Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I turn to the substantive issue, I just want to concur with the member for Macnamara and his fine words that ask the Prime Minister to either start leading or resign immediately.

When you've had a difficult week like this one has been, and continues to be for those who work in this place, the business of politics can be quite dispiriting. The important work we do here in parliament can seem devalued, but discussing important and considerable pieces of work such as the report that we have before us today is an important reminder of the important work that does happen in this place. It reminds us that, apart from anything else, the work of this parliament and the people who work here is valued. I want to put on the record my thanks to all the staff here at Parliament House and, in particular, in relation to the tabling of this report, those who work in the secretariat and assisted us to finalise this report and make good recommendations.

It is a pleasure to rise and speak on this report. I was very proud to participate in the work of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture and Water Resources to produce it. Aussie logs for Aussie jobs is a product of an inquiry which began in June last year. We held five public hearings and took 31 separate submissions. We took submissions from experts, industry and government agencies at the state and federal level. The process of our inquiry and report preparation was ably chaired by the member for O'Connor and even more ably co-chaired by my friend, the member for Lyons. They work well together—the chair and deputy chair.

The title of our report, Aussie logs for Aussie jobs, is absolutely apt. Through our inquiry, we sought to find how we could achieve precisely what the title conveys. How can we use our own natural resources to create jobs here in Australia? How can we expand the sustainable timber industry to expand employment? When we are discussing the forestry industry in Australia, we are talking about an industry with considerable economic impact. The forest products industry has an annual turnover of $24 billion and contributes 0.5 per cent to Australia's GDP. The Bureau of Statistics tells us that, in the year 2017-18, there were 76,200 people employed in the forest products and forest manufacturing industries. Breaking that figure down, that means jobs in logging, sawmilling, paper and converted paper products. That's significant.

The Australian Forest Products Association told us that they estimate that around another 100,000 people are supported by the economic activity generated by the timber industry. We've seen as well that the impact of this industry is disproportionately felt in regional areas of Australia, like the one that I represent in the far north. In the Northern Territory, the forestry industry employs only 170 people at this stage, but there's clearly room for us to grow this figure, and I'll return to this in due course.

The backbone of the timber industry is the national plantation estate. It covers an area of 1.93 million hectares. To put that figure in perspective, forests overall cover 134 million hectares of Australia. That's 17 per cent of our landmass, and plantations make up only a small part of that. The forestry industry of the Northern Territory manages 42,000 hectares of plantation estate. The industry harvests each year $115 million worth of products for domestic and international markets. Altogether, the gross value of the forestry industry in the Northern Territory is $10 billion. It's fair to say that, despite the size of the economic impact of the industry and the breadth of the plantation estate, the timber industry in the Northern Territory could grow more, but it needs more support.

In 2016, the Forest Industry Advisory Council advised the federal government to establish forestry industry hubs in areas 'with varied, high-quality wood resources that are close to wood processors, pulp and paper mills or expert facilities.' The purpose of each hub is to bring together industry and different levels of government to plan and develop strategies to support the growth of the forestry industry in its respective regions. This includes considerations such as: identifying new plantation opportunities, adding value to existing processing and infrastructure assets, engaging in community participation, encouraging local mills to invest in expanding capacity and efficiency, and exploring opportunities for new product manufacturing.

The hub model is a good one. The government agreed as well and announced the creation of nine hubs. But these nine hubs that the government has committed to ignore some significant opportunities to further strengthen and expand the forestry industry. Our inquiry considered this, and our recommendations reflect the need to seize new opportunities. Indeed, the recommendation of greatest interest to me is recommendation 1:

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government establishes two additional Regional Forestry Hubs, in the north part of the Northern Territory—

That's the area that I represent, with the member for Lingiari—

and in south eastern New South Wales.

We came to this recommendation after engaging with industry groups and hearing from them about where we could facilitate industry growth. In particular, I'm grateful to the Forest Industry Association Northern Territory for their work with us on this question. On the opportunity of a regional forestry hub for the Northern Territory, the association told the inquiry:

A founding priority of the hub will be to establish a taskforce to analyse the factors that are limiting productivity and efficiency in the sector … The forestry hub will facilitate the Territory to achieve a CFI certification and will therefore allow the industry to participate in the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF).

There is already great work being done in the forestry industry in the Northern Territory. Last year, during another inquiry of this committee, which resulted in the report on growing Australian agriculture, I spoke to Mark Ashley, a general manager of the Tiwi Plantations Corporation. He told me about the Tiwi Plantation and how it is exporting 16 shiploads of timber to established global markets. When we spoke, he was also exploring interest from potential Indonesian markets.

Mark spoke to me about the significance of forestry as a major source of jobs and economic activity on the Tiwi Islands. Importantly, this means local jobs for local people through their harvesting operations. In 2019, forestry paid approximately $6.8 million in wages, including $2.3 million to employees on the Tiwis, making it a major commercial employer on the island. The plantation itself manages 32,000 hectares of Acacia pulpwood. The forestry product exported is primarily woodchips for pulp and bioenergy markets. The plantation includes woodchip processing and wharf facilities on Melville Island. There is an interest in replacing the pulpwood with hardwood to increase the yield and export value of the forestry product harvested from the Tiwi Islands.

The example of the Tiwi Plantations Corporation is a single example of the success of the forestry industry in the Northern Territory. The inclusion of a regional forestry hub in the territory will be a tremendous value-add for our industry. I'm excited about the prospect of expanding the Northern Territory forestry industry and the creation of new jobs for Territorians. I want to thank the executive of our Forest Industry Association Northern Territory, including Frank Miller, and also the work of Paul Burke. It's going to be great for the Territory moving forward: new jobs for Territorians in harvesting those logs.

I want to congratulate the chair and deputy chair of the committee for this report, and for really backing the Northern Territory forestry industry with recommending that a forestry hub be established in the Top End of Australia. It will be great for us to be able to harvest those Territory logs for Territory jobs.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whenever I'm in this place talking about the wood fibre industry, I like to start with a statistic, so that colleagues understand the scale and scope of this issue. It's hard to believe that Australia is a net importer of timber. I'll say it again: it's hard to believe, but Australia is a net importer of timber—or, more precisely, of wood fibre. In a nation as broad as ours, so blessed with natural resources, it is literally hard to believe.

I grew up in a timber town. I live in a timber town. I came to this place in 2013 and I spent 12 months embedding myself in the agripolitics of the federal parliament. At one point I stopped and reflected and said to myself: 'I hear a lot about farming. I hear a lot about farming production systems.' And that's quite right. It's quite right, in a nation like ours, with the diversity of agricultural products and our reliance on agricultural industries, that we spend a lot of our time discussing issues relevant to Australian farmers. But what I was struggling to come to terms with is that we spend almost no time talking about Australian forestry: about foresters and sawmillers, the people that take that fibre and turn it into value-added products. Over time, I'm pleased to say—not just because of my efforts, but because of the efforts of many members who represent timber communities like mine in this place—we have raised the voice of the Australian forest industry in parliament. A lot of credit goes to the members of parliament and the industry peaks who have achieved that. But, in the lead-up to the 2019 election, I was experiencing a deal of frustration in my electorate.

My electorate includes the communities of Mount Gambier and surrounds, which is a softwood hub. Pinus radiata is the timber we grow. It's the pine that goes into the timber frames of houses, but it is also used for other treatments. What I was experiencing was a situation where sawmillers, the downstream processors, weren't able to get access to sufficient logs to meet the demand. Instead, they were watching truck after truck after truck of viable sawlogs being transported to the port of Portland, the deep-sea, bulk seaport, 100 kilometres from Mount Gambier. You can imagine the frustration. I had sawmillers telling me that they had demand for sawn timber products and that they had the capacity to increase the number of people employed in that manufacturing sector but that they couldn't do it because they couldn't get access to the fibre—not because the fibre didn't exist, but because the fibre which was being grown in our community was being exported to be processed overseas.

I'm incredibly grateful to the Prime Minister, who at the time acknowledged my frustration and my concerns and who, as you heard from the member for Solomon, committed to a pre-election promise that, should we be elected, we would undertake an inquiry in relation to timber supply chains in this country. I remember at the time a number of the sawmillers in my electorate said, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on account of the fact that they were pretty confident we wouldn't win the 2019 election. Thankfully, at least for the purposes of this report, we did, and the report has been undertaken.

I'm not a member of the committee, but for my sins—and given my advocacy and, effectively, my demands that we undertake this work—the Prime Minister seconded me to the committee. I want to take this opportunity to say how much I appreciated and enjoyed my time serving on the committee for the purposes of this report. The chair and deputy chair, but in particular the chair, my good friend, the member for O'Connor, did a magnificent job. He did a significant amount of work, which included personal travel to timber communities, quite separate to committee travel, where he got a deep understanding of the issues at play. This report will go a long way towards addressing the concerns.

In 2019, when we made the commitment that we would undertake this inquiry, we thought we had a set of problems, and we did. Little did we know that, by the time we reported—as occurred yesterday in the other place—there would be a whole series of other problems. The bushfires that were experienced last summer have significantly impacted our softwood timber industry. It's a pain that I don't think we've fully grasped as a nation as yet, but it makes it doubly important that we understand the need to put more trees in the ground and that we put the right trees at the right scale in the right places for the right purpose. For me, the right purpose has always been Aussie jobs, so I'm really pleased not only that we have developed these recommendations but that the report is titled Aussie logs for Aussie jobs.

Unlike other processing facilities in the agriculture space, this isn't a crop that grows in 12 months. You can thin trees; you can achieve some of the fibre as the tree in the plantation is growing; but the reality is that this is a crop that takes around 33 years to grow. So when you talk about long-term planning, you understand the importance and need for it in this industry more than others. It needs the right government policy measures. It needs political will. It needs an understanding that we sacrifice, effectively, that land to this purpose, not just so we can grow the tree but, importantly—and this is the history of forest and the state development over our nation's history—for the downstream jobs. We grow the trees because we want to process them. That's where the real rubber hits the economic road.

I started by saying that it's hard to believe that we're net importers of timber in this country. I'm going to conclude with an observation. As hard as that is to believe, it's even harder to accept—which we have to at the moment—that unless we change the settings in this country as it relates to this industry, we are tracking in the wrong direction. We are net importers, and those terms of trade are going to continue to deteriorate, because that's the long-term trend we're on. We've got to change that. I want Australians processing Aussie fibre and Aussie logs in Aussie mills for Australian consumers.

In the time I've got left, can I just give a shout-out to sawmillers across the country. The HomeBuilder program has been a runaway success, if you just ask the minister. It has meant that we've seen gargantuan demand for building products. One of those areas that's seen unprecedented demand is timber framing. Right now there are sawmills all over the country that are working beyond capacity to meet that demand. I don't think people in these sawmills perhaps understand how important their role is to our national economy, but let me just send a thank you out there to them. Because without these timber frames we can't put these houses up. Without the frames going up, you can't employ the carpenter, the tiler, the plumber, the person selling the furniture and fixings, the carpet layer, the landscaper. You are so important right now to the economic recovery that's being driven through lots of sectors, but in particular the construction sector, and I want to take this opportunity to say thank you.

Sitting suspended from 11:18 to 16:00