Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Gippsland for providing me with the opportunity to speak about a very important industry in my electorate.

I agree with the member: we have a world-class sustainable native hardwood industry in Australia that delivers social, economic, cultural and environmental benefits for regions and for the nation. I'm not going to comment on what mainland state governments do, but I can tell the member for Gippsland that in Tasmania both the minority Liberal government and the Labor opposition are fully supportive of forestry. And, federally, you won't find much, if any, difference in forestry policy between the opposition and the Labor government. We went to the election in May last year supporting sustainable forestry, with a focus on growing a lot more plantations and building up the value-added sector, just like those opposite, and we are standing by that commitment. The Albanese government supports sustainable forestry, including sustainable native forestry. The native forestry sector provides more than $320 million to the national economy, and provided a net carbon sink of 35.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2020-21.

Forestry and conservation are not mutually exclusive; they can and should be allies. Tasmania's native forestry sector supplies vital hardwoods and specialty timbers. The sector is highly regulated and strictly managed, with every tree taken replaced and with safeguards in place to protect fauna and flora. The cowboys have been run out of town. It's a different story overseas, as the member for Gippsland has already noted. If protesters get their way and kill the Australian native forestry sector, thousands of jobs will be lost, regional communities will be decimated and the global environment will be worse off. Trees will still be cut down, they will just be getting cut down in places where the environmental protections that underpin the Australian industry do not exist. I've had the privilege to see timber-felling operations in Tasmania firsthand. It's serious stuff, with safety and environmental protection paramount, and a lot of money tied up in capital investment. Our Labor government supports the highly skilled jobs that forestry now attracts, including 6,000 direct and indirect jobs in Tasmania and more than 51,000 direct jobs nationally.

One big difference between the former Liberal-National government and the Labor government is that we're getting on with the job—we're not just putting out press releases. When Tasmania Liberal senator Jonno Duniam was minister for forestry, he was responsible for the billion trees plantation program—400,000 hectares by 2030 was the goal. But by 2022, Senator Duniam had achieved just one per cent. If we stuck to Senator Dunam's timetable, we'd all be pushing up daisies and it would be well into the next century before the goal was achieved. I know he's only a young bloke, but the member for Gippsland, the member for Monash and I would be helping the trees grow by the time they were in the ground!

In Tasmania, the minority Liberal government is in strife because mainland sawmillers are securing contracts from a state-government-owned grower, Sustainable Timber Tasmania. Local sawmillers are getting outbid unfairly for the work. I make this point because managing forestry can be a difficult business, whether you're a Liberal or a Labor government. But I can assure the member for Gippsland that forestry has the full throated support of Tasmanian Labor and the Tasmanian Labor federal MPs and senators.

Let's look at some of the support the federal Labor government is providing to Australian forestry. We've released $300 million in forestry support initiatives, including $100 million for the Accelerate Adoption of Wood Processing Innovation Program, launched nationally from my electorate earlier this year, which seeks to encourage higher-value products, use more from available resources and boost supplies for construction and manufacturing. I'm proud to stand with my timber communities in supporting sustainable forestry in Tasmania.

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