John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to add to this debate that I have visited the red gum forests. I was down there last weekend and some six months ago. Locking up these forests and leaving them will destroy these forests—make no mistake about it. The forests have been managed for more than 150 years. They are a renewable resource. I urge Senator Brown to go down and have a look at the 900 hectares that was burned some four years ago. Red gum will not stand any fire whatsoever. When it was burned, the millers asked to remove the timber within 12 months before it cracked so that they could use it for some good. They were not allowed to do that. The locals asked to remove the dead timber to use it for firewood and to allow the growth of a new forest. They were not allowed to do that.

We now have 900 hectares of dead trees, and people call this conservation. I call it absolute destruction of our environment. You take the grazing out, you let the fuel levels build up and, once you have more than five tonnes of fuel per hectare, a 40-degree day and a 30-kilometre wind, the fire is uncontrollable. By locking this land up, just as the past Premier of New South Wales, Nathan Rees, did on the very day he was sacked as Premier, you are losing jobs and taking millions of dollars out of the economy. There is a destruction of the economy and now you are going to destroy the whole red gum forest with fire. Make no mistake about it—it will happen as sure as I speak here now if that country is locked up and left. The grasses will grow, the fuel will increase, the lightning will strike and there will be the destruction of the whole environment.