Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition cannot support this motion and I will put on the record the reasons for that. Senator Brown belatedly comes to the aid of forest contractors in Tasmania but is effectively a wolf in sheep’s clothing when it comes to this particular motion. This motion is in itself a trojan horse. What it actually seeks to do, what its real aim is, is to reduce the resource available to forest contractors in Tasmania by removing additional resource from the capacity of harvest, which in turn will mean a greater loss of jobs and a greater difficulty for forest contractors in Tasmania. The opposition cannot support such a motion that pretends to be supporting forest contractors. It makes that pretence upfront but is really continuing the objective that Senator Brown has had all along, which is to close down the forest industries in Tasmania. The opposition will not support that and will not support the reduction in availability of resource to forest contractors in the state.