Speaking in Orange today Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown called for a national register of foreign purchases of land or water in rural Australia. 

"In the coming century food and fibre production will be a huge issue as the world population soars to 10 billion people or more,” said Senator Brown.

“It is important Australians know who owns the productive farmlands and water rights of our country.

The Australian Greens have called for a levy on junk food and alcohol advertising similar to the levy which has applied in France since 2004.

Launching the policy with Victorian Greens Senate candidate, Dr Richard di Natale in Melbourne today, Greens leader Bob Brown said the advertisers could choose the option of including health information in their advertising or pay the levy.

With the collapse of overseas woodchip markets and the growth of plantation forests, results of a new national poll show unprecedented support for ending logging in Australian native forests.

Launching a new television advertisement calling for an end to native forest logging, Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said there had never been a more opportune time for the Commonwealth Government to step in and end conflict over forests forever.

Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown says Australia should follow the ban in New Zealand and Thailand on native forest logging and the new moratorium on logging boreal forest in Canada with an end to logging of native forests here.

"The Rudd government and Abbott opposition should join the Greens in working to transform the logging industry to a plantation-based-future," Senator Brown said.

"It would be a real breakthrough for Australia and its wildlife, and the opportunity has never so good as now."

In the run to the federal election, the Rudd government has a golden opportunity to protect the contentious native forests of south-east Australia, Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"Just as Gallop Labor made the monumental decision in 2004 to create 29 forest national parks in Western Australia, so the time is ripe for the great forests of Tasmania, Victoria and South East New South Wales to be protected," Senator Brown said.

"Meanwhile the logging industry can exploit the current 1.5 million hectares of plantation stock.

Greens Leader Bob Brown has called on the state government to release all details of its studies into eucalypt-derived pathogens in Tasmanian water catchments.

Responding to statements by Tasmanian director of public health Roscoe Taylor that while no traces were found in Georges river, eucalypt derived material was found in the Douglas river catchment Senator Brown called for details of what eucalyptus toxins were tested to be released.

The blocking of a Senate inquiry into potential toxic leaching from eucalypt plantations into Tasmania's George River by both Labor and Liberal today was an abrogation of responsibility, according to the Greens.

Greens Senators Bob Brown and Christine Milne moved for the inquiry following reports that plantations of Eucalyptus nitens were contaminating water supplies near St. Helens in North East Tasmania, with impacts on human and animal populations.

"This is an abrogation of responsibility by the Labor and Liberal parties," said Senator Brown.

Tasmanian Minister Nick Sherry, who represents Forestry Minister Tony Burke in the Senate, had ‘no briefing' when asked today about the high-profile fear of forest plantation run off poisoning drinking water in Tasmania.

Greens Leader Bob Brown asked Senator Sherry when Minister Burke first knew about the toxins from Eucalyptus Nitens plantations and how much taxpayers' money had gone into genetic selection of the species. The Minister replied he had no briefing from Minister Burke.