It's not just madness; it's criminal that it is subsidised by the taxes of Australian taxpayers. It is heartbreaking to see these ancient forests destroyed simply because, year after year after year, election after election after election, no government has been willing to stand up and say: 'No. Our forests need to be protected. Our ancient forests need to be protected.' When we're facing this huge crisis of global warming and biodiversity, we actually need to protect the little that we have left.</p><p>The commitments that Australia signed up to at COP15, the world's largest global biodiversity pact to protect nature, were that we would protect 30 per cent of land and 30 per cent of ocean and that we would make sure there are no more extinctions past 2030. Frankly, I think we should be able to say there should be no more extinctions of species from today. We have already lost too many of our native animals. We've already lost too many of our native species here in Australia. We should be doing everything we can to protect them. It is just shameful that we are facing a situation where our iconic koala is about to become extinct because we continue to destroy their homes. The Tassie devil, the Leadbeater's possum and the Australian sea lion in my home state of South Australia—these animals need protection. You can only stop their extinction if you stop destroying their homes.</p><p>It costs money to destroy their homes. Australian taxpayers are forking out money to allow logging to continue in our native forests. It is shameful, it is economically reckless and it is environmentally criminal. It would save Australian taxpayers money if we banned native forest logging today—it would save them money. While the government talks about environmental reforms and changes to environmental laws down the track—'They're coming soon'—there is one key thing missing, and that is a ban on native forest logging in this country, and that is shameful.</p> <p class="speaker">Dean Smith</p><p>Thank you, Senator Hanson-Young. Could you move the motion? It's not necessary to make the speech again.</p> <p class="speaker">Sarah Hanson-Young</p><p>At the request of Senator McKim, I move:</p><p class="italic">That in order to meet the targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework agreed to at COP15 in December 2022, including conserving 30% of land and sea and halting extinction by 2030, the Government must put an immediate end to native forest logging and the destruction of habitat for new coal and gas projects.</p><p>And I look forward to other members in this place supporting the motion.</p> <p class="speaker">Dean Smith</p><p>I meant that good naturedly.</p> <p class="speaker">Gerard Rennick</p><p>I'm so pleased to be given this opportunity today to rise to speak to this urgency motion because if there is one thing that I'm incredibly passionate about it is the environment and biodiversity. I just don't talk the talk; I walk the walk. When I was a young lad I quit my job at 23, got on a plane and went overseas. I had six months in Africa. I went to see the gorillas in the mist, I climbed Kilimanjaro and I went to see the Serengeti. Likewise, I spent another seven years overseas where I climbed Mont Blanc and Annapurna. I went to those places and saw lots of wildlife across the world.</p><p>I am very passionate about protecting our biodiversity, especially here in Australia where we do have a lot of marginal country. I grew up on a property in western Queensland. Ironically I have actually seen the mulga wipe out the mitchell grass. I know what feral pests do to this country. I know that you can have too many wild cats and pigs, for example. I don't have a gun licence anymore, but when I was a young lad we used to go and shoot the pigs because they used to create wallows. Feral cats are a real problem in this country. I can assure you that it's very difficult to keep control of that if you let the mulga run wild in western Queensland.</p><p>There are photos of our property back in the early 1950s and 1960s, and it was all open grassland. Today, because we're not allowed to push, the mulga has taken off. One of these days they will drop a match in there and the place will just burn. If you're worried about protecting koalas and things like that, you don't want bushfires going on out there. It won't take off like the gum trees and the eucalyptus will, because it's acacia, but fires have happened out there in the past.</p><p>I'm glad Senator Hanson-Young raised the issue of koalas. To sit here and talk about the impact that coalmines and logging will have and not talk about the destruction of renewables is completely one-sided and hypocritical. Our koalas will be under threat from the construction of up to 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines that have to be built to connect the power from all of these isolated remote renewable energy projects. I should say that that property in western Queensland had solar panels in the late 1980s, so I'm not anti using solar panels or whatever at the end of the grid, but I can assure you that it will never work on an industrial scale.</p><p>Then we should talk about the sea lions. We have just seen seismic testing in the ocean off New Jersey and a lot of beached whales as a result of that seismic testing. Only the Greens and Labor could come up with some sort of mechanical energy instrument that will kill above the water bats and birds, especially bats, which are one of our key pollinators, and will be a threat to sea life in the water. And it's not just the actual wind turbines that are going to cause problems, these wind turbines are coated in bisphenol A. One litre of that will pollute up to 50 million litres of water. So we don't know what the impact of this stuff is going to be. They're going to have to make sure that there are proper regulations when they put these wind turbines out in the ocean, that this bisphenol doesn't melt or decay away and end up polluting our oceans. So in terms of renewables, they're a serious threat to our biodiversity.</p><p>Then of course we come back to the batteries. These are built from rare earth metals. Technically speaking, they're not that rare in the earth's crust but they are very, very fine in the sense that you've got to actually mine so many tonnes of ore just to get one tonne of metal. With lithium, for example, on average that grades between one to two per cent of ore. So you've got to mine 100 tonnes of ore just to get one or two tonnes of lithium. Then, on top of that, you've then got the stripping ratio, where you have to go around and around and around to get to the ore; you don't just drive those big trucks down at a very steep angle. So the footprint of solar panels and rare earth mining on our biodiversity is going to have a massive impact on potential animals going forward. That's not to mention the actual CO2 emissions that are going to come in actually getting this stuff out of the ground.</p><p>So I think that before we start turning off our coal-fired power stations—and, by the way, the CO2 that comes from those is actually plant food. What better way to recycle energy than through the natural process of photosynthesis? That's something that I would have thought most of you would have understood because it was taught in grade 8 science. So I say, let's back coal—</p> <p class="speaker">Andrew McLachlan</p><p>Thank you, Senator Rennick. Senator Grogan.</p> <p class="speaker">Karen Grogan</p><p>That was quite a fascinating contribution—I'm not sure where to start with it! I rise to address the urgency motion put forward by Senator McKim regarding the need to end native forest logging. I am proud to be part of a Labor government that is committed to strong action on the climate—to address some of the degradation that we've seen over the last decade and more, and to work towards Australia being the country that shows the rest of the world how to build a balanced energy system, to protect the environment and to actually plan for the future: a future that is a net zero future.</p><p>We had in December 2022, as was referenced by Senator Hanson-Young, an agreement to some targets at the biodiversity COP15. We also had a very significant agenda to protect the environment, known as the Nature Positive Plan, which will halt environmental decline and repair the damage that has already been done by the former government over the last long, painful 10 years. Do we remember the damning 2020 <i>State of the environment report</i>? It was hidden, probably on top of the firehose and underneath the pile of ministerial appointments. The way that the environment has been ignored and the way that the emissions challenge that we have in front of us has been just swept to the side is awful. But in eight short months, this Albanese Labor government has made significant inroads into trying to turn that around. We have seen so many changes that really are going to get us on the track to put ourselves in a position to be the renewable energy country of the future, which is what we want to be. We must protect our environment along the way and we must put it as a priority, which is what we believe that we have done here.</p><p>After that wasted decade, what we're doing in terms of the environment includes our plan for rewiring the nation so that renewable energy is able to be dispatched appropriately across the grid. We will have cheaper and cleaner power. We are looking at a nature-positive plan to rewrite our national environmental laws, which many of us are well aware have been broken for so long. We have a plan for zero new extinctions for this continent. We have a new nature repair market. We are: legislating to protect the ozone layer; doubling the number of Indigenous rangers; protecting Indigenous cultural heritage, in true partnership with First Nations groups; reducing waste; building a more circular economy; and campaigning on the world stage to protect our oceans, support biodiversity and fight for a plastic-free ocean.</p><p>We've already, in those eight months, passed legislation targeting 43 per cent emissions cuts by 2030, and we're committed to reaching 82 per cent renewables by 2030. We've had the Chubb review, which found that land clearing accounted for a significant share of our national emissions and recommended that no new project registrations be allocated under that avoided deforestation method. It also recommended that we look at developing new methods that actually incentivise the maintenance of native vegetation that has the potential to be a forest and maintain those existing forests. We've accepted this recommendation, and our safeguard mechanism will reduce the emissions of our largest emitters.</p><p>New projects will need to meet specific requirements, including rigorous environmental checks and adherence to the reforms to the safeguard mechanism that we're in the process of making. These reforms are important to limit Australia's carbon emissions. The reforms have received significant support from business, industry and environmental groups. This is going to make a fundamental difference.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>-
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