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

The motion is about logging in World Heritage areas and I acknowledge the vote of the chamber in respect of that. But Minister Burke in his nomination of Tasmanian forests as a World Heritage area actually included forests that were still to be logged as part of that process. Even after the nomination was put in on 28 February, in a letter on 30 April this year Minister Burke said:

My officials continue to work closely with the Tasmanian Government and Forestry Tasmania to refine the management boundary for the nominated extensions to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

They are still playing with this boundary months after the initial nomination was put in. It shows the complete lack of integrity in the process and, in fact, how it is inconceivable that the World Heritage Commission could actually consider this when nobody has had the opportunity to comment on it because the boundaries are not even set yet.