Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to join with my colleagues Senator Watson, Senator O’Brien and, I know, all other senators who have the interests of Australia and Australia’s forestry industry at heart in supporting 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 today. I endorse entirely the comments by Senator Watson and I endorse the positive comments by Senator O’Brien.

I want to speak on this legislation simply to acknowledge those people in the industry who have put so much blood, sweat, tears, enthusiasm and effort into getting this proposal to where it is today. I mention particularly the members of the Forest and Wood Products Council who, over many years, have struggled to ensure that full industry support was obtained for this proposal. I want to mention, in no particular order, the very fine work done in this matter by Mr Nick Roberts—then a chief executive of Weyerhaeuser and now, as I understand it, following a chance meeting I had with him in Sydney last week, working for my namesake in Sydney, Ian Macdonald, the agricultural minister in the New South Wales government. Nick was one of those who led the charge along with Ms Kate Carnell, who was then the Executive Director of the National Association of Forest Industries; Neil Fisher, the CEO of A3P; Greg McCormack, the President of NAFI; and people like Rob Lord from Norske Skog and Warwick Ragg.

Trevor Smith from the CFMEU, who did a lot of work in those early days, and more recently my good friend and genuine supporter of the forest industries Michael O’Connor from the CFMEU, have played a very significant part in ensuring that this particular positive piece of legislation gets to the table. I want to mention as well Timber Communities Australia; Jill Lewis and Kersten Gentle, both of whom made a very significant contribution to the hard work that was needed; Colin Shipard from the Australian Forest Contractors Association; Clive Dossetor from the Timber Merchants Association; recently Mrs Catherine Murphy, now the CEO of NAFI; and Doug Head, now the President of NAFI but in those earlier days a member of the Forest and Wood Products Council, who added his considerable support and standing to this piece of legislation.

Regrettably, Senator O’Brien could not help himself; he had to try to find some fault with this legislation. It is unfortunate, because I know Senator O’Brien supports it and has supported it for a long time, but he does not understand. If, perchance, he ever were in the situation where he was a minister in a government, he would understand that things take some time to put together, particularly when you are dealing with something as complex as this particular issue. Senator O’Brien is right: this thought was as much a government initiative as an industry initiative; it was a drawing together of thoughts by the government and the industry that at each election they had to face criticism, stupidity and hypocrisy, particularly from the Greens political party, about forestry. Anyone who knows anything about the forestry industry will understand that the forestry industry, particularly in Australia, is one of the most sustainable, one of the most environmentally friendly industries going. But each year the industry has to put up with these fraudulent campaigns from the Greens political party about forestry.

The Greens political party would have Australia source all of its forest and wood products from forests around the world that are nowhere near as sustainable as Australia’s forestry management is. I can never understand—except to confirm that the Greens’ opposition is purely left-wing political rather than environmental—why the Greens would want us to take forest products from the Solomons, from Papua New Guinea, from many other places around the world that do rape and pillage their forests in preference to getting them from Australia, which has the most sustainable forestry management regime anywhere in the world. It is hypocrisy and absolutely fraudulent behaviour of the Greens in trying—and they are still trying, even today—to destroy this very sustainable industry for Australia that provides so much resource for our country. It also provides so many jobs and so much economic activity in rural and regional Australia, a part of Australia that, over the years, has declined in importance and declined in opportunities for employment. This industry brings back those opportunities and is a great industry for those of us who live in rural and regional Australia.

This initiative of the government and the industry, if I can say it was a joint initiative, is aimed at promoting the obvious good aspects of forestry—and that is all of them—and ensuring that Australians can understand the hypocrisy and fraudulence of the campaigns that the Greens mount every year against this very worthwhile industry. There is a good story to tell, but it is always easy for the Greens to get the ear of lazy journalists and to rubbish a very sustainable and productive industry. The industry and the government understood that the industry needs to be in a position to explain the benefits of forestry in a far better and more sustainable way than the industry has been able to do in the past. And so this idea came up at the Forest and Wood Products Council meetings back in 2002 and 2003, and the long process to bring it to fruition then started.

Senator O’Brien would have you believe that you have a talk about it one day and introduce legislation the next. Quite clearly, and unfortunately, Senator O’Brien does not understand the processes. The people who I mentioned earlier put a hell of a lot of work into getting this particular initiative to where it is. It had to fit in within the principles of research and development, but it also had to involve the industry and additional levies, and that required enormous amounts of consultation with the industry. I do not like to highlight this, but I point out that even with the greatest goodwill and the enthusiastic support of all of the industry leaders, the ballot that was required before this legislation came into being was supported by only 72 per cent of the industry people entitled to vote. I know from those early days that there were concerns, particularly amongst smaller organisations, about the cost of additional levies. All of that had to be gone through so very carefully.

The industry leaders took that upon themselves; it was not the government doing it. The industry had to go around painstakingly, and I know some of those people I mentioned travelled the length and breadth of Australia meeting with small organisations, meeting with businesses, explaining it, showing PowerPoint presentations, doing a hell of a lot of work. We talk about it today, but we cannot really understand the effort and toil that those industry leaders put into getting the support that was needed and then getting it just right, which they did, over a period of time. I congratulate Senator Abetz on getting this legislation to the parliament at this time. Senator O’Brien says someone told him something at estimates. I would point out though to Senator O’Brien that even to go through the parliamentary process, it has had to go to the Scrutiny of Bills Committee, it has had to go to the Senate committee—these things do take time, and they have to be done correctly. I am a bit saddened that Senator O’Brien had to find some way to try to differentiate himself from the government, so he embarked upon this quite silly attack on the time taken. The time taken was necessary to get it right. It is not an easy thing to do; it is complex. But it is here today and I am delighted to see that. I do want to place on record the efforts of all those people I mentioned earlier in getting it to this particular point.

Senator O’Brien also had to throw in some comments, along with his leader’s message for the day, I guess it was, about greenhouse gas emissions and the government’s approach to it. As has been pointed out before, time and again, the Howard government was the first government, I think, in the world to set up a greenhouse office, back in 1996.