Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

And it is cold—it is fabulously cold. Anybody who has not experienced the top of Mount Wellington has not experienced weather.

On the ridge that runs from Mount Wellington to the even loftier Snowy Range to the west is the great potential for a walking way from Hobart to the central wilds of Tasmania, including the tallest flowering forests on earth. However, despite a potential agreement there are massive clear fells in that country. There is a community group at the moment trying to stop further destruction of these great forests of highland Tasmania. It is for nothing; the native forest industry is on its knees and has asked the environment movement to help it to get through. Again, I put to Mr Tony Burke that he should require that moratorium on such important places to be brought forward for the alternative values of inspiration and education—and, of course, for great economic value to the tourism and recreation industries and as a backdrop for Tasmania’s international reputation. This destruction should stop immediately.

I am told by a local conservationist that, as we sit, here a new road—and this will involve a large amount of public money—is being driven into the Styx Valley. If this wood supply agreement is going to mean anything, then that is money that is totally wasted. It is being hosed up against the wall and it is high time that the Tasmanian authorities looked at that waste, because there is going to be a request for public money to ensure that the agreement signed between the industry and environmentalists bears fruit. That means good management and an end to this sort of destruction.

I flew across the south coast of Tasmania with a Channel 7 film crew a week ago and there is a massive clear-fell this year. This is where in 1793 the great French botanist, Labillardiere, slept out with his fellow French bushwalkers—this was before British colonialisation—and wrote in his diary about the wonder of these magnificent forests in which the sound of an axe had never been heard. There has not just been an axe there; there have been bulldozers and massive chainsaw clear-felling and cable logging, and next will be firebombing with napalm on this magnificent precinct, all for an industry which cannot make ends meet and which is still subject to great public subsidy. Again, what failure of management and good governance is this? What failure of imagination about the future? The Greens will continue to campaign to put an end to that, and I might add that they will try to enlighten a future government in Victoria about the ongoing destruction of the great forests of the central highlands and East Gippsland in that state.

I was in Bendigo last Friday and people there are trying to protect their local woodlands, which have a great range of rare and endangered species. You have to take your hat off to them, but also wonder why it is that governments are so remiss and that this destruction of native forests is continuing here at the start of the second decade in the 21st century. This great country can do better than that. We can catch up with Thailand and New Zealand by putting an end to the destruction of native forests, and we must do it soon. I am looking forward to hear from this Gillard government and from the minister, Tony Burke, about progress in putting an end to the catastrophic logging of Australian forests and woodlands, which itself produces 15 to 25 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions out of this country, unnecessarily and at great threat to the future of the economy as well as the environment of 23 million Australians.