Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week I had the pleasure of travelling to East Gippsland to meet with a number of locals and hear about their current concerns and about support around the bushfire recovery efforts. I thought I'd use tonight's adjournment debate here in the Senate to touch on two points around the future of many timber workers in the East Gippsland region and the work to support young bushfire impacted Indigenous Australians in Bairnsdale and surrounding areas.

On Thursday of last week, I was delighted to visit Heyfield with Labor shadow minister for agriculture and resources Mr Fitzgibbon. For those senators who are not familiar with Heyfield, it's a small regional community, around 200 kilometres east of Melbourne, on the Thomson River. It has a proud population of around 2,000 people and is home to Australian Sustainable Hardwoods' timber-processing facility. The products that come from this Heyfield facility are primarily used for construction, both structural and decorative. They're created out of beautiful Victorian oak and iron ash, and the facility also offers some really innovative products, such as alpine oak, which is created by salvaging smaller pieces of hardwood to create long, straight product full of character and variation. The timber-processing facility is the lifeblood of Heyfield. It offers employment to around 200 workers, and almost all of them are locals. The managing director, Vince Hurley, told us that the plant has an apprenticeship retention rate around 100 per cent. As you might imagine, most of the workers are young men. But Vince and his team are working hard to recruit and train women into the business as well.

Mr Fitzgibbon and I met with many of the workers at the plant. Senator Scarr is not here now, but I will say that the vast majority of them are also members of the CFMMEU's manufacturing division. It was concerning to hear from them as they shared their thoughts about the future of their industry and the challenges ahead. All workers deserve respect. We have to make sure that there are sustainable regional jobs so that workers can live close to home and make a life for themselves and their families. The workers at the Heyfield plant deserve that respect, just like any other worker in this country. They are manufacturing Victorian products made from Victorian resources in a highly sustainable and innovative way. Victorians can and should be very proud of the timber products coming from Heyfield. What they make there is being used locally and being used in a number of homes and businesses around the country. It's being used to create masterpieces such as the wooden interiors of many of our landmark icons in Australia as well as being shipped not just around Australia but also worldwide.

Putting the future of the Heyfield facility at risk would, of course, mean that Victoria could lose a product that we all really should be proud of. But it may also mean that the town itself could experience significant decline. You just can't take away 200 local jobs from a small town and expect the community to survive. All workers deserve respect. They deserve to have their jobs respected and should be able to count on their representatives to support all of them. This includes the workers at Heyfield and the timber workers all across my home state.

I was back in Gippsland last Saturday. This time, I went down to Bairnsdale for a fantastic event to support bushfire affected Indigenous youth. The Bairnsdale Aquatic and Recreation Centre hosted an all-stars basketball match to raise funds for Bairnsdale Regional Unlimited Sports and the Koorie Basketball Academy as they work closely to support Aboriginal youth who have been affected by the recent bushfires in East Gippsland. It was great to see sports stars participate in the great match and also to see one of my close friends, Indigenous basketball coach and strong advocate in Indigenous affairs, Ricky Baldwin. (Time expired)