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

It was with great pleasure I had the opportunity to listen to my friend the member for Lyons make his contribution because he is somewhat of a lonely voice of sanity in his own party room when it comes to the sustainable native hardwood timber industry in this nation. There were days in the past where the views of the member for Lyons were consistently held across the entire Labor Party room—but, sadly, those days have long since passed. Unfortunately for him, he is surrounded by colleagues who have actively campaigned for and supported the closure of hardwood timber industries in states like Western Australia and Victoria. I commend the member for Lyons for his contribution and, like him, extend my personal gratitude to the men and women in the Australian hardwood native timber industry who have worked so hard over generations to help create some of the wealth we've enjoyed in our country towns and in our cities. I despair for the way they have been treated by members of the Australian Labor Party in Victoria and Western Australia.

I acknowledge this legislation before us today, the Illegal Logging Prohibition Amendment (Strengthening Measures to Prevent Illegal Timber Trade) Bill 2024, takes some practical steps to protect foreign countries from illegal logging and protect the Australian market—which is something I'm very interested in. But, at the same time, it is impossible to make a speech here today in relation to this bill and not reflect on the abject failure in our own country of the Labor Party, the Greens and the teals to even try to understand the native hardwood timber industry. I also need to demonstrate how their constant undermining of hardworking Australians is having devastating social, economic, environmental and cultural impacts right across our nation but particularly in my electorate of Gippsland.

People actually die as a result of poorly managed public forests. Wildlife dies in extreme fire events when we don't manage our forests well. Today in Victoria, lives are at greater risk now because of poor forest-management decisions, and livelihoods have already been destroyed because of poor public policy and zealots within the government department that was meant to administer a sustainable, world-class timber industry in my state. We have thrown away, in Victoria, a world-class sustainable industry which was 100 per cent renewable. By law in the Victorian forest sector, you had to replant or reseed timber after it had been harvested. Yet, now we have left ourselves exposed to more illegal timber in this country as a direct result of the state Labor government's decision and the federal Labor Party's failure to stand up for one blue-collar worker in my state.

Country communities have been decimated. They are being torn apart because of decisions made by people who don't live in those towns and, in fact, have no interest in living in those towns, but feel they have the right to tell people in those towns what jobs they can and can't have. I've seen some stupid decisions in my political life, but the Victorian government's decision to ban the harvesting of all native hardwood timber was both illogical and bloody-minded. It wins the prize for extreme incompetence. This world-class sector has been under constant attack from activists in the judicial system, from the environmental extremists and from the cowards in elected office who are meant to protect the blue-collar workers in the Labor Party and the Greens are the Teals, who don't want to understand the facts about this industry.

Deputy Speaker Chesters, I know you are a practical, reasonable person and you would instinctively understand this: when it comes to hardwood timber, there are two choices when it comes to timber—you use your own wood or you use someone else's. The demand for hardwood timber isn't going away. The previous speaker made that very clear—demand for hardwood timber isn't going away. Sure, pine plantations can do some of the work, and structural work, with housing, but hardwood timber it is still going to be an essential part of our economy going forward. You either use your own wood, your own timber and your own forests in a sustainable way or you use someone else's. In Australia today we already import $5½ billion worth of wood products. We already have a trade deficit in timber products. As this legislation reflects, and as the agencies would fully acknowledge, it is incredibly difficult to impose Australia's environmental standards on other countries, to detect illegal activity and to investigate, and we are taking timber from countries which have poor environmental standards in the first place. Again, you can either use your own wood in an environmentally sustainable way, or you can rely on imported wood, over which you have almost no control.

Just look around this building—the member for Lyons reflected on this as well. Just look around this building or any public building or our own homes. Here in Parliament House the timber walls that surround the two levels of the entry hall are made from a variety of timbers—limed white birch, brush box and jarrah. The Speaker's chair in the House of Representatives was made by craftsman David Upfill-Brown from solid and veneer grey box. We could have gone down to Bunnings and got an imported Chinese camping chair, but we decided to use sustainable hardwood timber instead. Thank God the people who designed this building supported the native hardwood timber industry in this country! The Speaker's chair is made from Australian hardwood.

The industry in my community, despite the cuts to using their own native timber in our own region, still provide structural timber, which is used for homes, high-grade wood for furniture, and wood for musical instruments. Surely, our friends in the Greens and the Teals can at least agree that hardwood timber used for musical instruments is a worthwhile cause. That was timber that used to be harvested in my electorate, as well as a range of other everyday and essential products. You take your kids to basketball or gymnastics on a hardwood floor. That hasn't come from a pine plantation; that has come from sustainably harvested Australian hardwood timber. Going forward, I'm not sure where we're going to get that timber from, because right now in Victoria we're already raiding other states. Timber is coming from Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania and being processed in Victoria. Timber's even coming from foreign countries to be processed in Victoria, value-added in my electorate and sold in the Melbourne market.

The most ridiculous aspect of this whole debate is that we already had an established system of reserves in place to ensure that our biodiversity, our long-term environmental needs and our obligations to future generations were being met. Just six per cent of the total area of native forest in Victoria was available for possible harvest. That left 94 per cent of Victoria's natural forest preserved in national parks and in high-conservation-value areas. That was a world-class conservation approach and a balanced approach to the hardwood timber industry in our state.

I just want to correct some of the rhetoric that you hear in this place—and it stems from ignorance, but I just want to correct it. People like to equate the hardwood timber industry in Victoria and across Australia with terms like 'deforestation' or 'land clearing'. Deputy Speaker Chesters, you and I both know that is simply not true. The sustainably managed native hardwood timber industry involves regeneration and replanting for future generations to sustainably yield that timber in decades to come. This is not land clearing or deforestation. It is sustainably managing a public reserve to ensure that future generations will also have access to incredible Australian hardwood timber.

Victoria was leading the way in making sure that the timber it was harvesting was being used for more high-value purposes than it had ever been in the past. The modern timber mill—and I'd invite anyone listening who hasn't had the opportunity to visit a modern timber mill to take the opportunity when they get the chance—is not an old sawbench with blokes in blue singlets who are missing a couple of fingers doing a very dangerous task, trying to get every last little stick out of the bush. The modern timber mill is highly technical—computerised to a large extent—turning very small bits of hardwood timber into highly valuable structural-grade products, which are in massive demand across the nation.

Future generations would benefit from a change of policy in Victoria and Western Australia to allow a sustainable hardwood timber industry to continue, and I call on everyone in this place to be vigilant to the extremists on the crossbench and to some of the Labor Party, who want to shut down the entire Australian hardwood timber industry, rely entirely on imported products and leave us exposed to being part of the illegal trade in timber, which is at the very core of the bill before the House today.

'Lock it up and leave it' is not a forestry policy; it's a recipe for disaster. We have seen this in Victoria so many times. In the Black Summer bushfires, which roared through my electorate, every one of those fires started on public land. There were lightning strikes in dry conditions in poorly maintained public forests. These were not arsonists. These were not accidents with angle grinders or someone making a mistake on a farm somewhere. These were fires that were initiated on public land. They roared across the interface of public land and private land and caused massive damage, including the loss of lives.

We need active forest management in our regional communities. Active forest management allows for a range of uses, including sustainable native hardwood timber, ecotourism, four-wheel driving, prospecting and camping. The skills of the people involved in the timber industry are incredibly important for keeping my community safe not only in times of disaster—when the fire's actually burning—but also in maintaining the logging tracks and access for everyone else to get out there and enjoy the bush. We want people in the bush. People who go out in the forests actually appreciate the biodiversity and the conservation values of those areas, and they respect the fact that you can sustainably harvest some timber and also leave large areas of conservation for the wildlife and their habitat and improve the biodiversity of that region.

Just on that biodiversity point, I have to make this point: does anyone seriously believe that a monoculture pine plantation or a monoculture blue gum plantation of hardwood achieve a better biodiversity outcome than a sustainably managed, mixed species forest on public land, harvested on a 50-, 60- or 70-year rotational basis? It is madness to think that plantations are the sole answer to our future timber industry needs, and it's madness to then try to claim that there are biodiversity benefits from that model in comparison with mixed-species forests on public land.

What concerns me the most is that there are members opposite who used to stand up for blue-collar workers. They used to say that they supported the timber industry. But they've abandoned them in their time of need. Even this Prime Minister, who before the election said he supported the hardwood timber industry, has specifically excluded native timber hardwood businesses from accessing the National Reconstruction Fund—specifically excluded the native hardwood timber industry from that fund in a dirty deal done with the Australian Greens. Again, I stress that in the middle of a housing affordability and timber-supply-chain crisis, there are two choices with timber products: use your own, grown here in a sustainably managed way, or buy it from somewhere else. The Teals led pledge to end native hardwood timber harvesting across Australia is an incredibly foolhardy commitment, but it's coming from a place of ignorance and also a place of extreme privilege. The Teals and the Greens, in total area of electoral representation in this parliament, actually represent 1,100 square kilometres in total. The Liberals and Nationals represent 5½ million square kilometres. We've had a gutful in country Victoria and regional Australia more broadly of being told which jobs we can and can't have by people who have no intention of living alongside us—who lived in their privileged suburbs. For example: in the leafy suburb of Glen Iris, the average household income is $2,409 a week. And the member for Kooyong, Monique Ryan, is spearheading the charge to destroy the timber industry across the nation. The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, has Docklands in his seat. It has an average weekly income of $957, and in Caulfield, held by Labor's Josh Burnes, the average is $2,143. All three of those members actively campaigned to end the hardwood timber industry in my community. In Orbost, the town most impacted by the timber industry closure, the average household income is $785. The most privileged people in this country and the most privileged people in this building are telling some of the poorest Australians what jobs they can and can't have.

So in making my comments here today I want to highlight that Australia has a highly developed system of reserves and national parks already in place which can never be harvested. The plantation sector, while part of the solution, is not capable of meeting the demand in the foreseeable future. We need to stand up and fight to make sure we can secure the future of a sustainable native hardwood timber industry in this country and protect the jobs of the people who have worked so hard to care for their families in those communities.

Sitting suspended from 12:57 to 15:59

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