Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Gippsland for bringing on this motion in relation to the native timber industry. For the past 12 months, I've been compelled to call out the prioritisation of ideology over need and theory over reality by this government. I've shone light on the ideological decisions that have escalated both the costs of living and housing and energy crisis across communities in Australia .Today, I rise to ask the government to ensure that we don't continue washing over the reality of the needs of our country and our communities for the sake of metro based, ill-informed opinion that is often perpetuated by other countries, not from the experiences and practices of our own nation. Of course, I'm talking about the sustainable hardwood timber industry.

My very passionate colleague the member for Gippsland has fiercely represented his community and championed the sustainable practice that his local timber harvest has employed for many months now. I'd like to provide a perspective of my own electorate's hardworking industry for consideration. The North Coast forestry industry employs an estimated 3,800 people and contributes $184 million to the local economy. Local timber workers in my electorate of Cowper are fiercely proud of their ethical and sustainable practices—businesses like Hayden Timbers in Rollands Plains and logging contractors like Matt and Kristy Parker up in Dorrigo. I have visited logging sites in my electorate on many occasions and have seen firsthand the painstaking environmental practices they utilise every day. The true environmentalists in my state don't live in Sydney. They're not sitting in boardrooms deciding the green-aligned taglines that resonate with their marketing strategies. They're not strapping themselves to machinery attempting to gain more likes on Instagram. The true environmentalists in my state are out in rural and regional townships doing practical environmental work on a daily basis.

It's not in a logger's best interest to negatively impact their environment. How could it be? The creation and management of thriving forests is literally what keeps them employed. Why would they want to destroy it? Shutting down our native timber industry is not just detrimental to the local business owners and workers in regional electorates like mine; it is detrimental to the country's economy and, ironically, detrimental to the local and global environments that those opposite and on the crossbench consistently refer to. I should say that it was pleasing to hear in the speech by the member for Lyons that he supports the native forest industry. I hope that he goes and talks to his colleagues and explains how sustainable it is and how it should continue.

A sustainable native hardwood practice is not deforestation. It is not land clearing. It is not irreversible. Our local native timber harvesters are positively impacting emissions through the planting of native saplings. They are responsibly managing local forests and protecting them from pests and introduced species. They are contributing to biodiversity outcomes. Comparatively, plantation timber, which is our only other local option, provides none of this. It is planted in cleared land and is a monoculture. Whether pine or hardwood plantations, these are monocultures. They are not contributing to our biodiversity targets. We also don't have enough of them to sustain our own building and manufacturing industries.

The member for Gippsland spoke about the unfortunate reality that the meticulous and heavily regulated native hardwood practices that we employ in Australia are not shared by other countries around the world. It's from those countries that we'll be forced to purchase timber, at a financial cost much higher than what we achieve locally, and it's those offshore forests that will be destroyed.

I look forward to seeing these issues raised in the next National Cabinet and I hope to see facts about our critical, responsible native hardwood— (Time expired)

See this speech in context