REGULATIONS AND DETERMINATIONS

Senator DAVID POCOCK (Australian Capital Territory—Independent ACT Whip) (16:00): Since this debate started, I've been overwhelmed by the number of Australians reaching out and expressing a love for our forests. Australians care deeply about the natural world, and our forests are home to such incredible species. There are three distinct species of greater gliders, yellow-bellied gliders, koalas, masked owls, swift parrots—a whole range of species found nowhere else on Earth.

Many of them are threatened, and some of them are critically endangered. Many Australians have been working to protect our forests and have raised concerns about the way that we're managing them and about the lack of political will to do better as a country. I came to this method very sceptical and concerned about what it meant for forests, so I began engaging with experts.

Someone I've had many discussions with about this method is Professor David Lindenmayer, who is one of the nation's leading forest ecologists, having worked in the field for some 43 years. Talking to him—I think he won't mind my saying this—I found that he was also concerned about the method and has spent a lot of time going through it. After going through it, he came out broadly supportive.

The people whose life's work is finding the holes in carbon methodologies have looked hard at this one, and the overwhelming consensus is that the method should not be disallowed. I have taken the advice of the scientists who've spent their careers in the forests over the position of the Nationals, a party that has spent decades advocating for the forests to be logged and spent decades advocating for them to be logged even when it costs taxpayers' money.

Having considered the method—and having taken advice from scientists—I'm satisfied that it does have integrity. Credits are only paid where logging stops altogether—not slowed but completely stopped. An earlier draft would have rewarded stretching out the gaps between harvests—an arrangement the industry could have played.

That was identified and it was removed. That is what a good process looks like: experts raise a loophole; the loophole gets closed. The New South Wales government has ruled out selling these credits to coal and gas companies at all.

I acknowledge Senator Waters's work on ensuring that that is made a reality. Let's be clear about what this disallowance would achieve. It would not cap offset use.

It would not retire a single junk credit. It would not require one covered safeguard facility to cut one single tonne of emissions. What it would do is remove a long-term funding stream for ending native-forest logging.

I don't think the Nationals have moved this motion because they've developed a sudden concern about carbon-market integrity. None of those concerns were raised during the Safeguard Mechanism debate. They know that this provides state governments with an off-ramp—with an alternative to logging our precious native forests.

We're one of 17 megadiverse countries in the world, and we're the only developed country that's a deforestation hotspot. We log native forests, usually at a loss that is subsidised by taxpayers. For years, conservationists have been told: 'We can't stop, because we need an income stream.

We need to fund the cost of transitioning workers, rehabilitation and managing new protected areas.' That cost is often said to be too high. Well, here is an alternative. I acknowledge that concerns about offsets in this country are legitimate, and I share them.

Work from the Climate Council shows that polluters are paying to continue polluting by buying offsets, and they're doing this rather than actually reducing emissions. This is an indictment of the safeguard mechanism, but I don't think this is an argument against this method. The safeguard review is underway, and that is where the fight belongs.

I'll be calling for caps on offsets. We have to get the safeguard mechanism right, but we don't get the safeguard mechanism right by disallowing potentially the highest-integrity ACCU this country has seen.