REGULATIONS AND DETERMINATIONS
Senator McKIM (Tasmania—Australian Greens Whip) (16:05): After much deliberation, three Greens senators—me, Senator Steele-John and Senator Bleyer—have decided to exercise our right to take a position on this matter according to our conscience. We do not support the Improved Native Forest Management methodology, and we will vote here today in the Senate to disallow it.
Just as there are different views in the environment movement about Labor's proposal—which, let's be clear, is to sell forest carbon to corporations so corporations can keep emitting and cooking the planet—so there are different views in the Australian Greens party room. And I want to be very clear that people of good heart and clear mind, both in our party room and in the environment movement, can and have come to different positions on this issue.
We hope that people understand our position as we understand theirs. The three of us, Senator Steele-John, Senator Bleyer and I, want Greens members and supporters to know that we do not support the relentless commodification of nature, and we will not be part of making it easier and cheaper for big carbon polluters to continue to emit, which is what the INFM does.
I'm very proud to be aligned with Senator Steele-John, my close friend, on this issue, and I know that Senator Steele-John feels very strongly that the Greens in Western Australia have a long and proud history of being in solidarity with forest campaigners and that, over decades, they have fought for and won protections for native forests in Western Australia.
That history and the strength of the forest and climate movement in Western Australia have strongly informed the position that Senator Steele-John is taking. I'm also proud to be aligned with Senator Bleyer on this. She is someone I know has spent decades fighting to protect native forests purely for their intrinsic values, no strings attached, and Senator Bleyer is doing that again today.
I've been striving to save forests since I was arrested more years ago than I care to count at Farmhouse Creek, a place where I first met Bob Brown, who supports the position that Senator Bleyer, Senator Steele-John and I have taken today. Let's be very clear about this: this is a Labor shakedown. After repeatedly, unconditionally promising the Great Koala National Park, Labor is holding koalas hostage and threatening their extinction unless they can profit from their habitat.
It's an ecocidal threat, and the three of us have decided that we're going to resist it. There is no guarantee that a single extra hectare of forest will be protected through this methodology. This methodology is a neoliberal response to a crisis caused by neoliberalism.
What could possibly go wrong? If it passes, we may never again see a national park or a marine protected area created unless the carbon or biodiversity can be monetised in some way. Forests are profound, complex ecosystems that deserve to be and must be protected for their intrinsic value, not for profit.
The tragic reality today, colleagues, is that climate change is a greater threat to native forests than logging, and we have decided we will not be party to making forest protection contingent on a mechanism that will drive their very destruction. Carbon offsets from forests rely on a fiction that no future government would protect forests without them. And history shows that, thanks to courageous activists and Greens in parliaments around this country, including this one, vast tracts of forests have been protected without being monetised, and we have no doubt that that would have continued in the absence of the INFM.
The three of us are profoundly grateful to everyone who's raised their voices and supported us to take this position. That includes forest defenders, not just in my home state of Tasmania but right around the country; every single state Greens MP in Tasmania; every single state Greens MP in Western Australia; Amanda Cohn and Abigail Boyd, two MPs in the state of New South Wales; and our close friends and mentors Bob Brown and Christine Milne.