The NSW Government has finally agreed to protect 176,000 hectares of forest and create the Great Koala National Park – a habitat for koalas and 66 other threatened species. But there's a catch.

Under the Federal Government’s proposed new Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) Method, large emitters will be authorised to buy carbon credits from publicly owned native forests to claim they have "offset" their emissions. 

That means the protection of every publicly owned native forest in states without logging bans, including NSW, Queensland and Tasmania – will be tied to expansion of carbon pollution from our 200 largest emitters. That fuels climate change, the single biggest threat to the very forests and wildlife these parks are meant to protect.

Right now we have an opportunity to stop this flawed proposal. The Opposition has launched a disallowance motion to veto the Government's proposal in the Senate. The Greens hold the balance of power – we need them to vote to kill this flawed plan.

Add your name to the petition now – and tell Parliament: protect native forests without giving big polluters a licence to pollute.

The Murray–Darling Basin warns us what happens when nature is turned into a market: water trading let big corporations profit while rivers ran dry. We let the same happen to our forests.

Will these new Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) offsets be ‘high integrity’?

NO. There is a wide range of problems with these new offsets but the biggest problem is also the easiest to explain. Back in 2015, and again in 2023 and 2024, the NSW Premier promised to create the Great Koala National Park. He has already committed $80 million of taxpayers' money to build the park. The Park can, should, and has been promised to be delivered, without the creation of any new offsets to allow even more carbon pollution.

Will it push the price of carbon offsets down?

YES. The more carbon offsets that the Parliament allows the lower the price of polluting will be. BHP recently announced it was abandoning plans to electrify its truck fleet because it was cheaper to keep using diesel and just buy offsets instead. The more offset methods that are approved by Parliament, the more offsets there will be, and the less real abatement of emissions there will be. Every billion dollars spent buying offsets is a billion dollars that was not spent on electrification, energy efficiency and other ways to reduce actual emissions

Is there a shortage of carbon offsets?

NO. There's a glut. That’s why prices are so low that it was cheaper for BHP to buy offsets than to electrify its truck fleet. By definition, the only reason a polluter wants more carbon offsets is so that they can produce more carbon pollution.

Will the INFM offsets generate lots of money for forest protection?

NO. The NSW government already promised to make the Great Koala National Park, already allocated $80 million to fund it, and already spends over $20 million per year subsidising native forest logging. At best, the NSW Government would receive far less money for selling carbon offsets for the Great Koala National Park than it spends on subsidies for native forest logging.

Do offsets even work?

NO. In the words of Energy Australia: “offsets do not prevent or undo the harms caused by burning fossil fuels… Even with carbon offsetting, the emissions released from burning fossil fuels for a customer’s energy use still contribute to climate change.”

Will this new method for making carbon offsets act as a barrier to further native forest protection and climate action by state governments?

YES. If the Senate allows this new offset method to be created it will be the first time a state government will be able to sell carbon offsets to polluters. This creates a precedent where state governments will be unlikely declare parks or invest in other emission reduction policies unless they can sell ‘offsets’ for doing so, which will mean either less state government climate action or even cheaper carbon offsets for polluters.

So why might the Greens allow these offsets?

Two reasons. 
First, the NSW Labor government is holding the koala park hostage to this offsets deal. “Give us the offsets or the trees get it” is what Chris Minns is effectively saying to the Greens and the public, although the wording is slightly different - “The final creation of the park is dependent on the successful registration of a carbon project.” For some, Minns’ threat against these forests is enough to make them push for the deal.
Second, there is the concern that if the Greens vote against the offset deal, the Minns Government will use this in the upcoming election campaign to claim that the Greens “blocked” the koala park.

Does the Greens membership have a say in how Greens MPs vote?

NO. While it’s true that the NSW Greens policy states that the Greens will work towards “Ensuring that the carbon value in existing forests cannot be traded to offset fossil fuel or other greenhouse gas-intensive industries”. And it is also true that the NSW Greens have historically insisted that NSW Senators vote in line with NSW party policy, in reality each member of the Australian Parliament is always free to vote their conscience. To be fair, Labor and Liberal MPs often vote in ways that often contradict their party’s policies. Again, democracy requires all MPs to make hard decisions.

I have read there is a civil war in the environment movement, is that true?

The vast majority of Australia’s environment groups oppose the use of carbon offsets, and most NSW conservation groups don’t want the Senate to allow this method to be created. More than 30 NSW groups have written to the Greens asking them to vote against the new offsets, including Friends of Coffs Koalas, Koala Action Inc, Koala Clancy Foundation, and Save Sydney Koalas. That said it is true that a small number of environment groups have put pressure on the Greens to support more offsets. It is the job of political parties to choose which voters, NGOs and industry groups to deliver for and which to disappoint. There is no easy way to make a hard decision.

Is this a slippery slope?

It looks that way. The new offsets that the Senate is about to vote on are among the lowest integrity ever made as the trees to be ‘saved’ had already been saved by a promise, and the commitment of funding, by the NSW Government. But just as importantly, there is simply no need for even more carbon offsets as Australia already has a glut. The price of offsets is already so low that BHP cancelled its electrification plans because buying offsets was just so cheap. If the Greens can be ‘wedged’ into allowing these offsets (on the basis it's the ‘only way’ to save a particular forest), then the Greens will likely struggle to oppose future proposals to make even more offsets based on similarly spurious science and political strategy. In politics, once your opponents know you are afraid to fight, they tend to pick more of them.

What else could the Greens do?

They could vote against this new offsets method and campaign for the NSW Premier to simply keep his unconditional promise to create the Great Koala National Park. This would allow them to maintain a principled approach to carbon offsets while giving themselves a point of difference from other parties who talk about climate action but hide behind offsets and accounting tricks. But to be clear, all political parties face tensions between their principles and political ambitions, we will soon see how the Greens manages those tensions.

Learn more about the proposed INFM Method

• Leanne Minshull: Who the Greens vote with matters less than what the Greens vote for
• Bob Debus: We can do better for our forests than the INFM method
• Bill Browne: What is a “disallowance motion” and how could the Senate use it to stop greenwashing?
• Podcast: What's the point of offsets? - What’s the Point? with Richard Denniss - Apple Podcasts