REGULATIONS AND DETERMINATIONS

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for the Environment and Water) (15:51): The government will be opposing this motion. Today is a very significant day for the environment in Australia, for the koalas, the gliders, the birds and the trees that make up Australia's native forests, because today we open the door to a new way of protecting our native forests: allowing them to generate money by remaining standing rather than by cutting them down.

It's also a significant day for forest workers, providing a more certain source of funds for our forests, which will require workers to manage them for generations to come as a result of this change. Just to be clear, what we are debating here is the creation of a new method for generating carbon credits. The improved native forest method, known as INFM, gives state governments the option to support carbon sequestration alongside existing timber production and recreational uses.

This creates new economic opportunities for regional communities while delivering emissions reduction and environmental and biodiversity benefits. This is practical climate action and forest protection that supports regional communities and should be allowed to pass through the Senate today. It's important to recognise that this simply provides an option for state governments.

They may choose to take that option; they may not. Labor supports a sustainable forestry industry, and forestry will continue in various parts of the country. But, where state governments choose to preserve those native forests, they will be financially rewarded for doing so for the first time.

The Albanese government has made sensible adjustments to the implementation of this method. The measures we've agreed to will enable the Clean Energy Regulator to give effect to the New South Wales government's commitment to restricting the sale of Australian carbon credit units, or ACCUs, generated within the Great Koala National Park in New South Wales to a specified class of entities.

This will apply only to projects under the INFM method and only where a state government chooses to opt in to those requirements. In addition, Assistant Minister Josh Wilson has written to the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee seeking advice on variations to the INFM method, including increasing the amount of forest that must be protected against established harvesting baselines before projects can receive any carbon credits, rising to 30 per cent for projects registered from 1 July 2030, and clarifying the definitions of plantation forest and native forest within the method.

The ACCU Scheme is an important part of Australia's pathway to net zero emissions, helping drive emissions reductions while creating opportunities for landholders, First Nations peoples, regional communities and businesses. These are sensible, practical steps that further strengthen the method and build upon Australia's high-integrity carbon market. The creation of this new carbon method has widespread support from the environment movement, including WWF Australia; Greenpeace; the Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales; the National Parks Association of NSW; Environment Victoria; North East Forest Alliance; south-east forest alliance; the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation; various prominent ecologists such as Tim Flannery, Professor David Lindenmayer and Professor Hugh Possingham; the Aboriginal advisory panel for the Great Koala National Park; and many more.

I thank them for their support, and I thank those senators from the crossbench who have recognised that this is a practical, sensible step towards environmental protection. For those reasons, the government will be opposing this motion.