Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Again, if you look at the way the legislation is constructed, it states:

Timber products, for which due diligence will be required, will be prescribed by regulations that will be developed … The government will use—

if you logically work through how due diligence works—

a number of inputs when finalising timber products to be prescribed by regulations including an economic assessment of the range of product types, value and volume of timber annually imported into Australia.

Importers of regulated timber products and processors of domestically grown raw logs will be required to undertake due diligence …

They will find that they have to comply with the framework on what they have to do to satisfy themselves that they have undertaken that due diligence. Undertaking that work will be based on a risk management approach. That risk management approach will assess various risks and take into account the issues that you have raised to ensure that the due diligence is well done, accurate and provides the regulator with sufficient information to also look at it. It will also be an area where the compliance program in place can test these due diligence statements as well.

It is important not to have a system that simply halts trade at the border of both illegally logged timber and legally logged timber. It is important that we do have a system. This system is one that has been recognised by the European Union. It is a system that is risk based. If you look at the majority of systems that we are putting in place today, they are risk based. They are not interventionist models. They are not prescriptive models. They work on the basis of a compliance framework finalising both the risk based system plus a compliance system to ensure that we minimise the risk of illegally logged timber. Would you then guarantee forever that you will not get illegally logged timber into Australia? It is about minimising the risk. There will always be some people who will take the risk. What we want to ensure is that they get caught.