Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

I want to make some observations today in relation to the native hardwood timber industry in Victoria. I make a very simple point from the outset: the people of Victoria are facing a Dan-made disaster. The decision by Premier Dan Andrews to bring forward his heartless ban on native timber harvesting in that state was a direct contradiction—in fact, a lie, when you consider his original plan was 2030. Without any warning whatsoever, thousands of timber workers and their families in small communities right throughout regional Victoria have been told, 'From 1 January next year, you will not have a job.' Their jobs are going because of one man, and that is the Premier of Victoria.

My towns are resilient. They can survive fires, floods and droughts and they have worked together through COVID, but small towns can't survive the madness of Premier Dan Andrews. This decision to bring forward what was already a stupid decision has caused massive unrest right across my electorate and throughout regional Victoria. There will be devastating impacts—and I say that without any risk of being accused of exaggeration. There will be devastating social, environmental, economic and cultural impacts, all because of a premier who has made a decision based on political science, not environmental science. Make no mistake; there is no transition plan. There is no transition to plantations; the plantations aren't in the ground, and the trees won't be ready to harvest. It is a complete fabrication to suggest this industry can transition to plantations in the time frame to 2030, let alone seven months. Seriously, it is time for Labor MPs in this place and in Victoria to show some guts and stand up for blue-collar workers.

The very reason why this decision is a kick in the guts for regional communities is they have a world-class and sustainable industry. I challenge these people who are out there putting out press releases saying, 'How wonderful it is we're banning native timber harvesting' to spend one day in one of those communities, to go to a coop and understand what actually happens in the hardwood timber industry in Victoria.

The trees being harvested today were regenerated 60 or 70 years ago from previous logging operations. There is a myth being perpetuated by the Greens in this place and the eco-warriors out in the community, suggesting that, somehow, we're harvesting old growth forests. It is a fantasy. Go out into those communities and understand what you're actually talking about. In this country we have, quite rightly, an incredibly proud record of national parks and reserving high conservation value areas which will never be logged. No-one is harvesting old growth timber in Victoria today. It is a lie, and the green warriors out there, these extremists, are destroying country towns based on a lie, a complete fabrication. The trees we're talking about are in areas that have been harvested before, 60 or 70 years ago—we call it a regeneration forest.

I don't know why the Labor Party in Victoria and the Victorian Labor MPs in this place have crumbled and become so out of touch with blue-collar workers that they don't bother going out and listening to the concerns of the people they used to represent. The workers in my timber mills, the workers who drive trucks, who do the harvest and haulage work, who work in the downstream industries around furniture manufacturing, used to think the Labor Party supported them. They used to think that, if they joined a union, the Labor Party would be there to support them. Dan Andrews and Victorian Labor MPs are so gutless that they put out a press release sacking them all. They didn't go out to communities, didn't talk to local mayors, didn't talk to the mill owners, didn't talk to the workers. They put out a press release saying, 'You're out of work in six or seven months time.'

Old Labor MPs were never like this. I've got a lot of respect for old Labor MPs. This is what Joel Fitzgibbon, the former member for Hunter, had to say in relation to this announcement:

Stopping native forestry in one state to import the product from another state is not a plan, it's a pathway to more extreme bushfires, greater import dependence, and more deforestation and fauna extinction in developing countries. In a state hospital or state school crisis the Commonwealth wouldn't leave the matter to the states, it would engage.

Mr Fitzgibbon went on to say:

Like many things, people tend not to think much about where their wood products come from. There are two answers, our forests and the forests of others. In Australia, we hold ourselves to world's best forestry practices. Many of the countries we import from do not.

This is the crux of the issue. A sustainable well-managed forest industry is 100 per cent renewable. Whenever the loggers, the harvesters, go through an area, they are required by law to regenerate. That coop is regenerated, and in decades to come the next generation of growth is able to be harvested for the things we want. The demand is not going away. If you want your hardwood floor, if you want structural grade timber, if you want furniture, it's coming from hardwood.

People need to understand that these communities love the bush, respect the bush and work in the bush on a daily basis. They are using rotational harvesting of regenerated forest to generate wealth in those communities and to be part of a supply chain which people in the city depend on. Yet here we have Melbourne Labor MPs celebrating that you're kicking them in the guts and kicking them out of their jobs.

The greatest insult of all is this $200 million so-called transition plan. I say to the Premier: 'No-one wants your money, Premier; they just want their jobs. They want the decency of being able to go out there and providing for their own financial security by working in the bush and delivering a product that is world-class and completely renewable.' I say that the demand is still there, and Joel Fitzgibbon referred to it in his comments. The demand for hardwood's not going away and it can't be replaced—other than taking timber from other states into Victoria, which is happening already. We're already taking timber from Tasmania and New South Wales and processing it in Victoria. That's going to happen more in the future. Or we take it from overseas. Great idea. What a genius. Take more wood from countries with lower environmental protocols, but don't support your own world-class industry.

I'll just make a point on plantations. This will come as a shock to a lot of people. I challenge you to think about a parcel of land. You decide to plant trees on it. A plantation, either pine or blue gum, what we traditionally call a plantation, is a monoculture. Where is the biodiversity outcome in a monoculture of trees? The greenies supposedly say, 'Let's transition to plantations.' That's the sole answer to this question. Pine has a very important role to play. It's a softwood, obviously, and it's used for a whole range of things that hardwood is not required for. So you do need pine plantations, but it's a monoculture. Then think about the same parcel of land being allowed to regenerate as a mixed-species forest and then harvested on a rotational basis, so 60 or 70 years down the track. That is in fact a mixed-species plantation. It was actually planted by the loggers in the first place all those decades ago. We need to understand the consequences of decisions like this—the economic, social, cultural and environmental consequences.

In my community alone, there will be hundreds of direct job losses in little towns like Orbost and Heyfield and Swifts Creek. If you take the working-age people out of those communities and they head off to other areas to get work, you don't have a footy club, you don't have a netball club, your school's not viable, businesses start to shut down. We've had death by a thousand cuts in this industry for the last couple of decades, but this will be the final straw. Some of those towns will not be able to continue to function as you think a town should.

The point that really hurts these communities is the complete lack of respect they're being shown by people in the city. I'm sorry, but it is a city-country divide issue. People in the city, in their concrete jungle, want to tell people in the bush what jobs they can't have. They don't want to live there—don't get me wrong, they don't want to live in Orbost, they don't want to actually do the work, they just want to tell them what jobs they can't have. Now people in Orbost are about five hours drive from Melbourne. There is no town just round the corner you can go and get another job at. If you lose your job in Orbost, you leave that town. That's not fair. That is simply not fair. These people have, in many cases, major investments in their equipment and they're paying that equipment off through their own hard work. And their partner may well be working at the school or the local bush hospital, whatever it might be. They are committed to those towns; they are ingrained in those towns; they want their futures in those towns. And until last week they thought they still had a future, right up until Dan Andrews made that announcement, which was the greatest kick in the guts that Gippsland's had in my time as a member of parliament.

But I say to Dan Andrews: 'These people aren't going to take this lying down. You might think you can kick people in the guts when they're lying down, but I tell you now Gippslanders are tough, and they'll get up and fight.' There will be protests. There will be rallies. These people, who I love and respect, will stick together. They'll unite and they'll take on the Premier—and they'll take on this Prime Minister as well, because they know he's using weasel words when he pretends to support the forestry industry. We've watched his speeches in parliament this week, and they know what tricky weasel words the Prime Minister's using to try and get around the issue. They know that he's backing Dan Andrews 100 per cent. So, Prime Minister, I say this to you as well, in all sincerity: get ahead of this. Do not go down with Dan Andrews on this terrible, heartless, reckless decision, which will increase our dependence on imports and cost small-community members their jobs and livelihoods in those areas.

It's not just me saying this. My community is overwhelmingly in support of the position I've taken. This media release from the Wellington Shire Council on the announcement was put out last week:

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has devastated the futures of over 650 timber workers throughout Wellington Shire.

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The Premier's announcement to end native timber harvesting in Victoria in 2024 is a kick in the guts for timber communities, putting on full display the Premier's disregard for local people and a preference for policy and voters in inner Melbourne.

That's from the mayor of Wellington shire. The mayor of East Gippsland shire, a former Labor candidate, was quoted in his press release as saying:

"It completely flips East Gippsland upside down and does so without a logical explanation or a plan for the future," …

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"Six months is not a reasonable timeframe to transition. The decision disrespects East Gippsland communities and our economy."

That's the point. It is complete disrespect for all Gippsland communities. I was in Heyfield on Monday before I came to parliament, and the community was asked to get a few representatives to turn up to meet with the Today show to talk about their industry. With just 24 hours notice, 400 people rallied for the Today show to show their strength and their support for the timber industry.

But I guess in all this the question remains: what can we do to stop the madness? I know that people are tired. They shouldn't have to fight for their jobs. I know they're tired and they're sick of this. But the question of what we can do to stop the madness is one that really rests with the Prime Minister, because now we have other members in this place advocating for a total ban on native timber harvesting in our country. The Prime Minister last year, before the election, tweeted his support for the industry after the Australian Forest Products Association conference. He went to Tasmania and he said:

Labor supports your industry, your family and your community.

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The Greens have tried to take my job for the last twenty years—I have beaten them every time and I will take up the fight against them to protect your job too.

I say to the Prime Minister: these are nice words, but you have to back it up, and I can tell you right now that your party, new Labor, this light-green Labor movement that does everything the Greens want it to do, is heading down a pathway where blue-collar workers are deserting you, for good cause, because no-one has the courage to stand up for their jobs. Those opposite aren't comfortable with this conversation. I know why: because they know it's true. They know it's true that they've sold out blue-collar workers for Green preferences. So I say to you, Prime Minister: a tweet or a press release is fine, but will you actually help timber workers in Victoria or will you surrender meekly? I have enormous respect for those old Labor lions who would fight on behalf of blue-collar workers. This new Labor is timid. It's a shadow of its former self, and the blue-collar workers know it. I challenge those opposite to actually stand up for a sustainable forest industry in Australia and stand up for working-class families.

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