The Albanese government has rejected an internal push to ban native forest logging, instead committing to rewrite the three-decades old national forest policy statement this term.
Labor Environment Action Network spokesperson, Felicity Wade, praised the commitment but labelled native forest logging a “travesty” in a speech to Labor’s national conference on Thursday.
Wade said that as long as the industry continues “we undermine the government’s policy objectives on ending extinctions and emissions reduction, and we prove ourselves a little bit deaf to the deep environmental concerns of our members”.
The Albanese government has used the first in-person national conference in five years – and the first in Queensland for five decades – to set out an agenda for “long-term government” to drive the energy transition, make early childhood education universal and close the gender pay gap.
As the deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, works behind the scenes to head off opposition to the Aukus nuclear-submarine acquisition expected on Friday, Albanese said that delivering for Australians meant “demonstrating our responsible approach to everything from the economy, to foreign policy, to national security”.
In a keynote speech on Thursday morning, Albanese announced that Labor’s Help to Buy shared equity scheme will begin nationwide in 2024, vowing to keep the “great Australian dream” of home ownership alive for the next generation.
Albanese took aim at parties on Labor’s right flank, labelling the Coalition “reactionary”, and its opponents on the left flank “who prefer protest to progress, who imagine that grand gestures and bold declarations are better than the patient work of ensuring lasting change”.
“We’re not here in Labor for mere gestures. We are here to change the country, to go the distance, to get to the destination, to deliver the better future that we promised.”
After Wednesday’s national cabinet agreed on a new $3bn plan to incentivise the construction of 1.2m homes over five years, Albanese said that secure housing is the “foundation on which you build everything else” and recognised that life is getting tougher for renters and first home buyers.
“The fundamental answer to all of this is supply: building more homes.”
The Help to Buy scheme, announced in the 2022 election, promises a commonwealth equity contribution of up to 40% of the purchase price of a new home, and up to 30% for an existing home.
Albanese told the conference that national cabinet had agreed the policy “will commence next year, nationwide”. The policy “will help 40,000 low and middle-income families buy a home of their own”, he said.
Albanese criticised the Coalition and Greens’ handling of the $10bn housing Australia future fund bill, declaring “they are the blockers, we are the builders”.
“The Greens political party are not interested in solving the problem at all, they just want the issue, the campaign, the social media content.
“They revel in hypocrisy of voting against affordable housing in the parliament, protesting against it in their electorate, and then making memes calling for action.”
In the economic chapter of the platform, construction union secretary, Zach Smith, moved an amendment not for a super profits tax, as foreshadowed, but for Labor to “increase government investment in social and affordable housing with funding from a progressive and sustainable tax system, including corporate tax reform”.
Smith described it as an “important first step”, as the union campaigns for the tax to pay for housing. The amendment was successful.
Unions also won a ban on trade agreements that “limit the right of the commonwealth to regulate in the interests of public welfare or in relation to safe products” or “include [investor state dispute settlement] provisions”.
In the afternoon, Wade moved amendments that committed Labor to “delivering the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use, which commits Australia to ‘halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030’”.
According to another successful amendment, the forest policy statement will be revamped to “ensure the application of national environmental standards to Australia’s native forests”.
“Native forest logging is a travesty in the 21st century,” Wade told the conference. “It is failing to innovate or find good ways to give real futures to its timber workers.”
But the contribution was fiercely rebuked by forestry union official, Michael O’Connor, who told the conference that the “greatest danger” to habitat is fire.
Mitigating fire risk by “active management” produces wood fibre which is either left or burned, he said, arguing that sustainable native timber harvesting could do more to fight climate change than a ban.
Seconding the environment chapter, minister Tanya Plibersek said that “next year we’ll rewrite our broken environment laws to make them nature positive and establish a commonwealth EPA”.
Earlier, Albanese argued that Labor had inherited challenges including global economic uncertainty, open conflict in Europe, “strategic competition in our region”, supply-chain disruptions, and rising global inflation.
Albanese made the case for Labor delegates to unite to prevent the gains made in government, such as the national disability insurance scheme, from being “undone”.
“That is what is at stake now. The difference between a moment of progress or a lifetime of opportunity.”
Albanese noted Labor’s signature childcare policy had “helped more than 1 million families pay less” but said in the next phase “we can make early education and care universal and affordable for every Australian family into the future”.
The re-election of Labor could be “the difference between taking the gender pay gap to a historic low and making the gender pay gap history, which is our objective”, he said.
