Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I have been speaking for 1½ minutes of my 15 minutes in relation to this amendment, and I was simply indicating the Greens were a political irrelevancy because of their inconsistency on many issues, including this one.

I want to address the particular comments made by Senator Milne on the amendment. There is in Australia a very good sawlog industry. It is an industry that does employ a lot of people, but it also provides a valuable resource of carbon storage for Australia. Our sawlog industry is one of the most sustainable in the world and it is an industry that assists in construction within Australia. If we did not have a sawlog industry like this within Australia, we would be importing all of our sawlogs from places overseas that have an awful record of dealing with their forests. They deal with them in unsustainable ways, whereas the Australian forests are very sustainable. In fact, they are amongst the most sustainable forests in the world.