The Greens have fired back over comments made by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who warned the party it would be a “betrayal” to team up with the Coalition to block new rules for measuring carbon emissions from native forests.
Wed 26 Aug 2026 10.17 AEST
Photo: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
The only reason a country needs to create more ‘carbon offsets’ is because it expects to fail to decarbonise. Which is why the Greens are about to face a decision that has less to do with technical detail and everything to do with who they are.
In late 2025, the long held promise to build the Great Koala National Park became “dependent” on the NSW Government being able to sell carbon offsets relating to the founding of it. But is this money necessary to create the park? No, it isn't.
The Greens have fired back over comments made by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who warned the party it would be a “betrayal” to team up with the Coalition to block new rules for measuring carbon emissions from native forests.
The Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) method would allow state governments to earn carbon credits for protecting native forests that would otherwise have been commercially harvested.
Those credits can then be sold to around 200 of Australia’s biggest industrial emitters, under the Safeguard Mechanism.
The Nationals are leading a push to “disallow Labor’s dodgy carbon credit method”, arguing it would cause “irreversible damage” to Australia’s native forestry industry.
Minister Bowen told The Saturday Paper that it would be a “massive backward step” if the Greens chose to side with the Coalition, albeit for different motivations.
“Frankly, you can’t lecture the government about native forests if you vote against a method which provides an incentive to state governments who want to move away from that,” he said.
“I think it would be a betrayal of native forests if people who say they are for ending native forestry voted against that method.”
The Australian Financial Review reported that the vote was delayed last week after the Greens indicated they needed more time to finalise their position.
“Bowen is a hypocrite and a climate fraud with a track record that shows he cares nothing for nature or forests,” Australian Greens forests spokesperson Senator Nick McKim fired back.
“The biggest threat to native forests is climate change, and his support for clearing and burning native forests is impossible to reconcile with strong climate action.”
Senator McKim said the Greens wouldn’t “cop a lecture” from a government that recently budgeted $28 million to “help prop up” native forest logging.
“Chris Bowen and the Labor party have the blood of countless forest-dwelling creatures on their hands,” he said.
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“For him to now claim he cares for Australia’s native forests is the height of hypocrisy, and the Greens aren’t falling for it.”
The vote will now take place on 15 September, with the future of a massive koala sanctuary in northern NSW potentially at stake.
In May, the Minns government announced its long-promised Great Koala National Park would be partly funded by selling carbon credits from the park to big industrial companies.
It later declared the credits would “not be able to be sold to coal and gas projects”.
“This is the ‘Minns Principle’, the idea that no government should let fossil fuel companies buy their way out of cutting emissions using credits from public native forest,” said Louise Morris, head of Fossil Fuel Transition at the Australia Institute.
“Applied to one park, it is token, and in a federal trading pool, hard to implement.
“Applied to the Safeguard Mechanism, it becomes a systemic pathway forward.”
Research by the Australia Institute argues the country’s flagship climate policy is failing to reduce actual emissions because major polluters can rely on unlimited carbon offsets.
The Australia Institute report argues Labor’s Safeguard Mechanism has failed to drive reductions in gross emissions from Australia’s largest industrial facilities.
Instead, it says the scheme allows some companies to increase pollution while still claiming progress on climate action.
“Australia hands out $16.3 billion a year in fossil fuel subsidies,” said Ms Morris.
“Redirect a fraction of that, and then the protection of native forests needs no carbon credit at all, and can get permanent protection, not a 100-year stay of execution.”
