Australia’s native forests are unique and beautiful. They are home to some of our most iconic wildlife, are unceded Country for traditional owners and store enormous amounts of carbon.
Yet our environmental laws are failing to protect Australia’s native forests.
Under our current logging laws, the Regional Forest Agreements, the logging industry is given a special exemption from complying with Australia’s national environmental laws.
The Regional Forest Agreements have allowed for decades of reckless destruction of native forests across Australia, pushed native wildlife to the brink of extinction, endangered our water supplies, heightened bushfire risk, and made the climate crisis worse.
The Government has a responsibility to stop this destruction and fix our broken environmental laws. Yet Labor has failed to act on both a state and federal level.
Australia’s native forests need urgent protection - for their role in soaking up and storing carbon, as the traditional lands of First Nations peoples, for their totems and songlines, water, wildlife and beauty.
The Greens have a comprehensive plan to end native forest logging that will:
- Repeal the Regional Forest Agreements to close the loopholes used by the logging industry to violate our national environment laws
- Fund ecological restoration to restore forests destroyed by decades of environmental vandalism
- Support a just transition for workers and communities
- Create new, sustainable green jobs in areas where native forest logging is ending
- Ensure the carbon value of ending logging helps the climate rather than being traded away to benefit coal, oil and gas corporations
It is time the Labor Government stopped prioritising corporate profits and industry lobbies over people and the environment.
It’s time to end native forest logging.