Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I did not intend to come into this debate but I would like to say a few words about the Greens and forestry. As Senator Macdonald rightly said, it is a bit like the carbon tax. It is a case of: 'We are going to stop manufacturing in Australia and we are going to import product that does not have a carbon tax on it to replace our clean industries.' This has happened. I have seen it happen in my own state. I do not know whether Senator Macdonald is familiar with Proston and the big forests out there. That forest—I do not know how many millions of square acres it contained, but there were many, many millions acres of forest—used to provide hardwood for Australian homes. That was there in 1947.

Within that forest was a little town, a village, called Allies Creek. It supported something like 60-odd families. It had nice little houses—three bedroom homes, with wood and gas stoves. It was really well presented. It also had a single men's quarters, with dining rooms. It provided jobs for 60 people. It also provided a lot of Queensland's hardwood. And lo and behold, as Senator Macdonald said, the Greens never give up. They just keep charging; they keep going. They are funded by public donations, and the more forests they close the more public funds they get from people who are well-meaning but who do not understand them. The Greens wear it as a badge of honour that they have closed down these forests. Within that forest, there were probably 30 sawmills and all of them provided incomes for people who probably would find it very difficult to get a job if they did not work in a sawmill—low-paid workers, but they got a house with electricity. There was a little hall there. But along came the Greens and they closed it down—millions of acres of forestry.

Every couple of years those forests were chequer-burned. They would find a cold day and burn them. They would let the fire go against the wind and it would slowly burn and then burn out. They controlled the fire. They had fires in that area but they were crown fires; they controlled them. Now we have no-one in there. The people who had the jobs, which were skilled jobs, were proud of their jobs. They were proud of working at a sawmill. That was what they wanted to do. They have now gone out counting koalas. No-one worries whether they count them or they do not count them, but that is the job they have been given—a meaningless job counting koalas.

If the Labor Party are worried about why their vote is at 27 per cent, I say to them in all honesty: do not handcuff yourself to the Greens. You have done that for the last eight, nine or 10 years, and it has been productive because you have got Green preferences. But the blue-collar workers are in revolt. They have woken up to you. You are going to get a divide out there now. The people who are sort of Green oriented are not going to vote Labor; they will vote for the Greens. And the conservative, family blue-collar worker is out. He has had enough of you. He has voted for you consistently but you have taken his job off him and made him count koalas. He does not like it. He wants a meaningful job. I saw it happen in Ravenshoe and I have seen it happen in Proston. We have closed this industry down and replaced it with imported products from Malaysia and places that do not have any conservation values at all. They just rip and burn. What is the point in that? There is no point, but the point I am trying to explain to the Labor Party is that the game is up. The blue-collar workers have had a gutful.