Media release – Bob Brown Foundation, 4 October 2024
Minister for Forests Julie Collins will break young Australia’s hearts: Brown.
In a globally-disgraceful move, Julie Collins, PM Albanese’s new Minister for Forests, has actively helped pull the rug from under a European Union law to stop global deforestation by delaying its implementation another year.
Worldwide, environmentalists are outraged. Former Greens Leader Bob Brown said that any hope young Australians had that Collins would end native forest logging and wildlife extinctions in Australia are in tatters.
“As the world faces the twin disasters of global heating and mass extinctions, Collins is cheering the corporations who have lobbied to worsen the crises by delaying the EU anti-deforestation law. In fact, Australia is a standout in joining Brazil to get the EU to back off. Albanese’s Collins has taken a chainsaw to the hopes of every thoughtful young Australian, in particular Labor voters,” Brown said.
“Collins says the European law had ‘the potential to affect’ $242 million in Australian exports but not what these are. Even if her figure were true, that means 90% would be unaffected. It appears the Queensland beef industry which wants to keep smashing down wildlife-rich woodlands is her chief motivator. The Albanese government’s teaming up with Brazil is an ecological disgrace,” Brown said.
“Australia has joined an embarrassing global line up of forest, wildlife and climate destroyers in lobbying for this delay and shamelessly welcoming it. At an urgent time when deforestation must end, Julie Collins and Anthony Albanese are licensing ongoing forests and woodlands destruction here in Australia and in highly contentious countries, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua and Brazil where deforestation is causing global heating, pushing wildlife to the brink of extinction and bulldozing Indigenous peoples’ forests without consultation or consent,” Jenny Weber said, Bob Brown Foundation’s Campaigns Manager.
