Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise and speak in defence of a very proud and sustainable industry in our country, one that has been the political whipping boy for many a decade, sadly, and, frankly, for no reason other than arguments based on emotion in pursuit of votes in inner-city suburbs where falsehoods are peddled at the expense of science and livelihoods in communities where people are doing the best they can to earn an honest living. These are the people who are in the firing line. These are the people who work in an industry that, as I say—based on science, based on fact—is doing the right thing and should not be targeted in the way that it is.

The net effect, as Senator Urquhart rightly points out, of what the Greens propose to do with the Ending Native Forest Logging Bill 2023 is worse for our environment than they claim. They think that ending native forest logging in this country, repealing the RFA Act and ensuring that every coupe that is ever harvested in a native forest in a sustainable and science-based way is assessed by the EPBC Act is somehow going to protect the environment.

But we saw in Victoria that when a certain retail chain in Australia decided not to stock Victorian native timbers as a result of a court case, a legal question before the courts that had not yet been decided upon, they of course didn't lose demand for the product. They had to continue to stock products that were equivalent to the native forest hardwoods. The only difference was that they weren't coming from Victoria; they were coming from somewhere else, in many cases from overseas.

This is the problem with this argument. When you look around this chamber and the houses we live in and you look at the beautiful staircases, benchtops, coffee tables, window frames and the like, they don't come out of plantation forests, as Senator Urquhart has said. They come out of sustainably managed, science-based management approaches to these coupes—native forests, because of their strength and appearance characteristics. They're not coming out of Australian forests, as we go around the countryside shutting them down based on emotion and not science. They come out of forests overseas, where jurisdictions managing these forests don't care about the environmental outcomes. If we're supposed to be global leaders when it comes to looking after our planet as a developed nation, should we not be guiding others to support science-based best practice management of our resources, including forestry? Should we not be ensuring that we lead the way? And we do lead the way.

But the net effect of this bill before us now is that we stop doing what we do to world's best standard here because we don't care what happens over the horizon, what happens in the Congo basin, where they rip trees out of the ground, never to be replanted. Industries in that part of the world of course have the smell of modern slavery attached to them—but hey, we're okay with that, because it's not our forests that are being harvested; it doesn't matter what happens outside our backyard! This is the net effect of emotion driven, divisive Greens politics, which is what this bill is all about. That is the worst part about it. We can feel good because we haven't cut down our forests, because they look terrible when they're cut down. This inflammatory language around what happens in our forests as a result of sustainable science-based native forest management makes people think that it is a bad thing. I have sympathy for those who over time have fallen for these silly arguments that are not based on science. Bad decisions have been made time after time.

Senator McKim, in his contribution, talked about deals. He talked about dirty deals being done. I gather that's with reference to a bill that's coming before the Senate soon enough. I'll tell you a thing or two about deals. I'm a Tasmanian, and I remember some deals that have been done over time in my home state of Tasmania. They were deals that have been very bad for our environment, very bad for our economy and very bad for our state as a whole. These are deals that are often done, sadly, between the Greens and the Labor Party. I know there are people here who lament those decisions and others who, terribly, celebrate them. The point is: these are the deals that are done based on emotion, based on a political whim and based on the pursuit of votes in inner-city areas, not in the regions, where the people who know how to manage the land are doing the best they can to earn an honest living. That is the point I make.

As I say, the challenge laid down every time we have this debate in this place and in other parliaments around Australia is: tell us where they do it better and tell us where they cut down trees and use them for productive purposes. Trees, of course, are a great carbon sink, especially when harvested sustainably. There is carbon locked up in all of the timber in this chamber, would you believe? It's never going to escape, unless we burn the place down—and there may be some, sadly, who would like to do that. The point is that every time you harvest timber the carbon that has been sequestered by that tree is stored in that felled tree in perpetuity. You plant another tree; it continues to absorb carbon. That is the point of our industry, the forestry industry, being the ultimate renewable and the best 'carbon sequesterer' of all primary industries.

Claims are being made about it being destructive when it comes to the carbon challenge that this world faces. On that, I think it is important for us to focus on the fact that Australia contributes, I think, 1.1 per cent of global emissions. So shutting down the forestry industry, which only, in their arguments, contributes to a portion of that global 1.1 per cent, is not going to turn the dial on what places like the Congo basin do when it comes to ripping trees out of the ground, burning the life out of the ground behind them and never replacing them with a single stick anywhere, at any point in time. That is deforestation.

We don't participate in the act of deforestation here, contrary to the claims that are being made. That is bad for the environment, that is bad for climate change—not the Australian approach to this—and that's why these facts are so critically important. If we were contributing to 70 per cent of global emissions then, sure, maybe I'd listen to what Senator McKim has to say. But the reality is it's 1.1 per cent of global emissions, a small portion of that relating to forestry, yet suddenly we now need to shut down the industry and push it off over the horizon to countries where it will be far worse for carbon emissions, climate change and the environment and far worse when it comes to the economy—in fact, bad all round.

I want to go back to the point around custodians of the land. Foresters are excellent custodians of our land. They know a thing or two about forest management. They don't just run around the countryside and our forests wielding chainsaws, not caring about what they cut down and what they leave. They actually do care about having a sustainable industry, where forests produce the timber they need to have a sustainable industry into the future. They are not in any way reckless or careless about it. They are governed by, at a state level—for example, in the state of Tasmania—some of the most rigid rules around the management of forests, through the Forest Practices Authority. They have to get a forest practices plan before they go into a coupe. It takes into account every bit of cultural heritage, every area of environmental sensitivity and any presence of a threatened species, like the wedge-tailed eagle or similar—a swift parrot habitat might also be identified. Those things are taken into account, and foresters in Tasmania, like they do in other parts of the country, observe those rules. That is why they know how best to manage our forests.

I want to contrast that with something. I was taken down to some very deep dark parts of the Huon Valley in recent times to visit a coupe near the Arve River. This swathe of forest is now under World Heritage wilderness protection. It is protected under the highest level of protection that could ever be afforded a forest on our planet, and we respect that. It is a testament to our native forestry industry doing its best based on science to manage our forests that these forests, harvested once if not twice over modern times, are now protected as part of a World Heritage wilderness area. They're not virgin, pristine rainforests that have never been touched by man. They are former production forests. In fact, mining operations exist in there. There are timber tramways and a range of human objects and interactions that exist in these areas which are now World Heritage. All or a good portion of it has been logged and regenerated by these evil foresters the Greens talk about!

There is one patch, however, that you can see from Google Earth hasn't been managed in the same way, right in the middle of this beautiful swathe of forest in the south-west of Tasmania. You can see from Google Earth that it's a gravel patch. You might have thought it was a former quarry. In fact, no; this was the same as everything else in that part of Tasmania. It was a beautiful forest that had been managed sustainably for productive purposes over more than 100 years. There's an environmental group in Tasmania—Environment Tasmania—that were given a grant by the former Labor government and the then Minister for the Environment, Minister Tony Burke, to go and do what they thought was best for the environment. That gravel pit, part of a World Heritage wilderness area that stands out on Google Earth for all to see as a testament to how inner-city environmentalists would approach forest management, shows you that their denial of forest science doesn't work. Foresters fell the trees. They do a regeneration burn so that the seeds of those particular species can germinate and grow into what now has become a World Heritage wilderness area. This environmental group refused to do that. When they let this coupe sit there for a number of years with this grant of taxpayers' money, the rains came, as they do in south-western Tasmania, and washed away what saplings there were and the topsoil with them. Because they refused to follow the science—science based on the traditional techniques of Indigenous Australians—all that remains today is a gravel pit.

This is the environmentalists' answer for forest management in this country. They say, 'We've got to ban native forestry, because it's bad for the environment, but we will lock up swathes of land managed by native forest loggers for World Heritage purposes.' Those are in contrast with the patch of land that environmentalists manage, which is nothing more than a gravel pit. It does rather point to the fact that everything you heard before from the proponents of this bill is not based on fact. It is not based on science. It is pure ideology and will have bad outcomes not only for our environment, as demonstrated by what I've just said, but for the global environment. We should be global leaders when it comes to that. Of course, shutting down an industry has economic effects. I have before me the packaging of copy paper that we have available to us in this House. Would you believe we don't actually produce copy paper in this country anymore—which is a crime! There are many workers who have worked in mills over many years, proudly using Australian-sourced material to make Australian copy paper. We don't do that here. This package is produced in Indonesia. Would the Greens say that Indonesia does forestry and downstream processing better than here in Australia? Do they look after their workers over there better than we do? No, they don't.

Offshoring forestry and downstream processing is the by-product of supporting bills like this. They don't care. They really don't care where we get our paper and timber from or what happens to the environment over the horizon, as long as their political games are played to the best advantage possible. That's the problem. This is the same party whose leader famously spoke back in 1981 in opposition to renewable energy. Dams in Tasmania produce 100 per cent green energy which is now the envy of the nation as we transition out of coal and gas. Bob Brown, former senator and head of the Bob Brown Foundation said that coal-fired power was the best option. He doesn't believe that anymore, but it does rather prove the point around the arguments that Mr Brown and others in the green movement use. They deploy at a point in time something they think is part of the zeitgeist—popular. They tap into an emotive stream in the community to get a political outcome. That political outcome, can I tell you, Acting Deputy President Sterle, is immensely destructive. It's bad for the environment, as we've just demonstrated clearly. It's bad for the economy. It's bad for climate change. There is no common sense, there is no human decency and there is no scientific basis to what they're proposing here. I implore all senators to vote against this disastrous bill.