Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'll start with a few fundamental observations. In Australia and across the globe we've destroyed too much natural habitat already, and in Australia and across the globe we practice deforestation on a scale that has caused enormous harm to biodiversity on our planet and has put our climate system dangerously out of whack. Some estimates put the extent of deforestation in Australia over the last 200 years at 50 per cent. In 2021, Australia was named in a report by WWF as the only developed country on the list of deforestation hot spots, and, of course, we hold the unwelcome distinction of being the world leader in mammal extinctions.

On that basis you may think that in a country like Australia, with all our resources and practical know-how, the status quo would at least be a cessation of further harm; unfortunately, you'd be badly wrong if you thought that. Through all our activities—not just through forestry practices but in agriculture, industry and urban expansion—we continue to clear habitat in a way that pushes our biodiversity closer to the brink and continues to tip the carbon scale in the wrong direction. That doesn't mean that no clearing can or will ever occur again. It doesn't mean there's no place for very carefully managed and limited harvesting of non-plantation timber. It does mean we can't kid ourselves about the enormous harm that's already occurred.

The motion refers to a 'sustainable native hardwood timber industry'. It would have been more persuasive if it had acknowledged that the industry, for most its existence in this country, has been unsustainable and if it had acknowledged that the coalition government did nothing in particular to make it sustainable. The reality is that, after a long period in which the coalition government failed to show the stewardship required to arrest an entrenched trajectory of environmental decline, the Albanese government is making sure we can have a sustainable approach to a properly managed and renewable timber industry. If this is not done, the further harm to our environmental, social and economic wellbeing will be enormous and irreversible. Not only will there be the extinction of species, but entire ecosystems will be lost for ever—river systems and groundwater reserves pushed beyond recovery.

This Labor government will not sit idle and watch that occur. We'll not follow the coalition's method and leave the hard work for someone else or peddle dishonesty for short-term political gain by telling workers and communities that everything is fine and we can all keep driving towards a fast-approaching cliff. Already, the sensible and necessary measures of this government include a $300 million package to accelerate wood processing innovations, support new plantation capacity, combat illegally logged imports and provide $10 million for the Forestry Workforce Training Program. That matches the approach taken in my home state of Western Australia, where native forest logging will cease by 2024 and transitional programs include an investment of $350 million to expand WA's softwood plantations, in addition to the $80 million Native Forest Transition Plan to support affected workers, businesses and local communities in the south-west.

In July, I spent some time in the Great Western Woodlands, north-east of Mukinbudin in WA. Those woodlands represent the largest unfragmented temperate forest on our planet, with 16 million hectares across a range of woodland and scrubland habitats. That woodland contains more than 20 per cent of Australia's flowering plant species and 30 per cent of Australia's eucalypt species. In fact, the amount of floral diversity in those woodlands is comparable to the plant diversity in Canada, a country more than 60 times the size. But, of course, those woodlands are already massively reduced from their original scale because the WA Wheatbelt, which occupies 18 million hectares, was carved out of a good proportion of the incredible western woodlands when it was even greater than it is today.

Timber is a renewable industry, and it's a renewable material. We should produce and use timber in careful and sustainable ways. It's welcome, but in Australia we've reached the point where 87 per cent of our timber comes from plantations; we should get closer to 100 per cent as quickly as we can. Where native forest harvesting can sustainably occur, it ought to be in relatively few and small areas. Serious impacts on wild native forests and habitat, through logging or other land clearing activities, have to cease in this country and on the planet as soon as we can; otherwise, what would we expect, other than what the science shows us? Further biodiversity loss, environmental collapse and widespread and severe impacts of climate change—that's what we will get.

The member for Gippsland is a very good fellow, and I reckon he would have been super frustrated over the last decade to have been part of a government that was utterly irresponsible in grasping some of the big challenges, especially when he represents a community that will be at the sharper end of some of those challenges. It is indisputable to say that climate change and environmental degradation, which are entrenched in this country, will affect rural and regional Australians more sharply than it will affect those who live in capital cities, more sharply than the people in my community. Correspondingly, the actions of a responsible government to rise up and meet those challenges will have the greatest benefits and opportunities for rural and regional Australians. The member for Gippsland and his colleagues, after 10 years of waste and neglect in government, can choose to change their tune and change their approach and be part of those solutions, or they can keep playing the silly games they've been playing for those 10 years.

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