Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to follow on from Senator Abetz's presentation yesterday in response to Senator Bob Brown's motion in relation to the Tasmanian logging industry, which was passed in the chamber. The focus of Senator Brown's motion was to ask why the proceeds of the Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement, which was obviously a feature of the coalition's election package in 2004, had not prevented a reduction in markets in the Tasmanian forest sector. Of course, as is usual with the Greens, the intent of the motion actually does not deal with what the intent of the Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement was. It was not about creating or maintaining markets, and I will come to that later.

The Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement was a widely supported election commitment by the then Howard government, so much so that it is credited with being one of the reasons why the coalition won two lower house seats in the north of Tasmania, in particular Braddon and Bass. In some of the forestry communities, such as Circular Head, we saw close to 15 per cent swings in those particular seats because the Howard government was prepared to provide support to the forest industry. Unfortunately, that point in time when Mark Latham was the leader of the ALP was about the point in time when the previous bipartisan relationship and support for the forest industry in Tasmania started to fall apart. The Labor Party decided that they would go off and chase Green preferences and the rest of the industry were left to their own devices.

The funding uses for all of those elements of the Community Forest Agreement were and are actually on the public record, mostly because the Greens have FOI'd them all, so they know what the money was spent on, they know why it was spent and they know the focus of it. But they choose not to be honest in relation to how they represent that now. It is not because of the Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement that there are issues with markets in forestry in Tasmania; it is because of the Greens and the environmental groups that work with the Greens actually going out and destroying markets. The Greens are the only political party in this country that I know of that actually talk this country down. They talk the country down and they talk our industries down. Quite frankly, it is a disgrace that they would go into our international markets and talk down our local businesses and tell them not to buy products from Australia. It is outrageous. We have the government and senior union officials talking about a crisis in manufacturing yet here we have the Greens going into international markets talking down industry. We also have the NGOs and the greens in Australian markets. I am sure members of the Wilderness Society would like to know what happened to some of the money that used to belong to the Wilderness Society and now appears to be turning up within an organisation by the name of Markets for Change. My information is something around the $7 million mark has been siphoned off out of the Wilderness Society into Markets for Change to actually campaign against the Tasmanian and Australian timber industry in Australian markets: people campaigning against Harvey Norman, for example, seeking a commitment from Harvey Norman that they will not buy any furniture built out of timber coming from Tasmania. This is the sort of campaign that is actually having the result that Senator Brown talked about, which is loss of markets. So you have environmental campaigns which were recently described, in one media article that I saw, as anti-logging activism morphing into extortion. That is effectively what they are doing. They are saying to companies like Harvey Norman, 'If you don't stop buying products from this particular market we will campaign in your stores and we will destroy your reputation, just like we have attempted to destroy the reputations of other people in the industry.'

Senator Brandis interjecting—

I will take your interjection on that, Senator Brandis. They have an exemption under the Competition and Consumer Act to do this sort of thing, which is something that I am very concerned about and perhaps I will talk to my learned colleague Senator Brandis about that again later. But it is the Greens and their activities that are destroying markets for the Tasmanian timber industry, so it is groups like them that are causing the fundamental job losses in the Tasmanian community and the rest of us should be standing— (Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—Once upon a time Australia was self-sufficient in timber and in forests. Nowadays we import a lot of our sawlogs. Much of them come from places around the world which have a very poor environmental record. The fact that a once-vibrant timber industry now no longer practically exists in Australia is thanks very much to the Greens political party. I had the honour for several years to be Australia's minister for forestry and I noticed then that Senator Bob Brown made his mark on society basically opposing logging of the Tasmanian forests. Mr Acting Deputy President, there are so many native forest trees in Tasmania, that if you started cutting them down today, you would not finish by the time anyone who is currently in this Senate would still be alive. There are enormous forests in Tasmania that are native old growth forests. Many of them are protected, because over the years the logging industry built fire breaks and tracks through the forest to ensure that any forest fires, which are the greatest cause of destruction of native forests in Australia, were easily accessed. Because the forest industry had a financial interest in the forests and because they were concerned about the destruction of these valuable assets for Australia, more often than not those fires were extinguished in a relatively short period of time.

Tasmania had an industry which it could be proud of. Many, many thousands of workers and their families depended upon the forest industry for their livelihood. Yet the Greens political party for no more than a political reason has opposed logging in Tasmania for decades, to the extent, as Senate Colbeck mentioned, where the forces of sense and support for workers and the industry in Tasmania have been giving ground at the behest of the Greens over many decades.

In 2004, after three years of working with the CFMEU, the Howard government came to an arrangement which was intended to be the finish of fights over the Tasmanian forests. We locked up a lot more forests in native reserves. We put a lot of money into it, which this motion vaguely relates to. We had agreement with the unions and agreement with the Tasmanian Labor government. It was almost a 'peace in our time' arrangement. John Howard appeared before workers in Tasmania—and members of the Labor Party will well remember this—to the adoration of the blue-collar workers, the hard-hat people, who cheered and applauded the Howard government's approach and its decisions in relation to Tasmanian forestry.

Senator Polley interjecting—

I hear Senator Polley interjecting. I cannot hear what she is saying but I am sure she is agreeing with me, because, at the time, the Tasmanian state Labor government—not the federal Labor government that was under Latham—the federal Liberal government and the CFMEU were all in total support. We had won a major victory for Tasmania, for the forest industries and for conservation. But the Greens never give up; they never give up. They will keep going until they destroy the forest industries right throughout Australia. They have almost succeeded and they will continue—not, I might say, for any conservation reason, because the forests are conserved and preserved and never to be in any other way. But there was a logging industry, there was work and there were manufacturing industries in Tasmania. The Greens were beaten at one stage but they have come back. They will not stop—mark my words—until the industry is fully destroyed.

Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Macdonald, your time has expired.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did not intend to come into this debate but I would like to say a few words about the Greens and forestry. As Senator Macdonald rightly said, it is a bit like the carbon tax. It is a case of: 'We are going to stop manufacturing in Australia and we are going to import product that does not have a carbon tax on it to replace our clean industries.' This has happened. I have seen it happen in my own state. I do not know whether Senator Macdonald is familiar with Proston and the big forests out there. That forest—I do not know how many millions of square acres it contained, but there were many, many millions acres of forest—used to provide hardwood for Australian homes. That was there in 1947.

Within that forest was a little town, a village, called Allies Creek. It supported something like 60-odd families. It had nice little houses—three bedroom homes, with wood and gas stoves. It was really well presented. It also had a single men's quarters, with dining rooms. It provided jobs for 60 people. It also provided a lot of Queensland's hardwood. And lo and behold, as Senator Macdonald said, the Greens never give up. They just keep charging; they keep going. They are funded by public donations, and the more forests they close the more public funds they get from people who are well-meaning but who do not understand them. The Greens wear it as a badge of honour that they have closed down these forests. Within that forest, there were probably 30 sawmills and all of them provided incomes for people who probably would find it very difficult to get a job if they did not work in a sawmill—low-paid workers, but they got a house with electricity. There was a little hall there. But along came the Greens and they closed it down—millions of acres of forestry.

Every couple of years those forests were chequer-burned. They would find a cold day and burn them. They would let the fire go against the wind and it would slowly burn and then burn out. They controlled the fire. They had fires in that area but they were crown fires; they controlled them. Now we have no-one in there. The people who had the jobs, which were skilled jobs, were proud of their jobs. They were proud of working at a sawmill. That was what they wanted to do. They have now gone out counting koalas. No-one worries whether they count them or they do not count them, but that is the job they have been given—a meaningless job counting koalas.

If the Labor Party are worried about why their vote is at 27 per cent, I say to them in all honesty: do not handcuff yourself to the Greens. You have done that for the last eight, nine or 10 years, and it has been productive because you have got Green preferences. But the blue-collar workers are in revolt. They have woken up to you. You are going to get a divide out there now. The people who are sort of Green oriented are not going to vote Labor; they will vote for the Greens. And the conservative, family blue-collar worker is out. He has had enough of you. He has voted for you consistently but you have taken his job off him and made him count koalas. He does not like it. He wants a meaningful job. I saw it happen in Ravenshoe and I have seen it happen in Proston. We have closed this industry down and replaced it with imported products from Malaysia and places that do not have any conservation values at all. They just rip and burn. What is the point in that? There is no point, but the point I am trying to explain to the Labor Party is that the game is up. The blue-collar workers have had a gutful.

Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Boswell, your time has expired.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.