Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2023, and I wish to associate myself with the remarks of my colleagues, particularly Senator Allman-Payne, who has been the Greens spokesperson on this bill. I commend her and others in the Greens team for their detailed work on this bill and the improvements to this bill that she and the team have been able to achieve.

As Senator Allman-Payne noted in her speech, the Greens took a clear policy to the last election: a $15 billion 'Made in Australia' bank and manufacturing fund to support manufacturing in Australia. So, with that, it's no surprise that we will be supporting this bill. But we have been able to get improvements to this bill which show the importance of having Greens in the parliament, fighting for a better response to the climate emergency and to protect future generations. As people know, the amendments that we were able to secure were to make sure that none of this fund went to supporting coal and gas mining or to direct support for native forest logging.

You will note that the wording of 'direct support' does leave a few loopholes, and in fact 'direct support for native forest logging' doesn't go as far as I would have liked to see. I would have liked to see that this bill did not support native forest logging or, in fact, any use of the wood products that come from native forests, because you can't have a National Reconstruction Fund that is moving Australia forward and is absolutely supporting jobs whilst at the same time you are supporting destructive industries. Just as we secured an amendment that means this fund will not be able to support coal and gas mining, which are fuelling the climate crisis and pouring petrol on the fire, we cannot think that the future of Australian manufacturing and the future of jobs in this country are going to continue to be reliant on native forest logging and the wood from native forests. Native forest logging is so last century, if not before. It should have been completely phased out. It should have been seen as an industry of the past, just as whaling was before it, because it is an industry that has been particularly destructive of our forests and it's an industry that has been superseded. Almost 90 per cent of the wood products that are produced in Australia now come from plantations, which are a much, much more ecologically sustainable way of producing the fibre that we need.

I don't want to anyone to have any confusion. Wood is a terrific material, and the wood products industry is an incredibly important industry for Australia. The potential of wood from plantations to be ecologically sustainable is incredible. But that doesn't transfer to wood from native forests. Wood plantations are basically a crop; they are grown to produce wood. That can be done in an ecologically sustainable way and can produce really high-quality wood products. There are industries—and the industries can be even greater—based upon the wood products from plantations, which basically are really sound, sustainable products.

Wood from native forests, on the other hand, relies upon destructive logging of our native forests—the industrial-scale clear-felling logging of our native forests—which has been shown to decimate our forests and forest ecosystems. There was an article in the Guardian just this morning with regard to New South Wales that showed that over half of the original forests of New South Wales had been destroyed and a vast amount of the forest that hasn't been destroyed has been degraded. Yes, you had the issue of where forests had been cleared, but the issue of the degradation of our forests by logging is a huge, huge issue and is sending our precious wildlife hurtling towards extinction. If we had no other choice, like in the era before we had plantations, you could say, 'Well, okay, wood is a good product, so we have to do this,' because you have to make those compromises. But we don't have to make that choice now. We've got the plantation stocks that we need. Yes, they can be improved, they can be added to and certainly you could have more value-adding and better use of the wood from those plantations, but we do not need the wood from native forests. Given the destructive nature of the logging of our native forests, there is absolutely no reason for why it needs to continue.

A week ago I introduced the Ending Native Forest Logging Bill. As I said in the speech that I tabled for that bill:

The Commonwealth Government has a fundamental responsibility to protect our environment. That's reflected in international commitments that the Australian government has made on the international stage, and that have been enacted through the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

Despite those requirements in legislation, there is a loophole that entire truckloads of logs are being driven through. That loophole is contained in the Regional Forest Agreements Act 2002.

For far too long, these regional forest agreements, or RFAs, established between the federal and state governments, have exempted native forest logging from the environmental protections we have in place. These agreements cover significant parts of Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia, and New South Wales.

RFAs were allegedly intended to protect complex ecosystems, and ensure threatened species were protected, as well as provide sustainable timber supply, and protect jobs. In their 2020 report, Creating Jobs, Protecting Forests? The Wilderness Society concluded that RFAs have failed on every front.

…   …   …

The federal Labor party, since taking government, has comprehensively failed to address this multi-faceted crisis. There are vague statements about the need to protect our precious forests; but there is no action. The federal government has failed to act when the courts found that the Victorian government was failing to uphold its commitments under the Regional Forest Agreements. Government should act, but it has failed to.

Native forest logging has had its day. It is destroying our environment. This bill—

my bill, the Ending Native Forest Logging Bill—

would end the destruction. It would close the RFA loophole, so that the limited environmental protections we have in place would genuinely apply to forests, offering some level of protection that's greater than what we face now.

We can act, we can create change and protect our forests.

That was from my second reading speech for the Ending Native Forest Logging Bill.

Obviously the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill before the Senate today isn't going to be the bill that's going to end native forest logging. But the amendment that we secured to at least make sure that money from this much-needed fund is not going to be directly supporting native forest logging is a big improvement. It's a step in the right direction, and it acknowledges—and I think it's very important, in achieving this amendment, that there is acknowledgement—that there is a difference in terms of the wood that's being produced from destructive practices in our native forests and the wood that comes from plantations.

I would hope, in fact, that there is money from the National Reconstruction Fund that goes into supporting our plantation industries; goes into supporting value-adding from our plantation industries; and goes into making sure, for example, that the wood that is currently just being chipped and exported from our plantations actually has some higher-end purposes here in Australia. At the moment, vast amounts of the plantation logs that we grow here in Australia are just being shipped offshore as whole logs or as woodchips, both softwood logs and hardwood logs. There are huge volumes of plantation logs that are being exported out of Tasmania and out of western Victoria with zero value-adding. You look at that resource and, particularly for people who are concerned about where you can get hardwood timber from to provide the wood products that we like—yes, eucalypt timber is a lovely timber to have in your home, on your floors and around your windows. It can actually be grown in plantations. But it is a travesty that the largest eucalypt sawmill in the world is actually in Uruguay. It is processing 20-year-old plantation logs to turn into flooring, window frames and other products which are being sold into the North American market. Why aren't we making much greater use, much better use, of our eucalypt plantations here, rather than just shipping them offshore?

I hope that the funding through the National Reconstruction Fund can indeed be used to support plantation wood products. We should acknowledge that that is the future if we are concerned about jobs, about manufacturing and about protecting our environment. There is a way forward, and in the areas of the wood products industry it is absolutely firmly and clearly in the area of plantation forestry.

The other thing that the amendment does is signal that subsidies for the environmental vandalism that have been provided for so long must end. It hasn't been an equal playing field. We haven't had the support that was needed for plantation industries, but there have been huge subsidies paid out to continue native forest logging. A year ago, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that taxpayers were spending $441 a hectare to log native forest, with their state owned corporation facing a net loss of $20 million. In 2021, media reports indicated that the Tasmanian state corporation was operating at a net loss of $4 million, despite government funding in the millions. The data from Victoria is more dated, but a VicForests plan from a decade ago—I can tell you it hasn't improved since—noted that 'timber from harvesting operations in the East Gippsland forest management area have not been profitable for VicForests for many years. Operations currently lose up to $5½ million per annum after distribution of corporate overheads'. For all the statements from the Labor Party that this fund wasn't going to be supporting native forest logging anyway, the history of state governments subsidising native forest logging—destructive native forest logging—is there. I would not have put it past this government to have continued those subsidies for native forest logging except for the amendment that we have been able to achieve.

Let me be clear in conclusion. We support government expenditure when it supports people and the environment, but the tragic reality is that native forest logging is wanton environmental vandalism, and it's being subsidised by state governments at a cost to many people who would be outraged to know their governments are subsidising the destruction of our precious forests. This amendment is a small step towards ending that financial support for a dying and dangerous industry, but there is more to do. Native forest logging is devastating for our climate and devastating for endangered species, and it leaves us worse off as a society and as a nation. We are supporting this bill today—particularly, from my perspective, supporting the amendment—but, on ending the logging of our native forests, we will keep fighting and we won't stop until we know that Australia's precious forests have all been protected.