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

I take great pleasure in joining the debate on the Nature Repair Market Bill 2023. Many speakers on this side of the House, particularly within the National Party, have expressed some significant reservations with this bill from the outset, and I want to make it clear that I share many of their concerns.

If passed, these two bills would create a legislative framework for the operation of a voluntary national market in biodiversity certificates. It must be recognised that, during our time in government, the coalition was moving in a similar direction, although it should be pointed out that the coalition approach was exclusively focused on agricultural land, whereas the application of Labor's bills has been widened to all land tenure and water. I am concerned, from the lived experience of a member in a regional location, that there are some unintended consequences coming down the pipeline with an initiative such as this.

Communities like Gippsland are at the very pointy end of all aspects of natural resource management. On the surface, I would argue, we would almost always be supportive of additional resources being applied to national resource management, but it does need to be in a balanced approach. It does need to recognise the importance of agricultural land, particularly in terms of food security and particularly in terms of our national security as well. I have been concerned during this debate to hear members opposite and from the crossbench, in particular those from the privileged position of their city electorates, lecturing rural and regional Australians about issues surrounding biodiversity and climate change, and making sweeping statements about the environment which are often quite accusatory and almost always ill informed.

In my electorate, the public land estate is enormous. In one of my municipalities, East Gippsland Shire, 75 per cent of the land is unrateable Crown land. Without any hesitation or any risk of being corrected, the public land estate has been neglected in Victoria for decades. So my reservation around the bill before the House today is that plans to lock up even more land—in this case, privately owned land—for privately funded biodiversity reserves will make many landholders in my community very, very nervous. It is well known in Gippsland that the worst neighbour to have is the state government. The worst neighbour is to have is land that is being managed by Parks Victoria because the land isn't being managed. 'Lock it up and leave it,' seems to have become a mantra in the state of Victoria. To lock it up and leave it is a recipe for disaster. We have seen the intrusion of feral animals through the public land estate—feral deer, pigs, foxes, cats and wild dogs. We have seen an increase in the amount of introduced species in terms of weeds impacting on private land. I have continually argued in this place over the last 15 years that we need to see more boots on the ground—more boots and fewer suits; more boots on the ground doing the practical environmental work, and fewer suits in Melbourne making excuses for why that work can't be done.

The true environmentalists in this nation do not live in Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne. They're not sitting in Adelaide and giving lectures to the people in the country. The true environmentalists of this nation are out in rural and regional Australia right now, doing practical environmental work on an almost daily basis. The people who own farmland in my electorate are absolutely committed to eliminating pest animal and plant species from their properties because it helps with their productivity. They fully understand the value of balance and making sure we get that balance right so that they can continue to earn a living in the communities they love but also to recognise the important biodiversity values of the surrounding land.

The reason I have such great reservations about this bill and any unintended consequences that might come as a result is the current debate I'm seeing in Victoria, in relation to the native hardwood timber industry on public land. This is an example where we have a world-class and sustainable industry in Victoria. Again, members opposite and from the crossbench are speaking from a position of enormous privilege. They represent electorates with the highest individual household incomes in the nation and are calling for the abolition of all native timber harvesting in this country, calling for people with some of the lowest household incomes in this nation to lose that income. That is what we're seeing in Victoria right now, and it plays into my concerns about the Nature Repair Market Bill 2023.

We need to put a few facts on the record, in relation to the timber industry, in the context of this bill. To begin with, there are internationally recognised definitions of deforestation or land clearing—that is, the permanent removal of a forest and its conversion to non-forested land. That is not what is happening in Victoria today. In Victoria today we have sustainable native timber harvesting, where the forests are regenerated following harvesting, to ensure there's no net loss over time in a forested area.

In Victoria today, the customers and contractors to VicForests make significant economic contributions to the Victorian economy—around $500 million per year, supporting 4,000 jobs. These are real jobs for Victorians who rely on the forest industry, and the forest industry actually contributes to the biodiversity of our region. Beyond those directly involved in the forest industry, all Victorians benefit from the operations of VicForests, which produces high-quality timber products in our state. This is an industry that provides the state with structural timber, which is used for homes, high-grade wood for furniture and musical instruments, and a range of other everyday and essential products.

The reason I raise this in the context of today's debate is to talk about the alternative source of timber in our nation. The alternative source is plantation. Plantation timber comes from a monoculture. Whether they're pine or hardwood plantations, these are monocultures. They are not contributing to the biodiversity outcomes that the government says it wants to achieve through the Nature Repair Market Bill 2023. They are not contributing to the biodiversity outcomes that a well-managed native hardwood forest and mixed species forest achieves.

My scepticism about this bill stems from the failure of those opposite to stand up for the native hardwood timber industry in Victoria, when it is an industry that is entirely sustainable and would achieve some of the outcomes and ambitions—the rather glorious ambitions—of the Nature Repair Market Bill 2023 before the House. We would get poorer biodiversity outcomes from plantations than we do from mixed species hardwood timber. These managed mixed species forests are delivering social, economic, cultural and environmental benefits to our communities, yet the Labor Party in Victoria wants to ban all of the native hardwood timber industry, and those opposite in this place who come from Victoria are too gutless to stand up for blue-collar workers.

That's a sad but simple fact. They are too gutless to say to Premier Dan Andrews, 'We don't support you. We don't like what you're doing to blue-collar workers. We don't think it's a good idea to take orders from the Greens.' They are too gutless—as Labor members who used to stand up for blue-collar workers—to stand up to the Premier and say, 'Enough is enough. We want to use our own sustainable hardwood timber in Victoria.'

It's important to note that when we talk about the timber industry in Victoria we're not talking about old-growth forests. Those on the crossbench, the teals, the Greens, will have you believe that in Victoria today we are harvesting old-growth forest. In 2019, as part of the Victorian forestry plan, the Victorian government announced an immediate end to harvesting all old-growth forest. The majority of old-growth forest was already protected in Victoria's comprehensive, adequate and representative reserve system. Even prior to the 2019 announcement, most old-growth forest in Victoria was protected. The industry goes even further than protecting old-growth forest; it also protects old trees. In 2018 the Victorian government committed to protect all large old trees, greater than 2½ metres in diameter, across the state.

Again, we have a good biodiversity outcome being achieved from a well-managed forest on public land, which is being thrown out the window for a political purpose, not environmental purposes, and which is the basis of my concerns with this legislation before the House. If we're not already prepared to look after the publicly owned reserve system—it's already being overrun by weeds and feral animals, and the Labor Party in Victoria is already abandoning regional communities and taking people out of those communities who would be responsible for managing that public land estate—why on earth would we believe the Labor Party in this place when it says that locking up more land, in this case private land, is going to be a good result?

What happens when we have a farmer who is living next door to a new biodiversity reserve, and the owners of that biodiversity reserve fail to look after it properly—when it becomes overrun with pest, plants and animals just like the state forests in Victoria? What happens is those poorly managed areas of land become a haven for feral animals. They become a haven for weeds. They become the cause of bushfires which come out of public land—and in this case would come out of a biodiversity reserve area—and burn out the properties of nearby landholders. So I do have great concerns with the legislation before the House, notwithstanding the fact that I do see some benefits for farmers, in particular, if they can be paid to be part of the biodiversity and conservation challenge. I do see some benefits, indeed, but the bill before the House raises more questions for me than answers. And I'm unconvinced that this government, taking orders from the Greens, is properly placed to make the right decisions.

I want to refer members opposite, and tell them to take the opportunity to listen to—or at least read through—a couple of speeches that were made in this place in the last 24 hours from members of my own party, the National Party. I encourage them to have a look at the speeches from the member for Riverina, beside me, but also those yesterday from the member for Flynn and today from the member for Parkes. They all raised some very substantial questions in relation to the risk of more productive agricultural land being locked up. All three of them raised questions about how we're going to achieve our food security as a nation, in the future, and how we're going to continue to feed people throughout the world if we continue to lock up our productive agricultural land. There's a great divide in this place at the moment between those of us who live in the regions and those who lecture us from the privileged position of their city electorates.

I want to quote the member for Flynn's speech yesterday, which I think is worth mentioning:

There are issues which have substantial ramifications for the agriculture, mining and resources, forestry and fishing that could last for generations if these voluntary agreements are made. While this was originally an initiative of the previous government, it has been substantially widened in scope, and as such the future ramifications will not be fully understood by those taking up these agreements or by the general public. The biodiversity agreements will last for periods of 25 years or up to 100 years in duration. Such long periods of time do not allow for the ever-changing political climate, both domestic and international, nor do they consider fluctuating economic demand and supply, which change with time and which are a complete unknown 100 years from today.

The member from Flynn is spot on. The member for Flynn was also spot when he said:

The wealthy virtue-signalling elite want to invest billions of dollars in Australian agricultural land, lock it up and forget about it to appease their own self-loathing of their irresponsible lifestyles while they continue their jet-setting, latte-sipping affluence, whilst priorly declaring they're environmentally aware. This is just some more of the monumental hypocrisy we hear from metropolitan Australia.

That is the divide in this place right now between those of us who live in rural and regional Australia, who are responsible for practical land management in our electorate and who believe in things like the sustainable native hardwood timber industry, and those who seek to lecture us, condemn us and tell us what jobs we can and can't have from that extraordinarily privileged position where they don't actually want to live in the environment; they just want to tell everyone else how to manage it.

They don't actually want to work in the timber industry because that would involve getting their hands dirty and doing practical work. They want to tell everybody else they can't possibly have a job in that industry. There is a divide in this place, and it's up to us on this side, particularly in the Nationals, to continue to ensure the voices of our blue-collar workers, farmers and those in the resources sector are heard in this place and that they're not drowned out by the bleating of those opposite. Those opposite used to represent blue-collar workers but now are so obsessed with securing the preferences of the Greens in the city that they dare not mention a word in support of the blue-collar workers of this nation.

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