Transcript of media conference with Bob Brown at Bob Brown Foundation office, Hobart, 3 November 2021.
Bob Brown
As you know, overnight at COP 26, as a side agreement largely orchestrated by the UK government, over 100 countries signed up to a Leaders Declaration on Deforestation and a direct commitment in there to hold and reverse forest loss by 2030. And amongst the countries signing up 85% of the world’s forests covered by the signatories, is Scott Morrison, our Prime Minister. Now this means an end to logging at native forests in Australia, and the destruction of their wildlife, by 2030. We as environmentalists and this foundation have been working hard to have this outcome, we want it immediately. It is a massive breakthrough for the Prime Minister to have signed up to halt and reverse the loss of forests in this country. And to help that outcome around the world by 2030.
It’s an enormous task. It’s massively important for reversing the climate emergency that we’re in because 25% of greenhouse gas emissions are coming out of the destruction of forests, including in Tasmania, in Victoria, in New South Wales, and until the end of bauxite mining and so on in Western Australia, as well as clearances of woodlands in Queensland. So this is a monumental statement that’s lifted people spirits around the world. The question is, is it real? And we have to take the Prime Minister at his word, that he’s not being slippery, that he’s not telling another lie, that he does have a plan and that he is going to end logging of native forests and woodlands in Australia by 2030, in the next eight years. If not, he’s he’s committing a hoax on Australia. He says he is Australia. He’s said that a number of times in Glasgow, but he’s committing a hoax on himself and his country.
Now he’s signed up to this logging agreement. We’re excited about that. But we want to see his plan for that. It’s very important that this not be just seen as weasel words, meaning nothing. It is an end to deforestation. Deforestation means not destroying forests, and Australia should have followed New Zealand and Costa Rica in that outcome long ago. But we’re campaigning for this, we’re very excited. This means saving the Tarkine. It means saving the great forests of the Highlands and Gippsland and East Gippsland in Victoria. It means saving the forests and the koala habitat, right up through New South Wales, the endangered woodlands in Queensland, and even the forests which are yet threatened by bauxite mining in South Perth in Western Australia.
It’s a very big move. Look, it’ll be very, very popular. We know that 70 or 80% of Australians want an end to the destruction of native forests and woodlands and the protection of their wildlife. But is the Prime Minister real here? Or is he committing another massive fraudulent political move to which is not going to bear fruit? Which is not dinkum? Well, let’s say we’re already having some push-back from the logging industry, which thinks it can continue to log native forests after the Prime Minister has said he’s going to reverse, he’s going to halt and reverse, the loss of forest by 2030 in Australia, and help the rest of the world doing that.
Journalist – unidentified
How confident are you that deforestation can be reversed at the at the rate our forests are being destroyed. And by that 2030 target?
Bob Brown
Oh, it can be reversed. We’re just saying the West Australian Premier committed to that happening in the non-mining areas of forests in southwest Western Australia. The Victorian government says it’s going to do it by 2030. Anyway, but several elections between now and then. It can happen. It really does require a national commitment from our national leader. Now we’ve got that commitment. Scott Morrison has signed up in Glasgow. Where’s the plan? Where’s the money? Where’s the coordination to carry through the dream of the Australian people of ending the destruction of our forests and wildlife?
Tasmanian Times
What would you like to see in Morrison’s plan? And do you think we should see it before the next federal election?
Bob Brown
Well, we must. We must see this plan before the federal election in the next six months. The Prime Minister signed up to it; you don’t sign up to a pledge to halt and reverse the loss of forests in your country, unless you have a plan. And unless you have a financial commitment to that outcome. I say it will be very very popular.
Of course, it’s going to lead to big push-back from those who are destroying the native forests of Australia, largely a subsidised industry at the expense of taxpayers. But the Prime Minister will get a lot of brownie points for carrying this through. We need to see his plan before the election. We need to see this as dinkum. We need to see that that signature is honourable, and does mean that we’re going to see a halt and a reversal of the destruction of Australia’s forests.
Journalist – unidentified
You mentioned some of that push-back that we’re already seeing from the forestry industry. Can you just paint a picture of how big Tassie’s forestry industry is and how you anticipate the players here to be affected by this decision?
Bob Brown
It’s not a big change in Tasmania, because less than 1%, much less than 1% of the workforce is in the industry, the logging of native forests. And it’s a highly subsidised industry; more than a billion dollars of taxpayers money has gone into subsidising this industry in recent decades.
On the other hand, of course, the natural forests of Tasmania and wildlife is creating many more jobs, thousands of jobs for tourism, and hospitality. It’s a great boon to the economy. And our economy depends on our international reputation for natural excellence. So ending the destruction of forests here, as New Zealand did 20 years ago, will be a boon for the economy. It will create more jobs. And we get the environmental benefit of not releasing the greenhouse gases, but protecting those rare and endangered wildlife in this age of extinction of species.
Journalist – unidentified
Why do you think it was so easy for the government to sign up to this pledge? Whereas last week we heard the government or Barnaby Joyce saying methane won’t be part of Australia’s plan, methane targets and we see no similar targets with coal etc. Why do you think it was so easy to sign up to this?
Bob Brown
Well, there’s a methane agreement has been signed in Glasgow but Australia didn’t sign up to that. And the reason for that is that big corporations like Santos, which by the way, is funding the Australian pavilion, not the government. It’s Santos funding the Australian pavilion in Glasgow, who don’t want their destructive emission of methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, to be halted. They’re in the business of making money at the expense of the rest of the economy, and future generations.
So Scott Morrison hasn’t signed up to that one I’m given to understand. And you can see why Angus Taylor wants a gas-led recovery. Now that is destructive to the future of our environment, but also our economy. And our well-being in an age of destructive outcomes, bushfires, massive storms, floods, and droughts in our food producing areas, as we’ve already seen, and which is just going to get worse, not least, the continued destruction of the Great Barrier Reef.
Journalist – unidentified
Can you give us an idea of how deforestation contributes to carbon emissions, greenhouse gas emissions?
Bob Brown
In the native forests, regions where clear-fell and so called regeneration burning takes place, we see the forest flattened, a proportion of that’s taken out, and much of it is exported overseas for a throwaway economy, for energy or other uses in the northern hemisphere. And then it’s incinerated, that forest is incinerated, every living species in that forest is that hasn’t escaped the logging is burnt to death. It’s a complete destruction of the natural ecosystem in an age where we need to reverse the destruction of nature.
So Australia is has some of the world’s worst practice, they call it ‘best practice’ but it’s not sustainable. It’s destructive. It’s disgusting. And it’s very unpopular. If we find that the Prime Minister is a fraud again, and is not going to end the loss of forests in Australia by 2030, the voters should knock him out at this next election.
Journalist – unidentified
Here in Australia, so deforestation as far as clearing forests for agriculture, things like that, we don’t actually do a lot of that here in Australia. Do you think signing this agreement was actually an easy way out for the Prime Minister to look like we are taking action when really not that much could change?
Bob Brown
Well you see the heat is on the Prime Minister now to come good with the plan to end deforestation in Australia, whether it’s for agriculture, and that’s seen broad-scale destruction of woodlands, particularly on the mainland in New South Wales and Queensland, as well as the destruction of forests for the agriculture of replacement quick-growing plantations.
We have enough plantations – over 2 million hectares in Australia now – to provide all our wood needs. They’re already the major job creator in the logging industries. We don’t have to be destroying native forests and exporting them overseas, where they’re not used in the way Australians would like to see them used. They’re either burnt, or they’re being used, for example, to box cement, in high rise buildings in Tokyo, we just don’t need to be abusing this fantastic native forest realm that we have left in Australia in 2021.
Now the Prime Minister signed up to ending that. That’s what people are reading about this declaration of the leaders around the world. Here’s good news out of Glasgow, the whole world is seeing this with this Leaders Forests Declaration and end to the destruction of forests by 2030. And Scott Morrison signed up to it. Well, Prime Minister Morrison, where’s your plan? Where’s the money? And how are you going to do it?
Journalist – unidentified
So that declaration was to see the end of deforestation So how confident are you that that’ll translate into the end of native forest logging?
Bob Brown
Look, if the Prime Minister wasn’t being truthful in signing this declaration, that it would end the loss of forests by 2030, that’s an appalling thing to do to the Australian people. Now particularly in the wake of the condemnation of the Prime Minister by the French President, in the last few days. Well look, when the Prime Minister spoke in Glasgow, the place was empty. And when other leaders spoke it was full, that was a direct… as an Australian, an acute embarrassment: that we, this great country of ours, is seen as something of a an environmental pariah. The Prime Minister has to make amends on that, he is the leader of this country. He says he is Australia. He signed this agreement. Now he has to tell the Australian people about the implementation program.
Tasmanian Times
Aside from forests do you have any other general observations about the way COP 26 is unfolding?
Bob Brown
Well, COP 26 is headed for a massive disappointment for the people of the world. We are in an existential crisis, where human beings are using almost two planets worth of living resources now, and the planet is finite. And COP 26 was about the world’s leaders getting together to head us in a different direction of true sustainability. It’s failing to do that; the leaders are all flying home and leaving it to other people, those leaders who attended are flying home and leaving it to other people to try and make the best they can out of what is a failed COP. It’s a cop out.
