Greens to introduce bill to ‘end destructive logging of Australia’s precious native forests’
Lisa Cox
The Greens will introduce a bill to repeal the Regional Forest Agreements Act which grants logging operations an exemption from national environmental laws.
The party’s forests spokesperson, senator Janet Rice, will introduce the bill in the Senate today.
In addition to repealing the Regional Forest Agreements Act, the bill proposes the tabling of an annual statement from the threatened species commissioner on how logging is affecting Australia’s progress towards the government’s zero extinctions target.
It proposes a second statement be tabled by the environment minster outlining how logging is affecting Australia’s progress towards its commitment to protect 30% of the country’s land areas by 2030.
Rice said federal and state governments had failed to meet their responsibility to protect the environment and fix failing environmental laws. She said logging operations covered by regional forest agreements had been granted an exemption from national environmental laws for too long.
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.
If passed, this bill will end the destructive logging of Australia’s precious native forests, by repealing the Regional Forest Agreements and closing the loopholes used by the logging industry to skirt our national environment laws.
The Albanese government has proposed introducing legislation to reform Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act later this year.
Key events
Ed Husic on reconstruction fund: ‘one of the largest peacetime investments in manufacturing this country has ever seen’
The industry minister is very happy to have struck a deal on the national reconstruction fund legislation with the Greens:
After a decade of neglect from the former Liberal-National government, the Albanese government is revitalising Australian manufacturing.
By voting against the National Reconstruction Fund, the Liberal and National parties have once again shown they are not on the side of Australian manufacturers and only care about manufacturing when it comes to a photo opportunity.
We are now one step closer to delivering one of the largest peacetime investments in manufacturing this country has ever seen.
The Greens will hold a press conference about the amendment they secured very soon.
The About the House twitter account – which updates you on the business of the chamber – has embraced emojis.
The cupcakes do not make up for the cringe memes.
I’d take raising the jobseeker rate over 1m cupcakes though.
And it always pays to read the terms and conditions
Greens to introduce bill to ‘end destructive logging of Australia’s precious native forests’
Lisa Cox
The Greens will introduce a bill to repeal the Regional Forest Agreements Act which grants logging operations an exemption from national environmental laws.
The party’s forests spokesperson, senator Janet Rice, will introduce the bill in the Senate today.
In addition to repealing the Regional Forest Agreements Act, the bill proposes the tabling of an annual statement from the threatened species commissioner on how logging is affecting Australia’s progress towards the government’s zero extinctions target.
It proposes a second statement be tabled by the environment minster outlining how logging is affecting Australia’s progress towards its commitment to protect 30% of the country’s land areas by 2030.
Rice said federal and state governments had failed to meet their responsibility to protect the environment and fix failing environmental laws. She said logging operations covered by regional forest agreements had been granted an exemption from national environmental laws for too long.
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.
If passed, this bill will end the destructive logging of Australia’s precious native forests, by repealing the Regional Forest Agreements and closing the loopholes used by the logging industry to skirt our national environment laws.
The Albanese government has proposed introducing legislation to reform Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act later this year.
Michael McGowan
‘No indication so far’ cyber-attack caused Sydney rail shutdown
Sydney transport bosses say there is no evidence at this stage to suggest the hour-long shutdown of the city’s rail network was related to a possible cyber-attack.
During the shutdown, which saw tens of thousands of commuters stranded during peak hour on Wednesday, the transport minister, David Elliott, said that while it was likely a “glitch” in the network, he was waiting for briefings on the possibility it was due to “foreign interference or industrial sabotage”.
But on Thursday the head of Sydney Trains, Matt Longland, said during a press conference that “based on the detailed review overnight” the delays were caused by a failure in a piece of technology and “wasn’t related to any suspected issue in terms of any cyber activity or any anything of that nature”.
The NSW government is currently in caretaker mode in the lead-up to the state election on 25 March, and during a press briefing the chief operating officer for Transport for NSW, Howard Collins, said he had contact with Elliott and his office within minutes of the fault being discovered.
Asked whether the possibility of foul play was raised during those discussions, Collins said:
There is always a concern with any IT systems or even these OT systems, which are an enclosed system, is there any foreign interference or any other issue coming in to the network?”
I think so far, and it’s important to say so far, we haven’t concluded the final investigation, but so far this is leading to a component failure, or a failure of overloading the system with software. We will get to the bottom of it. But no indication so far indicates this is something coming into the network like a cyber attack or data which is coming in from outside our system.”
Katy Gallagher on safeguard mechanism deadlock: ‘We’re just going to continue to talk with Senator Pocock and others’
The finance minister, Katy Gallagher, is also a senator for the ACT. So if the ACT doesn’t want new coal and gas projects (as the Australia Institute polling Paul reported on has found) doesn’t that affect her too?
Gallagher told the ABC:
It [the findings] doesn’t surprise me. I mean, the ACT has been leading the way in terms of adoption of renewable energy targets, including when I was chief minister … we rely on 100% renewable energy now in our jurisdiction because of policies that were put in place 10 or 15 years ago, so that that doesn’t surprise me and I understand the issue more broadly, people do want to see the shift to renewable energy generation.
I guess the argument we’re having is, you know, the pathway to get there and the transition to get there.
That doesn’t just affect people in the ACT, it affects the entire country, and the country … is very different, as we know. But the safeguard mechanism is … a real opportunity to make huge progress forward in reducing our emissions in a way where we can all work together and so I am really hopeful that we don’t get to a situation where we have a stalemate in the Senate on this – like that we can’t make something that doesn’t please everyone to 100% – [a] stall in the face of the progress that we know we need to make.
So we’re just going to continue to talk with Senator Pocock and others to get this through the Senate because it’s essential if we’re going to make the first and important steps to reducing emissions from our biggest polluters.
GetUp calls for referendum machinery changes to fight voter suppression of First Nations youth
GetUp’s CEO, Larissa Baldwin-Roberts, says the government needs to ensure an amendment to the referendum machinery legislation (which sets up how the referendum will be held) that will ensure all voting age First Nations people can cast their vote needs to pass.
Baldwin-Roberts, a Widjabul Wia-bal woman, said further disenfranchisement from the voting process will only hurt the referendum’s success:
For over a decade we’ve been fighting voter suppression in First Nations communities. Voters have been purged from the electoral roll and years of Coalition-led funding cuts has meant enrolment rates and access to voting has dropped.
The provisional voting amendment to the referendum bill will undo years of suppression and ensure that thousands of First Nations people will have access to voting in this referendum. It will mean that people in remote communities have access to enrol on election day.
We saw how similar reforms in the Northern Territory elections increased voter turnout. The referendum has to uphold the best of our democratic process, without this costless measure we will continue to experience yet another form of voter suppression. This is something that communities and the AEC supports.
This amendment would give thousands of First Nations people across the country the right to vote in a referendum that is all about our vision for our communities.
We cannot have a referendum that directly impacts First Nations communities, without first ensuring every eligible First Nations person can vote on it.
Ben Doherty
Immigration minister grants residency to migrant family who faced deportation because of son’s medical condition
Some welcome news in the case of the Aneesh family in Perth, who faced being removed from Australia because of their son’s medical condition.
The ABC reported that the family of 10-year-old Aaryan, who lives with Down Syndrome, had failed Australia’s visa test, which considers the potential cost a migrant’s staying in Australia might have on the public health system. The system has been consistently criticised as discriminatory against people with disabilities.
The family exhausted its appeals options, but, this week, the immigration minister. Andrew Giles, has personally intervened and said the family would be granted permanent residency.
They told the ABC they were “overjoyed” at the minister’s decision.
“We can stay here, we can live in this community, we can provide a very good environment for our kids,” Aaryan’s mother said.
David Pocock, as one of the deciding votes in the senate when the Coalition says yeah, nah to voting to legislation is under a lot of pressure – not just from the negotiations himself, but his constituency in the ACT as Paul Karp reports:
Want to know more about the safeguard mechanism deadlock? The audio team have you covered:
Negotiations over Labor’s major climate policy are in deadlock. On Full Story today @adamlmorton speaks to @JaneSYLee about the standoff between Labor and the Greens, how this policy will work and whats at stake if the parties fail to reach a compromisehttps://t.co/FzT7RlTyHQ
— Laura Murphy-Oates (@lauramoates) March 8, 2023
Adeshola Ore
Daniel Andrews rejects accusations of ‘retribution’ against state ICAC
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has rejected accusations that his government engaged in retribution in response to probes by the state’s anti-corruption watchdog.
The Herald Sun reported on Thursday that the former head of the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission accused the Andrews government of retaliation in response to the agency’s probes into its conduct. The allegations are contained in a letter Robert Redlich sent to the parliament lower house speaker and upper house president in December.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Andrews said he had not seen the letter:
I absolutely reject any suggestion by him or anybody else that the government does not behave appropriately.
I’m not having a debate with a bloke who used to run an agency and he’s apparently written a letter that I haven’t seen.
Redlich claims that government MPs directed independent auditors to “find dirt” on the watchdog that was not publicly available.
Caitlin Cassidy
University of Sydney strikes continue
Hundreds of University of Sydney staff and students are striking for a seventh day today, marking the longest-running campaign of work stoppages at an Australian university.
Picket lines have been formed blocking access to campus in protest of university management’s rejection of the National Tertiary Education Union’s claims on a new enterprise bargaining agreement.
The agreement has been in negotiations since August 2021. In its latest offer, the university put forward a 4.6% pay increase in 2023 plus an additional $2,000 sign-on payment and a reduction in its casual workforce of 20%.
The president of the University of Sydney’s NTEU branch, Dr Nick Rimer, said the institution was “seriously threatening” staff rights at work.
University managers have been responsible for spiralling overwork and relentless inefficiencies. They’re badly distracting us from our key responsibilities of education and research. Union members are trying to fix that.
They want us to believe they’re the incarnation of generosity, but they’re making a miserly salary offer that is lower than far less wealthy institutions like the Australian Catholic University or Western Sydney University. That’s simply unacceptable.
The university posted a $1.04bn surplus in 2021, the highest of any institution.
Classes and laboratory sessions have been widely cancelled ahead of the strikes, the student union’s food outlets will be closed, and administration work – including on grant applications and results processing – will not be going ahead.
The union has flagged further industrial action in March and May if its claims are unmet.
In an email sent to staff on 21 February, the deputy vice-chancellor, Annamarie Jagose, said it had been in an “unnecessarily protracted bargaining round” and it recognised “maintaining our sector-leading salaries is critical if we are to continue to attract and retain the best people”.
Since August 2021, the university has made a number of significant concessions in relation to its offer. Now that we have almost reached the end of the more than 100 claims put by the unions, I am confident that we have made a sector-leading offer that many colleagues will be impatient to accept.
Amy Remeikis
Liberal senator James Paterson had found his niche in opposition, railing about TikTok.
To be fair, this was also his interest while in government – but it’s a lot easier to point out what should be done when your side isn’t the one with the power for the doing. So none of these things are new – it’s just that the shackles have been released.
Safeguard mechanism negotiations still deadlocked
The negotiations for the safeguard mechanism are still deadlocked, though.
The Greens and David Pocock (the key votes needed for it – Lidia Thorpe has said she will vote with the Greens on climate issues) are not convinced it will really make a material change.
Labor says it’s the first step and having a mechanism is important. Every commentator and their cat is talking about 2009.
It could pop up in the next sitting, but there is a lot of work to be done before then.
Amy’s analysis: who gets what out of the national reconstruction fund negotiations?
Labor has always said the point of the NRF was to boost manufacturing and wouldn’t be used for coal or gas – but now it is explicit. The Greens wanted the amendment to stop any future governments from using the fund for fossil fuels.
That doesn’t mean a future government couldn’t try to amend the legislation in the future if it really wanted to, but it would need the parliament to agree and also would have to publicise “we want to use this for fossil fuels”.
So Ed Husic gets his fund; the Greens, who had a manufacturing policy for the election, get the spirit of that policy and a fossil fuel ban; and the Coalition, who were against it – putting the Greens in the bargaining seat – get to say the government is making deals with the Greens (which is the point of a lot of this “just say no” policy).
Labor secures Greens support for the national reconstruction fund
The government has got the votes it needs for the national reconstruction fund: the Greens are on board after the government agreed to an amendment which means the fund can’t be used for coal and gas projects or for native forest logging. Adam Bandt:
Coal and gas are the biggest cause of the climate crisis, so this is a big win for the climate and a big win for jobs and the economy.
Coal and gas are out of the reconstruction fund, and native forest logging is too.
We thank the government for the constructive approach they have taken in the negotiations and hope this can continue in the safeguard and housing bill discussions in the coming period.
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