Cassy O’Connor MP | Greens Leader and Forests spokesperson
In a climate emergency, there is no argument for a mandated minimum sawlog quota requiring Forestry Tasmania to make available 137 000 cubic metres of native forest timber to industry each year.
Today, however, the old parties joined together to lock in the minimum sawlog quota that is driving forest destruction along with carbon and biodiversity loss across the island. This mandated forest destruction is in defiance of science, community expectations and the hopes of young people for a safe climate.
Every coupe clearfelled and burned, backed in by the Liberals and Labor, represents a loss of carbon that, according to scientists, will take at least a century to be recovered. It is also destroying habitat for species found nowhere else in the world but this island, lutruwita/Tasmania.
This island doesn’t have time to wait for the dinosaurs in the Liberal and Labor Parties to realise the severity of the climate emergency. We have a responsibility to keep the millions of tonnes of carbon stored in our forests, safely stored for a safe climate.
Minister Barnett and so-called Opposition spokesman, Dr Broad were united in their archaic diatribes. Their joint climate denialism was only interrupted by vilifying conservationists and young people trying to protect Tasmania’s carbon-rich, biodiverse forests.
Labor and the Liberals, singing from the same songbook, backed in the mandated forest destruction which is also heavily subsidized by taxpayers.
While WA Premier, Mark McGowan, has announced an end to native forest logging in Western Australia within three years the Gutwein Government is showing no such leadership.
In voting against our Bill to abolish the minimum sawlog quota, Labor and the Liberals demonstrated a complete lack of leadership and abrogated their responsibility to work in the public interest.