Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I first say that Labor welcomes the establishment of a forestry industry services company to undertake both research and development as well as marketing and promotion on behalf of the forestry industry. I want to talk about the length of time that the minister has taken to bring a bill to establish the Forest and Wood Products Australia company to this parliament. I also want to talk about the need to amend the Forestry Marketing and Research and Development Services Bill 2007 and the Forestry Marketing and Research and Development Services (Transitional and Consequential Provisions) Bill 2007 to ensure that there is an appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny for Forest and Wood Products Australia in the context of this legislation and consistent with other legislation. I also want to discuss the fact that, frankly, the Senate committee inquiry into this legislation has absolutely revealed that this government has not developed the issues of water, carbon and climate change into the broader agenda for the forest industry.

It has taken the government an extraordinary period of time to bring a bill to this parliament to establish the company Forest and Wood Products Australia. The Forest and Wood Products Council established a steering committee in late 2002 to develop options for developing a new entity that could deliver both research and development as well as marketing and promotion. In September 2003, the steering committee released the Australian Forest and Wood Products Industry: Options for reform report, which first proposed establishing Forest and Wood Products Australia. That was in September 2003. We are approaching four years since that report was issued.

The industry has wanted to establish marketing and promotion as a key component of a new body to fill a long-overlooked gap. The forest industry identified that there is a perception that wood’s real environmental values are being largely overlooked by consumers. I believe there is a need to promote the inherent natural properties of wood products, such as the recycling potential, the sustainability of production, positive greenhouse impacts and potential to contribute to biodiversity and mitigation of environmental problems such as salinity. These concerns were brought to the attention of this government five years ago. Industry developed a proposal to establish Forest and Wood Products Australia four years ago. Only now, in what could be the last parliamentary session before an election—although I think we might have another couple of sessions in this parliament—does the government bring a bill forward which would meet the concerns the industry identified years ago.

If the government were serious about marketing and promotion for the forest industry, they would have finalised this bill years ago. If Minister Abetz were serious about marketing and promotion for the forest industry, he would have made this a priority when he became a minister. During Senate estimates in February, and again in the budget estimates round which has recently passed, Minister Abetz bemoaned the need to conduct more promotion of the positives of the forest industry. The minister should have been holding a mirror in front of himself as he talked about the need for forest industry promotion, because he should have been having a good hard look at himself to see who has been the real culprit in preventing the necessary levels of promotion for the forest industry. It has been a clear display of negligence by the government that this bill was not put before the parliament some time before this session of parliament. This bill has clearly been in contemplation for a very long time.

Think about the time that it has taken to bring this bill to the parliament. According to the information I recall from the Senate inquiry into this bill, the bill was drafted in February. So not only did it take a long time to reach the point where the government and the minister decided to promulgate legislation, but the legislation was prepared in February. It is now June, so it has taken from February to June to get to this point where we no doubt will pass this legislation in some form today. But since that time one wonders what reflection there has been on this legislation and other forms of this legislation that apply to other industry bodies which have been referred to in relation to the principles that underpin the various components of this package, including the statutory funding agreement.

Labor wants this bill to be consistent with other forms of legislation and we believe that this bill needs to be amended to improve the accountability to the parliament. I stress ‘accountability to the parliament’ because that is the area in which this bill is deficient. We do fully support an industry services body, as set out in this bill, but the bill must contain adequate accountability provisions to the parliament. This bill will establish arrangements in its unamended form that do not hold the proposed industry services body or the minister sufficiently accountable to the parliament for the expenditure of levy and taxpayer funds. The accountability requirements that the government established for the dairy industry services body, Dairy Australia, provides a benchmark for accountability. The amendment that Labor put forward for that legislation, which was accepted by the government, is in fact the template we are using in this regard and will replicate the government’s own benchmark in accountability that was developed for the dairy industry.

The amendment involves inserting two additional provisions into the legislation. First is a provision that, within 14 days of lodging their annual report, the industry body must give the minister a copy of the report. The minister must table this report to each house of parliament within 14 days of the report being given to the minister and, additional to other requirements under the Corporations Act 2001, the annual report must include the amount of forest service payments and matching payments made to the industry services body, the amount of those payments that were spent and outcomes as measured against objectives that apply in relation to the industry services body.

The second additional provision of Labor’s amendment involves other reporting requirements. It requires that the minister, as soon as practical after the holding of each annual general meeting of the industry services body, cause to be tabled in each house of parliament a report on the year ending 30 June before the holding of that meeting. The report must include a statement as to the amount of charges imposed under section 2 of schedule 7, or section 2 of schedule 8, of the Primary Industries (Customs) Charges Act 1999 and it must be received by the Commonwealth on or after that time. A statement as to the amounts of levy imposed under those provisions must be received by the Commonwealth on or after the transfer time. It also requires a statement as to the amounts of levy imposed under regulations made for the purposes of schedule 27 of the Primary Industries (Excise) Levies Act 1999,  received by the Commonwealth on or after the transfer time; and a statement as to whether the minister is satisfied, on the basis of information provided by the industry services body, that the spending of forest service payments and matching payments complies with the funding contract and, if the minister is not satisfied, detail as to why the minister is not satisfied that the spending complies.

These are very fundamental provisions. It is all well and good for the industry services body to have contractual arrangements with the executive of the parliament or the government. It is a serious matter that levy payments in this legislation—in effect, a form of taxation upon industry—are not subject in an effective way to the scrutiny of parliament. I say again: these are measures which the government has included in other similar pieces of legislation—and I cite the dairy industry legislation, where the appropriate Dairy Produce Act provisions were included in the Dairy Industry Service Reform Bill 2003. These provisions are replicated in amendments which were accepted by the government in relation to that legislation. They are reporting requirements which the government was happy to bring forward, and Labor urges the government and the minor parties to support this amendment to ensure that there is an appropriate level of parliamentary oversight established for Forest and Wood Products Australia.

In the context of this legislation, and particularly in the area of research for this industry, this government has failed to incorporate the forest industry into the broader agenda of carbon, water and climate change that is going to be a future driver for the forest industry. During the committee inquiry into this bill, the current Forest and Wood Products Research and Development Corporation provided an extensive list of projects that they are undertaking. This list represents extensive necessary work to further advance the interests of the forest industry in Australia. But, frankly, the government has allowed a yawning gap to emerge for the future of the forest industry. The government has failed to develop any framework for the forest industry to establish its links with the issues of water for this nation, carbon and carbon sequestration, and the climate change future Australia will need to tackle.

During the recent budget estimates, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry indicated that it had received no directions on how to address these most important issues for the future of forestry. The department indicated that it was not looking into how forestry would fit into any future carbon trading scheme. It was also clear from the recent budget estimates that the department was not being asked by government to address what the effect of water use will be on the forest industry. The department has not been tasked by the government to address how carbon absorption by forests will fit into the future of climate change in Australia. In addition, the government has failed to provide any leadership, therefore, to the forest industry’s responses to the issues of water and water use in Australia, to carbon and carbon sequestration and to the general climate change picture.

I have to say that that is not all that surprising, considering that the government has been a bastion of climate change scepticism and is a government which is causing Australia—and, in this case, the Australian forest industry—to be left behind on issues which will be the necessary responses to climate change. That is the greatest shame of all in relation to this industry, which I know is keen to be involved and has not seen the government leading it in the directions that are necessary to give it the best opportunities to respond to the challenges that those issues present.

In summary, Labor believes that this bill will provide the forest industry with additional capacity to market and promote its products. This is a step forward that the industry identified in 2002 as being necessary for the future of the industry, but it has taken the government the best part of five years to take steps to address this issue. It has taken five years from when the industry identified problems around marketing and promotion for the government to take steps to address the issue. In addition, the government has failed to put the future of carbon, water and climate change at the centre of its thinking for the future of the forest industry. This, frankly, is a failure of leadership and a demonstration that the government has been caught in its own web of climate change scepticism, which rendered it incapable of delivering the leadership that this industry needed in these important areas.

I say again that we believe this bill does not contain the necessary reporting requirements back to this parliament. We seek to address that issue by the amendment circulated in the chamber in my name—which, I say again, replicates what the government has already established as a benchmark in the dairy industry services body, which has been approved in this chamber—with the support of the government. I urge the government and others to support Labor’s amendment, lest we end up with inadequacies which we will regret in the future in relation to the accountability of a body that will receive the benefit of not only levies collected from industry but also taxpayer funds in the form of matching contributions from government regarding this and other legislation of this parliament.