Today's Opera House protest for Australia's wild forests shows a courage missing in boardrooms and parliament, Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"It sends a message to the world that will be popular. More than 80% of Australians want the destruction of native forests and their wildlife stopped," Senator Brown said.

"The Australian Forest Products Association's claim that Australia's wild forest are logged sustainably is ecological nonsense."

After a zero-coverage press conference by Ta Ann critic, British journalist Clare Rewcastle, in Hobart this week, today's Mercury has a lead letter from Ta Ann attacking Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown.

A public forum for Ms Rewcastle at Salamanca Inn last night was filmed throughout by two Ta Ann employees.

"My images of an indigenous man sidelined by a log truck in Sarawak and of an Orangutan are every bit as illustrative of this giant logging company's impacts as generic images used every day in Tasmania's forest debate," Senator Brown said.

Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown speaks about CEO salaries, pokies reform, election readiness, the forests intergovernmental agreement, and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's visit to Tasmania.

Dozens of high conservation value Tasmanian forest areas, inside the 430,000 hectares agreed to be protected, are being logged for Malaysian logging corporation Ta Ann, Greens Leader Bob Brown alleged in Hobart today.

"Today, by agreement of Premier Giddings and Prime Minister Gillard, $11.5 million is being handed to Ta Ann's accomplice, Forestry Tasmania, for no better reason than Forestry Tasmania threatened even more destruction if they did not," Senator Brown said.

Tasmania's lead Liberal Senator Eric Abetz told the Senate today that "we don't want this money spent in Tasmania", rebuffing the Intergovernmental Agreement delivering $276 million of federal money to Tasmania.

The Coalition was debating its own move to delay a vote on Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown's motion:

That the Senate condemns the Coalition for seeking to deny Tasmania $270 million of assistance for forestry transition.

Bob Brown speaks in Hobart about the Gillard government's changes to the Migration Act to allow offshore processing and comments on concerns that the Tasmanian parks service won't have enough money to manage the new forest reserves.

Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown says that while he is not privy to the legal or probity issues compelling the Tasmanian Government to hand $11.5 million in federal money to Forestry Tasmania, an administrator should be brought in.

"The very fact that state Labor and Liberals legislated away ministerial responsibility for Forestry Tasmania is now coming back to bite them and the public purse," Senator Brown said.

The Coalition's Leader in the Senate, Eric Abetz, has ducked a Senate motion calling for him to account for $240 million in taxpayers' money funneled into the Tasmanian logging industry by the Howard government in 2004.

Greens Leader Bob Brown said Senator Abetz failed to respond to the motion (which passed the Senate on 23/08/2011):

Bob Brown on the mining boom, processing asylum seekers onshore, and Gunns dispute holding up the intergovernmental forest agreement progress.