The NSW Greens have thrown their full support behind the Improved Native Forest Carbon Method (INFM), with the state’s MPs, a Greens mayor, four councillors, and the party’s local government committee all behind the Albanese Government’s forest carbon method days before the Senate decides it. That is according to Sue Higginson, the party’s state spokesperson for climate change and the environment, whose comments were published this morning, and to an open letter delivered to Canberra today, backed by more than 100 signatures.
“NSW Greens MPs do not support the Nationals disallowance motion, and we have communicated this to our Federal Greens colleagues,” Higginson said, warning that a disallowed method would mean “logging will be locked in for years and years”. The Legislative Council member said last month the arrangement handed public forests from one exploiter to the next, and on Saturday she put her case against Bob Brown in Sydney, saying disallowance “would leave fossil fuel offsetting intact while putting hard-won forest protections at risk”.
A group of NSW Greens councillors has signed the letter, which a Nature Conservation Council of NSW delegation is presenting to Greens and crossbench senators in meetings today. It asks the party’s ten senators to back the INFM against a motion that both sides say could settle the future of native forestry in Australia.
Jack Thompson, the actor, is the best-known name on a list that runs from Sarah Ndiaye, the Greens Mayor of Byron Shire, through four sitting Greens councillors from MidCoast, Kempsey, Port Macquarie-Hastings, and Tweed, to Ian Cohen and Jan Barham, both former Greens members of the Legislative Council. Wood Central has read the full list, which appeared in mainstream newspapers tonight, and includes the South East Forest Rescue, the North East Forest Alliance, the council, the North Coast Environment Council, the National Parks Association of NSW, WWF Australia, and David Lindenmayer.
“The final method is significantly stronger than the original proposal, which the undersigned opposed,” the letter states. The deferred harvesting pathway, which would have paid a state for delaying harvesting rather than ending it, is gone from the final version, and a state that lets harvesting rise elsewhere to make up the difference “may have to give back the ACCUs and the money it received from them”.
The NSW Government has said the Great Koala National Park’s credits will not be sold to coal and gas companies, the signatories write, the first such condition they know of. The park would supply less than one per cent of the credits issued each year on their estimate, and ending harvesting across all two million hectares of the state’s public native forest would produce 1.5 million a year for 15 years, the figure Mandala modelled for the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation, or 5.5 per cent of current supply.
The 176,000-hectare park was announced on the condition the method proceeds, and the state has committed the credit revenue to rehabilitation, management, and more than 100 new park staff. A disallowed method leaves no guarantee of the same boundaries or funding, the letter warns, and a Minns Government free to “say its funded pathway was blocked by the Greens”, extend the Wood Supply Agreements, and “lock in logging for another decade”.
Labor will oppose disallowance and the Greens hold the deciding votes, the letter says, and the federal party room could hold off a final decision until next Monday, the day before the vote.
