Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Parry, who is an excellent senator from my home state of Tasmania and who has a longstanding commitment to balancing the needs of conservation with those of two of Australia’s and indeed Tasmania’s important industries, fishing and forestry. Mr President, it is with real enthusiasm that I take on this portfolio—a portfolio which, as you know, has crucial relevance to our home state of Tasmania. The Howard government has a proud record of successfully balancing conservation with jobs, a record in fact which has no parallel, thanks to the work of my predecessor.

As a government we are interested in ensuring that our crucial fishing and forest industries prosper for generations to come, while at the same time ensuring that our environment is properly managed. The government is committed to a sustainable and profitable fishing industry in this country. This approach was typified by the attitude of my predecessor, Senator Ian Macdonald, who late last year announced the $220 million Securing Our Fishing Future package, which not only ensures the sustainability of our fisheries but will help those fishers who wish to leave the industry to do so with pride and dignity.

Similarly, the Howard government has an unparalleled record of balancing conservation with jobs and the human need for timber resources. This approach was shown in our 2004 Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement, which saved the jobs of 10,000 timber workers in Tasmania while simultaneously protecting an extra 180,000 hectares of forest. As a result, Tasmania now has some 50 per cent of its landmass protected from logging and an amazing 100 million trees protected from harvesting, together with a job-rich and vibrant forest sector.

I was asked about alternative approaches. There are two. The first is that of the Australian Greens, which is not to balance conservation and jobs; it is simply to clear-fell tens of thousands of forestry related jobs in this country—hardly a balanced approach, particularly when the alternative source of timber is from clear-felling tropical rainforests in south-east Asia in a totally uncontrolled way. But the Greens have just recently changed, albeit marginally, their kooky policy on drugs, so we live in hope that they might also do it in the area of forestry.

The second approach is that of the Labor Party. We recall Mr Latham’s approach—or was it Senator Brown’s or indeed Senator Faulkner’s approach? Labor’s approach at the last election was the reason they did so very poorly at the ballot box. I note as an aside that today Premier Lennon is now trying to trip into the forests, hand in hand with Senator Brown, on the issue of Recherche Bay. It appears that Labor has not learnt the lessons of history.

Labor does not, in its policy platform, commit to the regional forest agreements around this country. We have the Labor Party betwixt and between—between Mr Ferguson and Mr Albanese, you would not know where the Labor Party stood. And now you have the spectre of even the Tasmanian Labor Party doing financial deals with the Greens, and you have the spectre of another Green-Labor accord in Tasmania. Just as the Tasmanian people punished Mr Latham, the Labor Party and the Greens, so too will they punish Mr Lennon and the Greens at the next state election.