Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak tonight on the motion moved by the member for Lyons. I recognise his passion for the future of the sustainable forestry industry. In his address he referred to the impact of the timber industry on small regional communities and the importance of the timber sector right throughout regional Australia. I fear, however, that it is not a passion that is shared by many of his colleagues who have sat back at both the state and federal levels and allowed the death of a thousand cuts to be applied to the timber industry in regional Australia.

As we approach a state election in Victoria I have grave fears for the future of the timber industry in Gippsland if the Labor Party is returned in some type of coalition with the Greens. Labor and the Greens have talked a lot in the past and made a lot of promises about jobs we might have in the future in Gippsland, but I am fighting for the jobs we already have today, and that includes fighting for the future of the native hardwood timber industry in my community. I am talking about towns like Heyfield, Orbost, Bairnsdale, Swifts Creek, Nowa Nowa and Cann River, which have a strong dependence on the timber industry, from the people who work directly in the harvest and haulage section to those in the mills and those who service the industry. Every time the Labor Party and the Greens lock up another section of forest in Gippsland more jobs are lost and more families are forced to seek alternative employment in the region, or they simply move away and small country towns suffer the consequences.

The Greens in particular like to claim that the jobs will be replaced by jobs in areas like ecotourism, but in my experience the Greens have never created a job in regional Victoria and their policies are a direct threat to the livelihoods of the families that work in range of traditional industries, from timber harvesting to commercial fishing and the Latrobe Valley power industry. As one of the leading players in the timber industry in East Gippsland, Bob Humphries from Cann River has told me in the past that he cannot see many of his timber workers serving up Devonshire teas in the future. This is a real issue for us. I am a very passionate supporter of our tourism industry, but at the same time the timber industry provides sustainable jobs in the long term for our community and there are people with the skills and experience who deserve to be able to continue to earn their living in a sustainable manner in the East Gippsland forests. These are hardworking men and women. They have skills in that industry. They provide a product that is in great demand. But their livelihoods are constantly at risk from the Labor Party and the Greens when they do those deals to win preferences in city seats. It is to the eternal shame of Labor members of parliament that they refuse to stand up and be counted when the workers in the timber industry are having their jobs taken away from them at the expense of Green preferences.

Just on the point of skills that the timber industry workers have I will briefly mention the important role that the timber industry has played in the past and must continue to play in the future in fire suppression and prevention activities in Gippsland. The skilled heavy machinery operators in the timber industry have been critically important in severe fire events over the past decade and before that. I have no doubt that the presence of machines and the men with the skill and courage to use them in difficult circumstances has helped to protect life and property. Every time another area of land is shut away from the timber industry, more workers are lost from those communities and more opportunities to help defend life and property in those extreme fire events are lost from areas like Gippsland. I have not seen any members of the extreme environmental groups jumping on bulldozers to put in firebreaks when fire has threatened our towns in the past. I hope the timber industry workers are around to provide that service for us in the future.

As the recent federal election result in Gippsland indicated, my community has had enough of the city based politicians, and in this case the city based Greens candidate, telling us how to live our lives, what jobs we can have and what jobs we cannot have. I sincerely welcome this motion by the member for Lyons because, like the member for Lyons, I recognise that the forestry industry is an important part of the Australian economy.

In my contribution to this debate I want to focus more on the native hardwood timber industry in Victoria. I do support the sustainable harvesting of native timber in Victoria because I recognise the important role that the industry plays in regional communities. I also recognise the complete impracticality of the alternatives which are often shouted by the Greens and whispered by Labor MPs. They call for an end to logging of native timber but remain strangely silent on the importation of timber products from poor nations with a poor track record of illegal harvesting and unsustainable forest management practices.

The Victorian Association of Forest Industries reports that the value of national imports and exports of forest products in 2008-09 show a $2.1 billion trade deficit in forest products here in Australia. I would much rather see Australians support an Australian native timber industry that is strictly supervised and managed in a sustainable manner to achieve maximum value for each tree that is harvested than support the pillaging of the forests of poorer developing countries where there are not the protocols, they are nowhere near as well-managed and they are unsustainably harvested.

I could take all night to dispel more of the myths and the factual inconsistencies of the Greens in their anti-logging tirades but in the time I have available I want to focus on the importance of the timber industry to Gippsland and the positive policy direction that has been adopted by the coalition at both the state and federal levels. Timber production, as a matter of interest—and this is completely contrary to the information that is often promulgated by the Greens—is excluded from vast areas of Victorian forests. It is excluded from all national parks and conservation areas—and that is over three million hectares of native forest. The area of Victorian public native forest actually harvested and regenerated equates to approximately 0.12 per cent of the total forest area in Victoria. If you listen to the Greens you would believe we were about to cut down our last tree in Victoria. It is a ridiculous proposition and it really causes great offence to the people who live and work in the bush and sustainably manage their forestry resource and seek to add value to the product at every opportunity. The industry itself is worth about $6.5 billion to the Victorian economy and directly employs in the order of 20,000 people.

I recently visited the Heyfield mill of the Gunns company and had the opportunity to witness firsthand the new technology and the investment in some of the equipment that the member for Lyons referred to. Finger joining is being done on small offcuts of timber that would have previously ended up in the chipper. They are now being joined in a high-tech process and maximum value is gained from every stick of wood that comes out of the bush. It is a fantastic commitment that the company has shown to the timber product we have in Victoria. It is a product that is in demand right around the world.

The Victorian Liberals and Nationals in coalition have recognised that there is a threat to the industry at the moment that is posed by Labor and the Greens in the state election and have given their policy commitments that they will not support any further reductions in access to native timber. There was a great announcement made on the weekend. The Victorian Leader of the Nationals, Peter Ryan, and the shadow minister for agriculture, Peter Walsh, gave more undertakings to the Victorian timber industry. They said they will guarantee long-term access to the current supplies of native timber, they will review the regional forest agreements every five years to provide 20-year resource security, they will place VicForests under the sole direction of the Minister for Agriculture, they will restructure the board of VicForests to include industry stakeholders and they will review harvesting rotations for faster-growing native species such as mountain ash.

These are all important initiatives that will help to provide security for the timber industry. The industry needs that security to be able to invest in new technology with any confidence whatsoever. Anyone who has not been to a timber mill in the last 20 years should visit a mill today. They will see it is completely different from the old saw bench they might have seen in the past. There is maximum effort to get the highest yield possible out of each log. The only way the industry is going to invest with confidence is if it has a policy direction set by state and federal governments that recognises that we do have a sustainable hardwood industry here in Australia—and we certainly have one in Victoria that needs the support of both state and federal governments.

The only way I believe that will happen in Victoria is if the coalition wins the state election. The future of towns like Bairnsdale, Swifts Creek, Orbost, Cann River, Heyfield and Nowa Nowa, which I mentioned before, will only be secured and the jobs of those working families in those communities will only be secured if we can get rid of the Brumby government in Victoria.

At a federal level the coalition has also got a strong history of supporting the forestry sector. We took a very detailed policy to the recent election. It was disappointing that the Labor Party—the party that claims to stand up for the working class, the party that claims to stand up for blue-collar workers—did not even release a full policy to cover the timber industry. It is an appalling situation when we have that neglect of such a valuable industry here in Australia. So at the federal election the Liberals and Nationals in coalition at the federal level committed to maintaining our support for the long-term regional forest agreements and not supporting any further lock-ups unless they are proposed by the industry itself, which is a completely different approach to that adopted by the Labor Party, who have the Greens constantly tugging at their coattails to make sure they get their attention. The moment the Labor Party lock up one more section the Greens will say, ‘That’s a good start, but now we want something else.’ They will never be satisfied. When it comes to the timber industry the Greens will never be satisfied.

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