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

Like Senator Boswell I need to put on the record some comments in relation to what Senator Milne has said and, most disappointingly, in relation to some of the misinformation that she has put about with regard to the forest industry, where the industry is at, what might be possible and what products should and could be used in the timber coming out of Australia’s forests.

Senator Milne quite frequently gets up in various forums and in this chamber to talk about the volume of plantation wood that exists and its capacity to take the place of native forests. That completely ignores the fact that a lot of Australia’s plantations have not been managed for sawlogs. They have not been managed to provide the high-quality timbers that Australia needs and continues to use for a range of things, such as the veneers that go into making the fine furniture in this place, the timber for our homes, fine flooring and things of that nature. These are high-quality-value products that are only able to be derived from Australia’s native forests. It is important that we get full value out of all the product ranges that come out of our native forests. For Senator Milne to assert that we can just move everybody out of the native forest industry to the plantation industry is just plain dishonest. It is not true; it cannot be done. Our plantations have not been managed for those types of quality timber, and they need to be.

When you look at what else is going on, you need to look at things such as the ongoing biodiversity of Australia’s forests. If we want to convert large areas of Australia’s native forests to plantation, which we will have to do if we are to have the supply, Senator Milne should push on with what she is doing. But that is not what we want to do. In Tasmania, we have the quite extraordinary situation where Senator Milne and Senator Bob Brown talk about the destruction forever of Tasmania’s native forests, and for that matter the native forests around the rest of the country. They say that these forests have been destroyed forever and that those that are left must be protected. Yet the really confounding thing is that, in Tasmania right now, 28-year-old regrowth forests that have been regrown from clear-fell and burn operations are now being claimed by the Greens and their friends as high conservation value forests that should be protected.

When you really look at that, what you understand is that the quality of the forestry management in Tasmania is of such a high standard that they are regenerating high conservation value forests, or forests that the Greens would like to claim as being of high conservation value. That can give the Australian community real confidence that the management processes of Australia’s forest industries, particularly in Tasmania but those in other states as well, is of such a standard that, when they get to the age of 28 years, the Greens now claim them as being of high conservation value, even though in their own language they were ‘destroyed forever’ by the forest industry when they were clear felled and burned. The inconsistencies in the arguments put forward by the Greens are plain for everybody to see.

If biomass were to come on stream in Australia, the industry estimates that 3,000 gigawatt hours could be generated from the existing waste that exists today, without transferring from any other product—that is, without touching another tree, without touching another single branch or leaf. So there is enormous capacity to generate energy at a reasonable cost, which is one of the issues that we face in this, by utilising the existing waste. We are not talking about conversion from other uses. Senator Milne tries to put this up as a saviour for the native forest industry. That is not what they are looking for. They want to use the existing waste. Yes, there have been proposals around the country for a number of years to generate energy at places like Southwood and the north-west coast of Tasmania, because there is a significant amount of wood waste from forestry operations in those regions. Rather than burning it in the open and creating a smoke problem, which the Greens and their friends all ring the local radio about on a regular basis, why not use it to generate energy at a reasonable rate? It just makes sense.

When you look at that use in comparison to, say, burning coal, you find that coal generates something like 955 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour. This information comes from the WWF, from a brochure they have been using in Europe. Europe has a 15 per cent of energy target from biomass by 2020; they are talking about generating 15 per cent of their entire energy from biomass by 2020. There are 35 times fewer CO2 emissions over the lifecycle from using biomass rather than coal. Here we have the capacity to use a product that is significantly cleaner and is a renewable energy source, yet the misinformation and the misrepresentation of our forestry industries by the Greens is just outlandish. It is just ridiculous when, having said that these forests were destroyed by forestry operations, they then come back 28 years later and claim them as high conservation value forests. The hypocrisy of this is just extraordinary and it needs to be exposed for what it is.

Progress reported.