The Abbott government is under renewed pressure to abandon a move to wind back Tasmania's World Heritage wilderness.
A Senate committee has slammed the unprecedented attempt to delist 74,000 hectares as misleading and recommends a proposal to the UN World Heritage Committee be withdrawn.
Green groups have jumped on the environment and communications references committee report's findings to demand the government reverse its position.
"Logging World Heritage forests is ... like knocking down the Opera House for harbourside apartments, dismantling the Great Wall of China for paving stones, or selling the Eiffel Tower for scrap," Wilderness Society national director Lyndon Schneiders said in a statement.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott made an election pledge in 2013 to downsize 120,000 hectares listed in Tasmania as part of the state's forestry peace deal between environmentalists and the timber industry.
The World Heritage Committee will deliver an interim report this weekend before a final decision in June.
The move to delist is considered a world first.
The federal government says parts of the listed area are "degraded" because of previous logging and are not of World Heritage standard.
The Senate report finds just four per cent is heavily degraded, while factors such as World Heritage boundary integrity also needs to be considered.
"The only conclusion that can be drawn from this evidence is that the proposal has nothing to do with concerns about the integrity of the World Heritage Area," the report says.
"The real reason behind the proposal is to delist the areas for the purposes of allowing access for forestry activities."
The report warns the proposal could be seen as "insulting" to the World Heritage Committee.
"(It) will potentially damage Australia's international reputation and set a terrible precedent for other countries," it says.
Dissenting Senate committee members from the Liberal and National parties says the federal government will support Tasmania's forestry industry.
"The Australian government will honour its forestry election commitments in Tasmania to ensure the industry is sustainable in the long term and is not hampered by self-interest groups," their report says.
Greens leader and Tasmanian Senator Christine Milne called on the government to withdraw the proposal.
"The industry doesn't want to cut these forests, no market wants to buy the wood and the community wants to see them protected," Senator Milne said.
A spokesman for federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt said: "The matter is being considered by the World Heritage Committee and we await their decision."
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