Russell Broadbent (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

and bend the knee to our program, what we've decided to do.' That's exactly what's going on here. At the end of the member for Corio' speech, which was a good speech, on the topic—she got the talking points right—she also said, 'Hey, this goes down really well with my local environment groups, all about my coastline, my rivers and the things that are happening.' Do you think this legislation will make one ounce of difference to the erosion that is happening around all of our Victorian beaches at the moment in a 200-year cycle we've been expecting for ages? Only very strong man-made groynes, rock walls and other processes can stop that. We've actually built on land in this nation that 200 years ago was ocean and sand dunes. There are shells in my backyard at Phillip Island because that's where the sea once was.

We're saying these bushfires are being caused by climate change. How dare I even suggest they're not all caused by climate change. Could they be caused by bad management of our forests for 200 years and more recently in the last 50 years? We saw that in the last bushfires that went through New South Wales and Victoria. Did they have a problem with their townships where there'd been Indigenous management of the forests? No, they didn't. But step outside the Indigenous management and the places were torn to shreds by fires, because of our management of our environment. I take the blame.

In this legislation I would back you 100 per cent if I hadn't heard it all before and believed that the legislation was actually going to do what it is suggested it will do. What it will do is it'll put the price of steel up, it'll put the price of cement up and it'll put up the price of products that come from those steel and cement products. Some of our biggest companies are going to have to cover higher costs because of this legislation—that's acknowledged by the government. But do they acknowledge how much harder it will make it for a first home buyer to be able to get into a home, or that a backyard shed will increase in price? I'm not saying it'll become unaffordable, but a backyard shed is going to cost you a whole lot more. Your little shed in the backyard is going to cost you a whole lot more because of this legislation. Do you know that all your main buildings will cost a whole lot more because of this legislation? Do you know that these companies will have diminished output because of this legislation? And do you know that in China their emissions are rising because they're building power station after power station after power station after power station? Of course their emissions are going up because they've got greater product going out. And yet this bill says if you increase your business and you have greater emissions, it is only natural that as our economy grows our emissions are going to grow. So how do we deal with that in this legislation? I thought the proposition before the nation prior to that was a much better proposition than this is because of all the unknowns that are in this legislation.

The government talks about a soft hit on the economy. What's a soft hit on the economy and what's a hard hit on the economy? This is going to be just a soft hit on our own economy. Is that the same type of soft hit that has been wrought upon white paper manufacturing in this country? The courts have decided they know better than governments in our regional forest agreements and other agreements we have regarding the management of our native forests, where right now in Victoria 400 forestry workers in one area or another are being paid to do nothing. Every week 400 of them are being paid to do nothing because our whole forest industry is caught and stuck in the courts, and the state government of Victoria is doing nothing about it. They have the power and the authority to end this tomorrow. The same ideology is driving this legislation as is driving what's happening in Victoria. And you say: 'Oh, it doesn't count. We're saving our forests.' Unless you are going to make pallets out of recycled plastic to take the steel that members in this House produce in their electorates, you actually need hardwood pallets for those exchanges of heavy freight. You can't use pine; it's not strong enough. Two years ago it was identified that, unless there were more hardwood products being sawn through the sawmills and put into pallets, we're going to run out of pallets. If you run out of pallets you stop moving freight around this country or around the world.

See this speech in context