Australia news live: decision to scrap net zero commitment shows Nationals ‘profoundly out of touch’ and ‘spells disaster’ for party, critics say

Nationals leader says opposition leader was ‘fully cognisant’ of Nationals net zero debate in lead-up to today’s formal scrapping of targetGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastWatt says Labor doesn’t have a policy to end native forest loggingAsked if he wanted native forest logging to continue (it’s not banned in the legislation, despite the significant negative environmental impact that it has), Watt dodges the question by saying the party doesn’t have a specific policy of ending native forest logging.What we have said, though, is that we will follow the recommendation from Graeme Samuel to apply national environmental standards to the regional forestry agreements that are used for native forestry, so what that means in practice is that native forestry would need to meet higher environmental standards than are currently required under the legislation. That’s a big step forward in terms of the environmental management of native forestry.