Ongoing native forest logging has been funded in Albanese’s anti-environment budget, highlighting the farce of EPBC reform, which claimed to remove logging exemptions.

“This budget has reinforced Labor’s commitment to more flattening of forests and wildlife killing while contributing to global heating,” said Jenny Weber, Bob Brown Foundation Campaigns Director.

“More taxpayer funds for business-as-usual destruction of forests must end in this country. While large-scale logging tragically continues in ancient native forests, which are habitat for critically endangered species and irreplaceable carbon storehouses, Prime Minister Albanese has allocated more taxpayer funds to allow “existing forestry operations under Regional Forest Agreements to continue under the reformed environmental laws,” said Jenny Weber.

“Cutting $2.2 billion to the Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water portfolio over the next 14 years is also a dangerous move by this government when we urgently need to shift financial resources away from fossil fuel subsidies and into the most undervalued and underfunded tool for climate mitigation, which is protecting and restoring nature,” said Jenny Weber.

p48 Budget Paper 2

• $28.0 million over two years from 2026–27 for DCCEEW and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to work with impacted states to develop landscape‑scale approval pathways to allow existing forestry operations under Regional Forest Agreements to continue under the reformed environmental laws.