Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—Once upon a time Australia was self-sufficient in timber and in forests. Nowadays we import a lot of our sawlogs. Much of them come from places around the world which have a very poor environmental record. The fact that a once-vibrant timber industry now no longer practically exists in Australia is thanks very much to the Greens political party. I had the honour for several years to be Australia's minister for forestry and I noticed then that Senator Bob Brown made his mark on society basically opposing logging of the Tasmanian forests. Mr Acting Deputy President, there are so many native forest trees in Tasmania, that if you started cutting them down today, you would not finish by the time anyone who is currently in this Senate would still be alive. There are enormous forests in Tasmania that are native old growth forests. Many of them are protected, because over the years the logging industry built fire breaks and tracks through the forest to ensure that any forest fires, which are the greatest cause of destruction of native forests in Australia, were easily accessed. Because the forest industry had a financial interest in the forests and because they were concerned about the destruction of these valuable assets for Australia, more often than not those fires were extinguished in a relatively short period of time.

Tasmania had an industry which it could be proud of. Many, many thousands of workers and their families depended upon the forest industry for their livelihood. Yet the Greens political party for no more than a political reason has opposed logging in Tasmania for decades, to the extent, as Senate Colbeck mentioned, where the forces of sense and support for workers and the industry in Tasmania have been giving ground at the behest of the Greens over many decades.

In 2004, after three years of working with the CFMEU, the Howard government came to an arrangement which was intended to be the finish of fights over the Tasmanian forests. We locked up a lot more forests in native reserves. We put a lot of money into it, which this motion vaguely relates to. We had agreement with the unions and agreement with the Tasmanian Labor government. It was almost a 'peace in our time' arrangement. John Howard appeared before workers in Tasmania—and members of the Labor Party will well remember this—to the adoration of the blue-collar workers, the hard-hat people, who cheered and applauded the Howard government's approach and its decisions in relation to Tasmanian forestry.

Senator Polley interjecting—

I hear Senator Polley interjecting. I cannot hear what she is saying but I am sure she is agreeing with me, because, at the time, the Tasmanian state Labor government—not the federal Labor government that was under Latham—the federal Liberal government and the CFMEU were all in total support. We had won a major victory for Tasmania, for the forest industries and for conservation. But the Greens never give up; they never give up. They will keep going until they destroy the forest industries right throughout Australia. They have almost succeeded and they will continue—not, I might say, for any conservation reason, because the forests are conserved and preserved and never to be in any other way. But there was a logging industry, there was work and there were manufacturing industries in Tasmania. The Greens were beaten at one stage but they have come back. They will not stop—mark my words—until the industry is fully destroyed.