During a visit to Tasmania's North on Monday, Mr Morrison announced $86 million for 40 per cent of a cash-grant scheme for foresters and farmers to establish timber plantations, asking the states to pick up 60 per cent.

The goal was for 150 million trees to be planted across Australia's 11 declared forestry hubs - one of which covers the entirety of Tasmania - by 2027.

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Labor and the Greens were quick to point out that the government's plan from 2018 outlined the need for one billion trees by 2028, meaning Monday's announcement was a shortfall. By mid-last year, just 1 per cent of that target had been reached in three years.

Assistant Minister for Forestry, Tasmanian senator Jonathon Duniam, said the announcement was "only one of a raft of measures" aimed at achieving the goal.

"It also includes crucial policy incentives such as the opening up of forestry regions to access carbon credits, which industry believe in Victoria and Tasmania alone could mean an additional 100 million trees planted," he said.

"These measures serve to improve the rate of return, provide ongoing revenue streams for those putting in plantations, and therefore incentivise growth in our plantation estate."

In 2019, forestry hubs were established to carry out research and engagement on ways to increase plantations in each area with appropriate species, market demand and to ensure productive agricultural land is not lost.

The forestry sector sees this as an essential way of avoiding the mistakes of the MIS from over a decade ago, when plantations were bulldozed en masse after species were planted in wrong areas and suffered poor outcomes or were too far from mills, resulting in investors losing billions of dollars.

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There may have also been an overreliance on eucalpytus nitens in the past, and it appears likely that pine plantations will form the bulk of the new plantations in the state under the government's scheme.

Pine is critical in addressing the shortage for house frames.

Tasmanian Forest Products Association chief executive officer Nick Steel said the grant scheme was "a great start" and he was hopeful the public would get behind the idea of a significant increase in plantation timber.

Bob Brown picked up on comments senator Duniam made in the media on Monday, including his description of the "terrible outcomes" of the 2006 MIS.

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Dr Brown doubted whether the new grant scheme could avoid bad outcomes.

"If the last lot of Managed Investment Scheme plantations failed because they were planted in the wrong place without adequate rainfall and subject to weeds and invasive species, why will this lot be any different?" he said.

Labor agriculture spokesperson Julie Collins said the Prime Minister's announcement was too little, too late.

"Three years ago he stood here in Tasmania and said that they would plant a billion trees," she said.

"How do you go from a billion trees, down to 150 million trees in just three years? The promise was a billion trees, he made that promise."

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