Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great pleasure to rise to this urgency motion moved by Senator Duniam, and I can only concur with the comments listed in his motion. I think it demonstrates how committed the government is to forestry. I don't doubt the good senator's desire to see forestry in Tasmania continue, given his family history, and I will acknowledge that, but the fact that not one Labor senator from Victoria is prepared to come and stand here in this chamber and defend the actions of the Labor government in Victoria speaks volumes for this motion. Not one single Labor member is prepared to step foot into the chamber to defend what the Victorian Labor government is doing. I think that demonstrates, as I said, exactly what is going on.

If you actually look, as Senator Duniam said in his contribution, at the science of forestry and the realities of forestry, you will clearly understand that this sector plays an important role in our broader communities. No lesser organisation than the FAO, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, made this statement in their report The state of the world's forests 2012:

… it must be clear that including forests at the core of a strategy for a sustainable future is not an option—it is mandatory.

They go on to say:

… the best way of saving a forest is to manage it sustainably and to benefit from its products and ecosystem services. If the principles of sustainable forest management are applied and forest products and ecosystem services play an increasing role, the global economy will become greener.

The global economy will become greener.

It's interesting that we just heard that the future is in plantations. We hear this quite a lot from the Greens. Mind you, you've got to grow those plantations somewhere and, every time someone looks to grow a plantation on a new piece of ground, the Greens are there to oppose it or to campaign against it. But the reality is that you won't get the high-quality timbers that go into making magnificent furniture such as we enjoy in this chamber here from plantation forestry. As a carpenter, I know that the best-quality timbers are slow grown. They're given time, on a sustainable forest rotation. That is where you'll get these timbers—and not only that. I acknowledge that the plantation sector is important, but a native forest based system of growing timber is actually better for carbon storage, it's better for biodiversity, it's better for water quality and it uses no chemicals. So, under almost every environmental value that you could consider, native forestry—