Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a response in relation to the response to a Senate resolution agreed to on 13 February 2014by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Hunt, about the Gunns Ltd pulp mill.

Leave granted.

On 13 February the Senate passed a motion calling on this government to maintain the environmental safeguards in the approval of the Gunns Tamar Valley pulp mill proposal, which excludes wood sourced from native forest being used as wood stocks. This was part of the process for the pulp mill touted for the Tamar Valley by ex-company Gunns Limited, which has now gone into receivership. That approval at both a state and a federal level included many aspects that were controversial. The most recent form—before the company went into liquidation—was to use only timber from plantations and not native forests, as was the original proposal. That was up to 1.5 million air-dried tonnes year, which is approximately four to five million tonnes of high-conservation forests from Tasmania.

Since we have seen a Liberal Party sweep to power in Tasmania over the weekend, we thought it was very important to ask the question of the federal environment minister whether he would continue to support the existing legislation around the Gunns pulp mill—or what we now could call the Tamar Valley pulp mill, for clarification—and ask whether there would be no native forest feedstock put through any future pulp mill.

I would like to say very clearly on record that both myself and the majority of Tasmanians are opposed to a pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. I am opposed to a pulp mill in Tasmania because I do not believe it is the best use of the wood in our state in terms of getting value in the value chain and what is necessary for the competitiveness of the industry to underpin jobs.

I ask this question because it is very important. That is because the Liberal Party this weekend in Tasmania swept to power—particularly in the northern electorates of Bass, Braddon and Lyons—on the promise that somehow they were going to wave a magic wand and create the 5,000 jobs that have been lost in forestry in the last decade. That was with no plan and with no details provided to anyone on how they are going to create employment in these hard-hit areas of the state. There is absolutely no doubt that they are hard-hit. These are agricultural and rural areas. Tasmania is essentially a large rural electorate and—like other rural areas in this country—it is under significant pressure, particularly in the industries that are subject to a high Australian dollar. In Tasmania, of course, we have special issues around freight and freight costs that impact on our primary industries.

But the forestry industry was under pressure for a long time. The reason that I am up here speaking on this right now is because I am concerned—with the new government in Tasmania and with a federal government that has been making very, very high-profile comments on the forestry industry in the last few weeks—that perhaps they have a home and perhaps they have some demand created for these high-conservation forests. If they rip up these world heritage forests—which I understand Senator Milne is going to be talking on in a moment—what are they going to do with them?

We know that industry has said very clearly that there is no market for contested forests from these high-conservation areas. We know that the buyers of timber and investors in the timber industry have said they will only take certified wood under a FSC certification. That is part of the Tasmanian Forestry Agreement: they do not want to buy high-conservation forest anymore. It really puzzles me how a party can sweep to power, or claim to sweep to power, on a mandate to rip up world heritage forests if they have no market, no solution and no plan for how they are suddenly going to get the industry back on its feet.

The Liberal Party has conned the Tasmanian people into the belief that somehow the collapse in the forestry industry in my state is because of a forest peace deal, when in fact Senator Colbeck sat next to me in the Senate inquiry—which Senator Milne also attended—when the head of the Forest Contractors Association gave evidence and said, 'I want to make it really clear that it is the other way around. The Tasmanian Forestry Agreement or peace deal is a response to the collapse in the forestry industry, because we have to find a new way forward for this industry; a way forward that gets high-value products and gets acceptance for Tasmanian products.'

So if suddenly we have millions of potential tonnes of high-conservation forest becoming available—let us call it wood supply—because the Liberal government at a state and federal level has ripped up some of the most magnificent and high-value conservation forest left in this country, in fact in the world, then where are they going to go? Well, unfortunately, to me it looks like they may go to a future pulp mill. All it is going to require a legislative change. If you do not think that the federal or state government has the ticker to go back and change the legislation to allow a future pulp mill to include high-conservation forest, then just look at what happened in the first week into the Tasmanian state election, where parliament was recalled to pass special legislation for the receivers—KordaMentha—of the sale of Gunns Limited assets. Special legislation was passed for special interests—again. This is the history of Tasmania.

I have no doubt that this is an area where the Liberal government in Tasmania, or federally, is planning to sell and funnel high-conservation forests into a totally unacceptable, divisive, zombie pulp mill project in the Tamar Valley in Tasmania—which is where my family lives. It is a project that I have been opposing for the last decade, as have thousands of my community members, my friends and, in fact, people right across the state. During the campaign, we have had an alliance not just of those people one might call greenies; we have also had the fishing industry, the Australian Medical Association, and a broad array of businesses opposing it. We have had people opposing it on the grounds of corruption and corrupted process. These are very deeply felt issues in my state.

Unfortunately, the jigsaw puzzle looks to me very much like ripping up the World Heritage listed forest goes hand-in-hand with building the world's most unpopular and most unloved pulp mill project in the Tamar Valley—a project that has never been economic, that has been flogged to death by Gunns Limited for a decade, and that has had every obstacle to it removed by the government. Everything has been bulldozed in its path—and yet it still cannot find an investor, because the economics of an undifferentiated, price-taking pulp mill at the bottom of the world are that it is not competitive in terms of growth rates for timber and is not competitive on any basis of costs. It cannot find an investor and it cannot find a market.

It was very important to me to see Minister Hunt—and this was supported by the Labor Party here in the Senate—make a strong statement that he would not consider any changes to the legislation. But unfortunately, the letter that I received from Mr Hunt, and which I am now talking to, used weasel words, danced around the issues and refused to acknowledge that high-conservation forests, whether they are contested forests, from forest peace deals or World Heritage listed forests, could be used in a future pulp mill. This is totally unacceptable. I and Senator Milne and others will continue to raise this issue until we get clarity on it.

It is easy to claim that you have a mandate to rip up some of the world's most beautiful forests—something that we know from recent surveys most Australians are totally opposed to. And the outrage will continue to build as this issue gets more of a profile. The mandate that the Tasmanian Liberals and their federal Liberal counterparts have to think about is not just the mandate of the people but also that of the markets. Those investors and those businesses, such as Norske Skog, who spoke very publicly and openly on election night and on 7.30 said that ripping up the World Heritage agreement and the Tasmanian Forests Agreement would be very bad for business confidence in Tasmania, because the industry has got behind this deal and it wants to see it done—for the future of jobs and prosperity in the timber industry. This is the timber industry talking. But because of a few disgruntled landowners, most of whom have been shafted by Liberal Party managed investment scheme policy over the years, and a few disgruntled Liberal voters in this state, and because of the politics of division which has worked so well in Tasmania—beat up the greenies, focus on destroying the Greens rather than creating value and employment for Tasmanians—we have a situation in front of us where we have a zombie pulp mill and a zombie government now in Tasmania with no plan on delivering employment. (Time expired)