Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

Organised crime, civil wars, slave labour, corruption, the extinction of species and environmental destruction have all been linked to the global practice of illegal logging. This pernicious practice not only damages forest ecosystems and local communities but also costs the global community up to $240 billion each year, according to the United Nations. This makes illegal logging the world's most expensive environmental crime and, in an economic sense, significantly distorts the free and fair operation of timber markets the world over. While most of this illegal activity occurs overseas, this is not to say the impacts of below-market-price and illegally sourced timber aren't felt here in Australia, nor does it suggest that there is not a role for Australia to play.

As a general principle, the coalition gladly supports further practical actions to tighten and strengthen Australia's laws against the importation, sale and use of illegal timber. As such, I second the sentiments of the shadow minister for the environment, fisheries and forestry, Senator Jonathan Duniam, and express my pleasure in seeing Labor continue the work of the former coalition government in this policy area, specifically in regard to reviewing and monitoring the content, operation and effectiveness of relevant laws and regulations in this policy area on a number of occasions. Broadly speaking, it is also good that, at the 2022 federal election, the Labor Party basically carbon copied the coalition's forestry policies. Whilst we wouldn't normally condone plagiarism, one of the outcomes of that course of action from Labor was that they promised to match our policy to assign $4.4 million to strengthen Australia's fight against illegal logging and stop illegal timber imports from undercutting Australian producers.

Specifically in relation to the Illegal Logging Prohibition Amendment (Strengthening Measures to Prevent Illegal Timber Trade) Bill 2024, we are also pleased that Labor has continued the considerable work that we had started when we were in government in respect of reviewing the sunsetting of the Illegal Logging Prohibition Regulation 2012. That review began in 2021. It was aimed squarely at assessing whether the act and the regulation were allowing Australia to best play our part in effectively reducing the many harmful impacts of illegal logging. So it's a welcome development to see some movement now from the Labor Party.

During the years of the coalition government we, likewise, oversaw the advent of two other major review processes. The first of these was conducted by KPMG in 2015 to examine the impact of the Illegal Logging Prohibition Regulation specifically on small businesses. The second was a statutory review of the act, which was undertaken in 2018 by the then Department of Agriculture and Water Resources. Each of those exercises shed valuable and important light on how Australia could potentially strengthen and improve our approach to countering illegal logging. As has been acknowledged by Minister Watt, this particular bill gives expression to important improvements identified as part of those previous reviews. We're glad that the Labor Party has adopted that approach and has continued with the direction that had been established for them by the coalition.

All of that said, there are a few things associated with Labor's execution of this approach that we think need further scrutiny. The first is that we would obviously like some more information from the government, and in a reasonable time frame, about how the content of each of the proposed new regulations and rules might look. We won't be in a position to understand all of the detail and the likely impacts that flow from this bill until we can see those changes more specifically.

Of course, when it's the Labor Party and forestry involved, our nervousness about this kind of situation necessarily grows exponentially. That's because Labor has historically made so many bad decisions and so many false promises to Australian forestry workers and their families. Foremost among these have been the disastrous decisions—involving many broken promises, I might add—by the state Labor governments of Victoria and Western Australia to end native forest harvesting from the beginning of this year.

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That has not only decimated jobs but it's also a disaster for the environment. At a time when demand for timber in Australia is continuing to accelerate, we do not support the policy position of those two state Labor governments or, might I add, of the Greens and the teals in this regard. Their approach of trying to eliminate even the small amount of native timber harvesting activity that remains here will not only continue to harm Australia socially and economically by triggering mass job losses but it will also substantially increase our importation and use of timber from countries with weaker environmental regulations, including those where tropical rainforests are logged unsustainably and illegally. Not to mention the further devastating impact this will have on timber towns and communities.

During this parliamentary term, Labor has made some other really bad decisions in forestry, and the federal forestry minister has also completely caved in to the federal environment minister time and time again. Alarmingly, he has even stood idly by as the environment minister has instructed her department to rewrite the relevant laws in the EPBC Act, to rip up the regional forestry agreement system that has operated successfully and provided certainty in Australia—for both industry and environmental advocates alike—for around 25 years. In regard to native forestry, that system has imposed very significant prohibitions on the level of native forestry harvesting that occurs across Australia. More specifically, there are around 132 million hectares of native forest area in Australia, and only 0.06 per cent of this area is harvested annually. That's the equivalent of six trees out of every 10,000. This comparatively very low level of harvesting means that Australia now already imports more than $5½ billion of wood products annually, and that figure is continuing to soar. A 2022 Forest & Wood Products Australia study even found that, without significant changes to the status quo, Australia's reliance on imported timber will likely further surge and potentially even double by 2050. This is made worse by the fact that this study was also written before the Victorian government decided, in May of 2023, to bring forward its native forestry ban by six years, from 2030 to 2024.

During this term of parliament, the environment minister has also noticeably failed to back in the Prime Minister's explicit pre-election promise to Tasmanians to not end native forestry. In fact, she even appeared as the keynote speaker at an event at last year's ALP National Conference that was called 'ending native forest logging'. The government is also shamefully hiding the details of exactly how far the minister intends to go in rewriting the relevant laws, even after two years in office. We assume that the Labor Environment Action Network and the far left of the Labor Party have been told what will be done and what the environment minister's secret plan is. But every other Australian will be left on tenterhooks until the next time the Labor Party is elected to government—whenever that might be.

In relation to this bill more specifically, we have heard from stakeholders that not all parts of the forestry sector are fully in agreement with it. That includes feedback that they have not been properly consulted and that, in some cases, their representations have actually been ignored. There are also some arguments being mounted by them about a likely substantial increase in red tape and the potential practical unworkability of at least some of the new arrangements. Indeed, there are a range of points of contention that we think warrant at least some further examination.

It is on that basis that we will allow this bill to pass the House of Representatives, but we also suggest that it should be referred to a short Senate committee inquiry. This is not to thwart nor to block the passage of this legislation. Indeed, we strongly suspect that anyone who is prepared to voice public criticism of this new legislation and/or the process that has led to it in such a Senate inquiry may also choose to criticise the coalition, not just the Labor Party. Our intent in calling for a short Senate inquiry is so that we can genuinely understand, right across the parliament, whether there might still be further amendments to the bill worth making.

The bill does deliver some important changes, and the philosophy behind it, if you like, is right. The coalition hopes that, if there is further work that can be done to improve the bill's practical operation and it's workability, the government will be open to it.

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