Federal Greens pledge $140 million for forestry communities if logging stops in NSW

A new national forest on the South Coast might be on the cards if an election pledge comes to pass.

Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Mehreen Faruqi, said the proposal would come after NSW ended logging.

“If the NSW Government ends native forest logging, under the Greens’ plan, they will be eligible for $140 million of funding per year for 20 years from the Federal Government,” she said.

“[The money will be] for ecological restoration and for a just transition for workers.”

Announcing the policy on the NSW Far South Coast, she said the proposal was part of the Greens’ climate policies.

“We know that forests are vital to tackle the climate crisis, so to protect our forests is about sequestering more carbon and protecting our climate which will have an impact on the disasters that our communities and our wildlife are facing at the moment,” she said.

The proposal includes the creation of a new national park, which would span much of the South Coast.

If their plan goes ahead, the Greens will advocate for the creation of the ‘Great Southern National Park’, which had previously been proposed by community and environmental groups.

Under this proposal, more than 400,000 hectares of state forest may be added to the reserve system once native forest logging ends.

“[The idea is the national park] basically extends from the south of Wollongong, down to the Victorian border and also towards the west,” Senator Faruqi said.

“It is about connecting the really badly damaged parts of the native forest with each other, so it provides an ecological corridor for the species that are being endangered and that face extinction.”

The Greens have also committed to allocating money towards rehabilitating forests and creating new jobs.

Senator Nick McKim, the Greens spokesperson for forests, said his party would support transitioning forestry workers into new roles.

“They are jobs that will allow people that currently work in the forest to continue to work in the forest,” he said.

“They will be jobs in things like forest management, in things like re-wilding to repair the damage caused by logging [and] the damage caused by bushfires. They will be jobs like remote area firefighting, where people can actually work in the forest, protecting and defending the forest.”

Senator McKim said the plan would be paid for by taxing the largest corporations.

“Our tax system is absolutely cooked, and it absolutely means that corporations should pay their fair share of tax,” he said.

“Now we’ve got a range of corporate tax policies that will deliver hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue over the next decade [if] we make the corporations pay their fair share.”

The date of the federal election is yet to be set.