The Greens have reached a deal with Labor to support a contentious regulation allowing big industry to use a new koala national park in New South Wales to offset its climate pollution, but three senators will cross the floor to oppose it. The regulation, known as a carbon credit method, is expected to survive a Coalition-led disallowance motion in the Senate.
Greens split over koala park carbon credit deal
On Thursday afternoon, Tasmanian senators Nick McKim and Vanessa Bleyer, and Western Australia's Jordon Steele-John, declared they would cross the floor to oppose the deal. The minor party and environment advocates have been divided over whether to support the regulation proposed by the NSW government and introduced by the Albanese government, which lets states earn carbon credits for protecting native forests that had been earmarked for logging.
The Nationals have introduced a disallowance motion in the Senate to kill the regulation, arguing it would hurt the forestry industry. The Greens hold the casting votes and have been split for weeks over which way to go. They want the park – a promised 476,000 hectare reserve, including 176,000 ha of newly protected areas – but have been divided over whether it should be allowed to happen this way.
Greens leader defends improved method
Greens leader Larissa Waters said her party had improved the improved native forestry management method but would oppose other upcoming carbon credit legislation that would produce a larger number of credits. “The fight against Labor’s carbon credit greenwashing starts with the Greens opposing 40% of the offsets used by these big polluters to hide their emissions,” she said in a statement. “For years, Labor has created a system that allows big polluters to buy get-out-of-jail-free cards instead of cutting their emissions, and the consequences of this broken system are being felt around the country by communities living with the floods, fires and heatwaves. That ends now.”
Waters did not directly address in her statement that three senators would cross the floor. In a separate statement, McKim, Bleyer and Steele-John said “people of good heart and clear mind can, and have, come to a different position on this issue” and they would vote “according to our consciences”. “We want Greens members and supporters to know that we do not support the relentless commodification of nature, and will not be part of making it easier and cheaper for big carbon polluters to keep emitting as [this method] does,” they said.
Carbon credits and the koala park deal
Each Australian carbon credit is said to represent one tonne of greenhouse gas emissions that has been prevented from being released or drawn down from the atmosphere. Their use is contentious, partly because polluting companies can buy an unlimited number of credits – also known as offsets – to count as their own cuts while continuing to pollute. Peer-reviewed studies have found some existing carbon credit methods have not effectively reduced emissions and scientists say limiting the climate crisis requires rapid direct emissions cuts and offsets should be used sparingly.
The Greens said the deal with Labor would ensure credits from a native forest project could not be sold to coal and gas companies if the state government promised that would be the case. NSW premier Chris Minns said this for the koala park, but his commitment was not legally enforceable. Other changes include an increase in how much logging has to be reduced in an area for a project to qualify for any carbon credits - rising from 20% to 30% from 2030 - and closing a loophole that could have been used to classify regrowing native forests as a plantation.
Environmental groups divided
Those who wanted the regulation killed included Tasmanian and Western Australian state Greens MPs, the Bob Brown Foundation, the Wilderness Society and the Australia Institute. They say the method fails a basic test: the NSW Labor proposed a koala park near Coffs Harbour a decade before announcing it was dependent on carbon credit revenue, and the offsets created would therefore not represent real additional emissions reductions. They argue forests should be protected for their intrinsic values, and backing the plan would put capitalism before the environment and set a dangerous precedent for other state governments to not protect the environment unless they received carbon credits.
In a statement earlier this week, the four WA Greens state MPs said they could not support a system that “enabled carbon polluters to keep polluting”. “We need to bring down emissions at the same time as ending logging and clearing of native forests,” they said. On the other side are most NSW Greens’ state MPs, a list of NSW and larger conservation groups including WWF, Greenpeace and the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation, some Indigenous organisations and several senior ecologists. They argue there is no guarantee the park would go ahead as promised if the method was disallowed, and that the benefits of protecting 176,000 hectares of additional forests that are home to more than 100 threatened species and that have been devastated by decades of logging are the most important consideration.
NSW Greens MP Sue Higginson earlier told the Guardian the idea of polluters getting offsets from the protection of public forests was “deeply offensive”, but the method would lead to a substantial reduction in logging and could end the native forest logging industry. Labor said the agreement with the Greens confirmed that a majority of the senate would oppose the Coalition’s disallowance motion and the regulation would survive.
