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

Yes, it appeared there this week—some months after the statement, because I goaded the minister at estimates about the fact that it was not on his website. He excused the action by saying that he did not want to trouble his department on the weekend to put it on the website. It would be interesting to see how many press releases that were issued then now appear on the website. I am certain the officers would be offended if it were suggested that they did not work on weekends, because I know that they do.

Senator Abetz in that press release pressed his claims that Labor’s platform represented a resurrection of Mark Latham’s Tasmanian forest policy. As I said, it is a press release that appeared on the Liberal Party website. In that press release, Senator Abetz said:

... Labor’s commitment to “protect at least 60 per cent of existing old growth forest (increasing to 100 per cent for rare and depleted old growth), and 90 per cent or more of high quality wilderness” (Draft National Platform, 91) will inevitably result in more forest lock-ups.

I was very surprised that Senator Abetz did not recognise the figures that he quoted. Those figures appear not only in Labor’s platform but also on—guess what?—the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry website—the website of his own department.

Under the heading ‘Nationally agreed reserve criteria’, which the website goes on to explain are also known as the JANIS criteria, are the following nationally agreed targets for the conservation of ecosystems:

• 15 per cent of the pre-1750 distribution of each forest type
• 60 per cent of the existing distribution of each forest type if vulnerable
• 60 per cent of the existing old-growth forest—

this is from the minister’s department’s website—

• 90 per cent, or more, of high quality wilderness forests, and
• all remaining occurrences of rare and endangered forest ecosystems including rare old-growth.

If Labor’s platform recites those words and that means that they have resurrected Mr Latham’s forest policy, does that mean that so has the minister’s own department and therefore his own government? The facts have never got in the way of this minister presenting an argument.

The figures quoted by Senator Abetz from Labor’s platform represent nationally agreed targets for conservation, and the figures that Senator Abetz used to attack Labor are in fact the government’s own targets, adopted in regional forest agreements for various regions, signed by the Prime Minister. So it is little wonder that Senator Abetz chose not to put this press release on his ministerial website, because it so directly contradicts the very argument that he has been making. And, as I said, he came up with a lame excuse for the reason that it was not on his ministerial website: because it was released on a Sunday.

This is a minister who is particularly good at selectively quoting Labor’s platform. In his press release, he conveniently left out a passage of the platform that talked about all of those goals which, as I say, appear on the departmental website. Our platform went on to say:

This goal will be achieved through the Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) process. RFA outcomes will vary from region to region in response to variations in community expectations and environmental concerns.

And, in the budget estimates, guess what? The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry had to acknowledge that this statement from Labor’s platform is consistent with the regional forest agreements, the very agreements that the Prime Minister has signed, the very agreements that this government has signed up to, the very agreements which Labor have committed to support in our platform. As I said, this is a minister who never lets the facts get in the way of a good story. He has been left in this regard without a leg to stand on.

In relation to the issues around this particular legislation, the minister would have us believe that, in the near five years that have elapsed since it was proposed that the process encapsulated in this legislation be given effect, the government has expeditiously done all things necessary to get us to this point. Frankly, I took the minister’s explanation for the delay as a reflection on the previous minister, Senator Ian Macdonald, who made a contribution. Frankly, I would have thought that the minister was suggesting that, if there was a delay, it was perhaps the responsibility of his predecessor, not himself.