Federal Labor has maintained its unwavering support for the fossil fuel industry against persistent community demands for genuine climate action by voting down a disallowance motion that would have blocked the so-called Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) system.

Controversially, seven of 10 Australian Greens Senators voted with Labor on September 10. But Greens Senators Nick McKim, Jordon Steele-John and Vanessa Bleyer supported the motion, although not because they agreed with the Nationals-One Nation movers.

The WA Geens MPs said that they “strongly opposed” the INFM method and were “disappointed” that colleagues voted with Labor, “thereby allowing the INFM method to remain in place”. They said the INFM system could generate 1.5 million carbon credits.

Supporters of the Labor-Green deal say it will save koalas and forest habitat.

Greens leader Larissa Waters said: “These improvements will help deliver the Great Koala National Park in NSW, protecting 176,000 hectares of native forest and safeguarding habitat for around 12,000 koalas and more than 100 other threatened species”.

However, it also means that saving forests and koalas relies on creating new carbon credits in an already dodgy carbon trading market.

While the INFM method of creating carbon credits is, possibly, less dodgy than other methods, even Forestry Australia (FA) says the method is “structurally biased towards over-crediting”.

FA........

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