Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Rice for her question. Our government stands by our approach in terms of the modernisation of regional forest agreements, regional forest agreements which provide for an approach to forest management through greater transparency, through outcomes based reporting, and through long-term sustainability of a renewable resource in terms of our forestry sector. RFAs protect threatened species through establishing and subsequently growing a conservation and reserve system and requiring states to implement sustainable forest-management practices outside of the reserve system. RFAs provide certainty to the forest industry and support the thousands of jobs associated with that industry. Our government knows that we need to create and continue to provide certainty in those sectors to make sure that those jobs are secure and sustainable, as we want and expect those resources to be as well.

Since RFAs were first signed 20 years ago, conservation reserves in RFA areas have doubled from over five million hectares to more than 10 million hectares in that time. This means that 50 per cent of native forests found within RFA areas are now protected with the comprehensive and adequate representative reserve system. Of the remaining native forest in RFA areas, less than 0.5 per cent of that is harvested annually. States, of course, are responsible for the day-to-day forestry operations in line with state forest management frameworks under RFAs. Indeed, RFA responsibility—