Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian government does not support the repeal of the RFA Act. The government has committed to supporting the ongoing operation of RFAs while also strengthening environmental protections. This will be achieved by applying new national environmental standards to RFAs. The Australian government is committed to providing a framework that allows sustainable native forestry to occur. The government is committed to continuing to work with stakeholders towards applying new national environment standards to regional forest agreements. This will support the ongoing operation of RFAs whilst strengthening environmental protections.

Our forest product industries are vital to our regional communities. They directly employ 51,000 people, and tens of thousands more jobs are indirectly supported by this sector, which contributes nearly $24 billion to the national economy each year. The benefits of a competitive, sustainable and renewable forestry industry in our regional communities should not be underestimated. It delivers positive economic, social and environmental outcomes. In addition to employment and income throughout the supply chain, it also underpins the social networks and the fabric of many of our regional towns and communities.

Australia's native forest management is sustainable and does not lead to deforestation. Our native forests are regenerated after harvesting. Repealing the RFA Act and terminating RFAs will not end native forestry, as these are state government decisions. Rather, terminating RFAs will mean forest operations will be subject to EPBC Act assessments, potentially at the coupe level. This may undermine the landscape-scale approach taken to forestry approvals under RFAs.

Repealing the RFA Act will result in industry uncertainty that could lead to job losses and mill closures in regional areas. This, in turn, could compromise the future of many of our regional towns and constrain our ability to prevent and respond to bushfire effects through the reduction of the skilled workforce and machinery required for quick responses to fires and fire mitigation operations. Repealing the RFA Act will lead to increased administrative costs for forestry operators and for governments, and that will result in backlogs and possible delays in forestry approvals and in assessing applications for wood exports.

The Australian government is expanding Australia's plantation forest estate, but plantation wood is not able to replace the high-quality wood sourced from native forests. Because of the choice of species and site and short rotations, most Australian hardwood plantations do not develop the same size, strength and appearance properties as wood sourced from native forests. It would place further pressure on domestic supply chains for products that are able to be sourced only from native forests and create an increased dependence on substitutes—imports—for native hardwoods from places where forest management standards may not be as high and where wood production may be associated with deforestation and illegal logging. These are some of the many reasons the Australian government does not support the repeal of the RFA Act.