In an Instagram video, the Executive Director of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation (ACBF), Lyndon Schneiders, discusses the controversial Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) offset method and wider climate policy in Australia. While ACBF’s support for carbon offsets was expected, there are plenty of unexpected bits in the video. Let’s unpack a few...
Tue 8 Sep 2026 11.19 AEST
Photo: AAP Image/David Wigley
Imagine a conference on stopping smoking, sponsored by tobacco companies, hosted by tobacco exporters and crowded with tobacco lobbyists. Then imagine being told it is the world’s best hope for getting off the ciggies. That is the UN climate process as it rolls out every year.
The last full sitting week in October before budget estimates was a big one in Canberra for anyone who cares about who should benefit from Australia’s gas and missed revenue.
A really fantastic proposal. A fantastic scheme.
No, that’s not a Donald Trump quote, but the CEO of a conservation group describing a new method for making carbon offsets from native forests.
In an Instagram video, the Executive Director of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation (ACBF), Lyndon Schneiders, discusses the controversial Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) offset method and wider climate policy in Australia.
While ACBF’s support for carbon offsets was expected, there are plenty of unexpected bits in the video.
Let’s unpack a few:
An accusation is made that The Australia Institute and Cheek Media are promoting “a great new conspiracy”.
The conspiracy is “that the NSW Government promised to make the [Great Koala National] park, but never said anything about [linking its creation to carbon offsets].”
Apparently, The Australia Institute and Cheek Media claim that the national park-offsets link “only happened recently”.
The Australia Institute has certainly highlighted that NSW Labor promised to establish the koala park in 2015, right through the 2023 election and beyond. As far as the Institute can tell, the public had no idea that Labor’s promised park was “dependent” on carbon offsets until 7 September 2025.
The Australia Institute has called this a broken promise, but I don’t think they’ve ever said there was a conspiracy… Until now.
That’s because in debunking the “conspiracy theory”, we discover what sounds a lot like an actual conspiracy:
Between 2023 and 2025, I was part of an advisory group that was established by the NSW Government… And for two years, we met and worked with the NSW Government to develop the proposal that became the Great Koala Park proposal…
From 2023 onwards, the NSW Government started the development of what has become this [carbon offset method] that’s in the Australian Parliament to create credits for stopping logging, and they started that in 2023. So, to say somehow this is some late last-minute decision by the NSW government to tie the creation of the park to [offsets] is just wrong. I was there. I know.
I saw all the conversations happening, all the studies that were being undertaken, and what all those things. So, to say the koala park can happen without this ability to generate carbon credits is simply not true.
So, ACBF and a group of other insiders were there with the NSW Government for two years, in all the conversations linking the park to carbon offsets.
They kept this secret from the public and the rest of the environment movement.
That sounds more like the definition of a conspiracy.
Another surprise is the Trump-like description of Australia’s climate policy.
While most people think Australia’s climate policy is a bit crap, according to ACBF:
Australia’s got really ambitious climate targets…. some of the most ambitious climate targets in the world.
These targets he says are “totally consistent with the Paris Climate Change Treaty”.
Quality research, analysis, explainers and factchecks from experts you can trust.
Literally no one else thinks this. The Climate Action Tracker website describes Australia’s main target as “insufficient” and its 2050 target as “poor”.
Australian groups like the Australian Conservation Foundation describe the targets as “timid” and the Smart Energy Council says they’re “the minimum”.
Even Australia’s climate minister describes his government’s targets as only “ambitious but achievable”.
On Australia’s targets being Paris-aligned, this is not the view of any other environmental group. Not the Climate Council, backed by significant analysis, not The Greens or AAP Fact Check, not the Environmental Defenders Office, not Climateworks.
It’s unclear why ACBF is so keen to talk up Australia’s existing climate policy rather than pushing the government to do better.
Some parts of the video are quite misleading. For example:
For most companies, they’ll [reduce emissions] by making changes in how they operate. They will change the technology…particularly things like, smelters and steelworks, which we’ve got quite a lot of in New South Wales… those companies, they’ve gotta do two things. They’ve gotta demonstrate to government how they’re reducing their emissions [or] they’ve also got the ability to go and buy these things called carbon credits…
It is not smelters and steelworks that buy the vast bulk of carbon offsets, it is coal mines.
Recent research by IEEFA shows that coal mines are by far Australia’s largest offset buyers, followed by gas exporters. IEEFA show that coal mines are not improving their technology, they’re using offsets to delay improving their on-site emissions. This is the opposite of what ACBF is saying.
And at no point in the video do the words “coal mine” or “gas project” appear.
These are Australia’s biggest domestic polluters, exporting huge emissions, and the biggest purchasers of the carbon offsets that ACBF considers so important, yet they don’t rate a mention.
Another topic notably absent from the video is offset integrity and fraud. The problems with offsets are so great, and so widely acknowledged, that even users like EnergyAustralia now acknowledge: “offsets do not prevent or undo the harms caused by burning fossil fuels”. No discussion of this by ACBF.
Instead, the focus is on money. Specifically, the ‘real money to manage the forests for a hundred years’ that will apparently come from big polluters buying offsets.
This is more Trump-channelling. It’s clear that 95% of the money for managing the Great Koala National Park will come from the public. The big polluters will chip in some small change and claim all the glory.
It’s hard to know what’s going on with this video…
“A really fantastic proposal”?
The most beautiful carbon offsets anyone has ever seen? The koalas they all love me?
Could it be the start of the Make Offsets Great Again movement?
Verdict: No, carbon offsets are not ‘a really fantastic proposal’.
