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

As has been indicated by previous speakers on this motion, the coalition is proposing a very similar amendment in relation to the protection of agricultural land. I have to say I am quite confused as to where the government really sits on this matter. We have seen a decision made by government in the last fortnight which places enormous pressure on the availability of agricultural land in Tasmania from forestry.

When the Prime Minister and the Premier of Tasmania signed the intergovernmental agreement on forests in Tasmania, based on the statement of principles processes that have been negotiated between the forest industry and environmental groups over the last 12 months or so, one of the elements of that process was effectively to move the industry out of native forests—out of our forest estate—and into a plantation regime. That plantation regime does not exist at the moment and the calculation that has been made, and widely accepted as part of that process, is that you will need an extra 100,000 hectares of plantations in Tasmania to replace the lost forests that are proposed to be locked up, or claimed for lockup, by the environmental groups.

I am trying to get a sense of consistency of policy from a government perspective. It does one thing under this initiative, and the coalition agrees with that. As Senator Birmingham has said, we had an amendment to the bill to do exactly the same things with slightly different wording but the same effect. But here we have the government making an agreement with the Tasmanian government that, if it is put into effect, is effectively going to take up to 10 per cent of Tasmania's prime agricultural land for forestry.

Where is the consistency in the approach that the government is taking in these matters? It says it wants to protect agricultural land, yet its actual policy actions, the decisions that it makes, are completely contrary to that. As I said, these plantations do not exist. There are some in the environmental movement who claim that we can just magically change the manage­ment regime in our existing plantations and suddenly make them usable for solid timber. That is patently absurd. I do not know whether they are just being mischievous, whether they do not understand forestry or whether they are just trying to push a barrow. I do not know the answer to that. Let us be charitable and say, 'They just don't understand it.' But those who do understand it have said quite clearly, 'The lockup of these Tasmanian forests will require up to 100,000 hectares of Tasmanian agricultural land if the industry is to have some form of equivalence.' Of course, we know that there are some who want to go further; they want to lock up all of Tasmania's agricultural land.

If we are going to do that, we need to transition to a sawlog product that comes from a plantation base. We all understand that that will be required, but the reality is that that estate does not exist. The foundation research work for that has not been done. The species in Tasmania have not been properly identified. The methodologies are still being worked on. Some research is occurring but not enough has occurred yet. Where is the consistency in the government's policy? On the one hand they say, 'Yes, we would like to look after agricultural land; we would like to support prime agricultural land,' as they are saying through this amendment. The reality of what they are doing is the inverse.

Through the intergovernmental agreement that the Prime Minister signed a week and a half ago, the government are in effect condemning 10 per cent of Tasmania's agricultural land to plantation use. I really struggle to understand where the consistency is in all that. The minister has completely vacated the ground on this. The Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities has taken over the negotiations in Tasmania, with the Prime Minister. The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is playing no part in this that I can see, not visibly anyway. All of the work that is occurring is being done through the minister for the environment. Even then, there is no consistency. I would like to see consistent policy developed here.

For all the reasons colleagues discussed this morning, we all know that there is a strong basis for a managed regime in our native forests. It will provide for the long-term storage of carbon. If it is scaled at the right scale, it will have an absolutely negligible impact on our carbon stocks over time. And you need to recognise the carbon that is stored in solid timber products. I have referred before in this place to our magnificent surroundings here. The desk at the centre of this chamber is in fact a carbon sink. The carbon locked up in that stays there for the life of that product. I spoke to Gerry Harvey a couple of weeks ago and he had bought the propaganda peddled by some in the environmental movement that when you cut down a tree all its carbon expires to the atmosphere. He did not know that every piece of timber furniture that he sells is in fact a carbon sink. He has been put under enormous pressure from people in the environmental movement who are running a direct campaign against our forest industries—a dishonest campaign, I have to say—to not use native forests and to not use any native forest timbers out of Tasmania. That very campaign provides a direct threat to this amendment, to this legislation.

A number of forest scientists that I have spoken to have confirmed that the require­ment is 100,000 hectares. We are talking about a lonely tree concept in this circum­stance. We are not talking about a plantation that might have 1,400 or 1,500 stems to the hectare; we are talking about a plantation in Tasmania that will have about 100 stems to the hectare so that you can get the right size over time. Those sorts of things will take up to 35 years to develop. Some in the environ­mental movement think that we can magic­ally transform from a native forest regime in three to five years. I am not sure what sort of management regime they are talking about.

This direct action of the government is directly opposed to the intent of this particular government amendment. I would really like the minister to explain to me how that works. The coalition put up an amendment to do a very similar thing: to provide protection for prime agricultural land. There is enormous scope for putting native vegetation back into the landscape. The coalition have said that all along. We have supported the concept of enabling farmers to put vegetation back onto their farms, and, to a reasonable extent, without having a negative impact on their product­ivity. There is enormous capacity to do that.

Through this government's actions, it is placing 10 per cent of Tasmania's agricultur­al land at risk—and it is highly productive land—because it wants to appease its Green partners. It wants to stay in government both at a state level and at a federal level. So much of the policy that we are now seeing is being dictated by that arrangement and there is complete inconsistency in the govern­ment's approach. I would sincerely like the minister to explain that to me and explain how we are magically going to change the management regimes in forestry in Tasmania. I heard Dr Pullinger say on the radio last week that there are 300,000 hectares of plantations in Tasmania and that we need to change the management regime of those so that we can use them for timber. That is just complete garbage. That is patently wrong. We have done tests on the plantation estate in Tasmania. They have been grown for fibre. A species called Eucalyptusnitens was put in the ground and those trees have largely been managed for the production of fibre for woodchips. That is a specific purpose and we know that there is a market for that. There is a proposal, which I know both the government and the coalition support, for the development of a pulp mill in Tasmania to utilise that resource. So we both have the same objective in respect of that. Dr Pullinger completely forgets that a large proportion of those 300,000 hectares is owned by the proponent of the pulp mill to go into the pulp mill. He does not tell that to the community when he says that we should just magically change our regime of forest management into a sawn timber process. But what do we find when we have do the scientific work and test that product? Can we use it for a sawn product? We find that it has a 35 to 40 per cent internal checking rate. That means that it is not commercially viable as a sawn timber product. It has not been managed for that and it is not suitable for that. So you just cannot switch over in three to five years, as some have suggested, to a plantation estate through some magical change in management practices.

When you are going to grow trees in a plantation estate for the purposes of solid timber you plan that process from before the time you start. You plan your regime, you plant your trees to that regime, you manage them to that regime and then, over the cycle, you will get the results. There is a lot of work to be done on that at the moment and yet here we have a government that is acting in a completely and utterly contradictory manner. It says that it wants to protect agricultural land through this amendment to the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill but its real actions on the ground are doing exactly the opposite. I think that the government should be prepared to reconcile why it is doing that—although in the funding arrangement that the government has put together with the Tasmanian government there is absolutely nothing to encourage that shift to plantation, so I am not sure whether the government is just accepting that it will let the forest industry fall over in Tasmania. I am not sure if the government is accepting that or not. Where is this plantation resource going to come from and how is it going to be developed? If it is going to be developed it is going to take up to 100,000 hectares of agricultural land in Tasmania.

We have heard the government say a number of times, 'We are talking about developing evidence based policy.' My contention is that they are not even doing that. They say 'this is what we are going to do' but when they act they do something completely contradictory. We have heard a lot of times that you should watch what people do and not what they say, and here we have a government that have acted in a completely contradictory manner. They have devastated people in Tasmania with the concept that their fine timbers will be lost and that our craftspeople will lose access to the timbers. If you go to Salamanca market in Hobart on a Saturday morning there are stalls everywhere that use our fine Tasmanian timbers that come from our native forests. It is a huge tourist attraction. We are told that the tourist industry is going to be a substitute for our native forest sector, but here we are taking away a huge chunk of that. So the attitude of the government on this really needs to be considered very carefully.

As I have said, the coalition support the concept of protecting agricultural land, but we remain extremely concerned that the government are acting in an absolutely opposite fashion by threatening 10 per cent of Tasmania's agricultural land. In conjunc­tion with the Greens, they want to lock away up to 572,000 hectares of our native forests which can be sustainably harvested and should be managed through a sustainable and properly scaled regime to produce those fine products. It will be very interesting to hear what the minister's response to that is.