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

I note that the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry indicated that the issues I spoke of in my previous contribution were not relevant. I have to say I completely disagree with that. We are specifically talking about protection of agricultural land, yet the direct actions of the government—they are not indirect by any sense of the imagination—put at threat 100,000 hectares of Tasmania's agricultural land. So 10 per cent of Tasmania's agricultural land is directly put at threat by the Prime Minister and the Tasmanian Premier agreeing to lock up to 572,000 hectares of Tasmania's native forests. It was something that was discussed during the statement of principles process, and it goes directly to the government's credibility in the discussion of this piece of legislation—the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill 2011. The government says it is looking, through its amendment (1), to protect agricultural land, yet its direct action—what it really does on the ground—indicates that it is not. Under what circumstance can anyone have any real confidence in what the government says it intends to do when its direct action—its real activity—actually indicates the opposite?

Minister Ludwig is correct that we both have the same aspirations in what we are proposing here, but it would have been nice if the minister had been prepared to actually address the issue of the direct threat to 10 per cent of Tasmania's agricultural land rather than just passing it off as completely irrelevant—because it is not. We know he has vacated the field completely to the environment minister in the forestry negotiations in Tasmania. He is no longer a part of it; he has been pushed aside. That is disappointing, because I think he might be prepared to stand up a bit more for the forestry industry than is the environment minister—who, amusingly, is a former forestry minister. It would be very nice if the minister were to address the reality of what is occurring in Tasmania and the direct impact on Tasmania's agricultural land.

I want to put a few more details on the record in relation to what has been proposed by the environmental groups and the discussion they are trying to pass off as a simple way to deal with this, saying: 'We're not really threatening agricultural land. You can use the existing plantation estate to take up the lockup of these forests'—the disgraceful lockup of these forests. As I said before, there are about 300,000 hectares of plantations in Tasmania. About 216,000 hectares of the 300,000 are actually in private hands. So here we have the ENGOs out there happily talking about property that is not even in government hands; it is held by private individuals. As I have said, a lot of that is actually owned by the proponent of the proposed pulp mill in Tasmania, and it has been grown specifically for that purpose. You cannot just magically waltz off and say, 'We can put that into a first-class timber supply.' That is absolutely, patently absurd. Yet that is what the ENGOs are implying in their discussion.

It is no wonder that there was huge frustration even from Mr Kelty, in his negotiations with the activities of the ENGOs throughout this process. The ENGOs have been quite disingenuous, saying one thing inside the negotiations and another thing outside the negotiations. Mr Pullinger, in particular, got to the stage where his credibility in this whole process was quite suspect, quite frankly. In fact, I think he has even deceived some of his own people in what he was agreeing to in the negotiations versus what he was telling them outside.

I will just take this a little bit further. We have 216,000 hectares of Tasmania's 300,000 hectares of plantation in private ownership. They do not belong to the ENGOs. They are not public property to be negotiated as part of this agreement. As I said, they have been grown for something else. There are 32,700 hectares in private ownership, and they are there for a number of reasons. Some of it is pine plantation, and that obviously has a specific market, but you are not going to get magnificent native forest veneer out of a pine plantation—it is absurd to suggest that you can transition in three to five years out of native forest into, say, a pine plantation. You certainly cannot transition into a eucalypt plantation, which has a life cycle design of about 12 to 13 years. You certainly are not going to get a long-life veneer out of that.

The government's policy, through this amendment, is to protect agricultural land, yet the action resulting from the govern­ment's decision in Tasmania is to push forestry out onto agricultural land. In fact, we are seeing it more broadly than that. I was in Orbost last week talking to the forest sector down there, and they are being slowly squeezed out of the forests by the Greens and the environmental groups, in conjunction with the Labor Party. They are a bit more encouraged, with the change of government in Victoria, that that might slow down a little bit, but you see this squeezing out of native forests and into plantations, and there is only one place to plant that: it has to be on agricultural land. We do not like to see conversion of native forests to plantation anymore. I support that process. Let us regrow native forest as native forest and have a long-term rotation, which the forest scientists tell me is the best way to store carbon, the best way to look after water quality and the best way to look after biodiversity.

All the values that the ENGOs and the Greens claim they want to achieve are best achieved by a long-term rotation regime in a native forest. Yet here we have a government decision that is directly threatening that, pushing agriculture out of the way and pushing us into a plantation regime. There is only one place for that to go. Whether it is in Tasmania or in any other state, it has to be pushed out onto agricultural land. As I said, we do not like to see conversion of native forests to plantations. We have seen that in Tasmania, and I am happy to admit that from my perspective that was one of the mistakes we did make in Tasmania in relation to our forestry practices: the large-scale conversion of native forests to plantations. We actually have a plantation estate there now and, as I have said, two-thirds of it is in private hands. But, I have to say well-managed, sustainable long-term rotation of a native forest regime—properly utilising all the product streams that come out of that—is the best way to manage this, not pushing our forest sector out onto our agricultural land. We see the government consistently making decisions that do not support what it says it is doing in this particular circumstance. It did exactly the same thing with its prohibition on utilising biomass for renewable energy. It was a completely ridiculous decision that was driven by the Greens. There is no other explanation for that. It is driven by the Greens; it is Greens policy. Senator Milne asked one of the ministers at question time yesterday a question about the life cycle of coal seam gas versus coal. She asked for a life cycle comparison. I will give her the life cycle comparison of utilising biomass from native forest waste to coal. It is 4 per cent. So how do you reduce your carbon emissions in energy generation by 96 per cent? You utilise biomass. In Australia, we could generate 8,000 gigawatts of energy from native forest biomass waste without touching another twig or tree.

Think about the carbon emissions that will reduce. The government bangs on about wanting to have a comprehensive carbon reduction scheme and process. If we recognise biomass we can reduce the life cycle emissions over coal by 96 per cent, but because of ideology we cannot do that. The government is not prepared to stand up and say: here is a way that we can do that. You can do it cheaper than wind. It is a low-cost technology compared with, say, wind. It can be done at the regional level. It can be appropriately scaled. I am prepared to accept that in some places we have let the wrong drivers get into our forestry systems. Woodchips did that for a period of time in Tasmania, and that has now obviously changed with some changes in the markets. But a properly scaled biomass industry, set up on a regional basis and with access to the grid, could provide a well-costed, low-carbon-emission energy source which could be quite cost competitive. Yet, because of ideology, because the Greens tail is wagging the Labor dog, we cannot go down that track, so we miss out on the opportunity to produce up to 8,000 gigawatt hours of energy from wood waste that lies on the forest floor, which quite often gets burnt in regeneration burns, which of course the Greens then come out and complain about, saying that we are putting all this particulate matter into the atmosphere. We could actually put that into a biomass plant and generate renewable energy and reduce the emissions from coal in comparison by 96 per cent. Yet ideology drives us away from that.

So all these things we could have if the government were prepared to make sensible and consistent decisions. All we are asking for is a consistent decision-making regime. The government have an amendment on the table that says, 'Look after agricultural land,' yet their decision-making processes, with the forestry agreement in Tasmania and the exclusion of biomass, act in an opposing manner to the intent of this amendment.

We have stated that we have a similar amendment on the Notice Paper. We support the protection of agricultural land. Because of the government's actions in concert with those of the Greens, the Greens tail wagging happily away when they get their way, running the Labor dog, we cannot get sensible decisions out of the government. We would be more than happy to work with the government in relation to these things if the government were prepared to make sensible decisions, not say they are going to do one thing and do something else, which is what we see time and time again. We saw it with the forest agreement and with the biomass in Tasmania.

We see attempts to make claims about the plantation estate in Tasmania that just do not stack up. ENGOs are getting on the radio, telling the community that there are 300,000 hectares of plantation estate in Tasmania that will be available to transition into in three to five years. They are privately owned and they have not been planted and managed for that purpose, yet the government makes a decision at the behest of the Greens at the state level—Nick McKim, running for Premier in Tasmania. And in the federal parliament we have the Greens running the Labor agenda. They are not prepared to stick up for the industry and not prepared to take the actions that we support, which is to provide that level of protection for agricultural land.

I will be very interested to hear the minister's response to that. It is disappointing that he has been pushed aside as part of this process, as I said before. I would much prefer to have him driving this than the minister for the environment. He was a complete failure as agriculture and forestry minister in the previous government. I have much higher hopes for the current minister, and having spoken to him a couple of times I know that he has a sense of feeling towards the forestry sector. But it would be really nice if the government in its actions were prepared to demonstrate that.