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

Well, I don’t know about mud—but certainly aluminium, concrete and steel, which have enormous greenhouse gas emissions. The Greens would rather you build with them than with the most sustainable product you can get, and that is native forest and wood products. They would have us buy paper made of pulp from the countries in the world that simply ravage their forests. Here in Australia we manage them sustainably. We need paper. The Greens use as much paper if not more than anyone else, but they want to get it from countries whose forests are just pillaged and ravaged, rather than from Australia, which, as I say, has one of the best if not the best forest management regime anywhere in the world.

Perhaps this legislation should not have been necessary, but, because of the easy message to sell, picked up, as I say, by lazy journalists who find these faults with the forest industries, it is necessary for the industry—not governments, and I make that clear; it is important for the industry itself—to fund and run education campaigns, and this legislation will help in that way.

I do not want to delay the Senate. I am delighted that this legislation is receiving bipartisan support. Senator O’Brien, in the committee hearing, mentioned that it did not have sufficient accountability—well, as I am sure Senator Abetz will elaborate on, what we followed here was the egg industry R&D arrangement, and this is really a template for the future. There is all the necessary accountability there, and the industry itself of course will ensure that it is accountable to itself for the additional funds that the industry will be putting in.

Congratulations to Senator Abetz and his department. I know the department has put in an enormous amount of work over many years on this. I have mentioned this twice before and I want to mention it again: I particularly want to recognise the efforts of all those industry leaders who have worked so hard to get this particular proposal to where it is today. Like my colleagues I commend the legislation to the Senate.