A clash between pragmatism and purity is coming to a head

September 10, 2026 — 9:45am

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In many ways, it’s the Rudd government’s first carbon emissions trading scheme all over again – the famous clash between pragmatism and ideological purity when the Greens voted down climate policy for not going far enough. And it’s all coming to a head next week.

At issue is whether state governments should be able to earn carbon credits for protecting public forests, as the NSW government wants to do to support its proposed Great Koala National Park. A Nationals move to kill off the plan will come to a vote next Tuesday, with Bob Brown among those urging the Greens to join their old political foes. Other groups, not least the NSW Greens, say the plan must be allowed to go ahead.

The Greens are believed to have made their decision after an extremely close-run debate in the party room, and after negotiating with Labor to further lock in commitments not to sell the carbon credits to fossil fuel projects and tie the revenue to the park. The Greens’ position could be announced imminently.

The Australia Institute, which opposes the idea, is calling it “the Greens’ first major climate test in the Senate under leader Larissa Waters”. Tim Flannery, who supports the idea and also supported the Rudd-era carbon scheme, told The Australian Financial Review it’s imperfect, “but it is what it is, and you’ve got to live in the real world”.

Some are describing it as the most divisive issue in the environmental movement for decades. But it’s really a proxy war for a broader debate about carbon credits and the purpose of national parks.

Explaining next week’s vote is like unstacking a set of nesting dolls, from the global climate treaty, to the national policies that sit within it, to a state proposal for a national park.

First is the Paris Agreement, which obliges Australia to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. Then there’s the federal government’s flagship climate policy, the Safeguard Mechanism, which caps the emissions of big polluters but allows them to achieve it by buying offsets known as Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).

Within that, the federal government has approved a NSW proposal to create ACCUs by protecting public forests, called the Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) method. The Nationals have moved a disallowance motion in the Senate and the Greens hold the balance of power.

Finally, there’s the proposed Great Koala National Park, which the NSW government says is conditional on it being a project that will earn carbon credits.

The environmental movement has been cleaved in two, not just the Greens.

Those who believe the Senate should kill off the INFM also include the........

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