The Greens Leaders have responded to Premier Lara Giddings’ call for them to show leadership by requesting she meet to discuss options for Tasmania to manage its forests for future business and job creation.  

“The Premier will lead well if she gets off the failed logging trajectory onto promising alternatives,” Senator Brown said at a press conference with Senator Milne and Mr McKim.  

Greens Leader Bob Brown says the Tasmanian forests agreement, to be finalised in a fortnight, would be fixed by the promised 572,000ha of national parks being established forthwith. 

“These forests have been studied and mapped for decades. There have been scientific assessments of their world heritage values since the early 1990s. The only possible glitch is with clearfelled, burnt and degraded areas and Forestry Tasmania knows where all these are. 

The opportunity for a 100% solution to Tasmania's long standing forest conflict is compromised every day that logging continues in high conservation value forests, the Greens said today following reports that the coupe at the top of the list for a moratorium has just been logged.

"A moratorium must be placed on the highest conservation value coupes immediately," Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator Christine Milne, said.

The Liberal Party's decision to oppose the Greens disallowance motion on the carbon sink forests tax scheme is based on an incorrect understanding of the law, according to legal advice released by the Australian Greens today.

Advice from Michael Bearman, a leading Australian tax lawyer, is that, contrary to what the Government has been telling stakeholders, the full cost of land on which carbon sink forests are to be planted will be tax deductible under the legislation. This will dramatically increase the financial incentives for the scheme, increasing its impact tremendously.

MINISTERIAL STATEMENTSGlobal Initiative on Forests and Climate
Speech

Senator MILNE (Tasmania) (3.52 p.m.)-I also rise to take note of the minister's statement, and this follows from remarks I made following question time. I would like to point out to the Senate that, when the Kyoto protocol was negotiated, there was a considerable debate globally about whether, under the flexible financial mechanisms of the protocol, protection of forests could earn carbon credits. It was determined that that would not be included in the protocol for several reasons.