Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a response in relation to the response to a Senate resolution agreed to on 13 February 2014by the Minister for the Environment, Mr Hunt, about the Gunns Ltd pulp mill.

Leave granted.

On 13 February the Senate passed a motion calling on this government to maintain the environmental safeguards in the approval of the Gunns Tamar Valley pulp mill proposal, which excludes wood sourced from native forest being used as wood stocks. This was part of the process for the pulp mill touted for the Tamar Valley by ex-company Gunns Limited, which has now gone into receivership. That approval at both a state and a federal level included many aspects that were controversial. The most recent form—before the company went into liquidation—was to use only timber from plantations and not native forests, as was the original proposal. That was up to 1.5 million air-dried tonnes year, which is approximately four to five million tonnes of high-conservation forests from Tasmania.

Since we have seen a Liberal Party sweep to power in Tasmania over the weekend, we thought it was very important to ask the question of the federal environment minister whether he would continue to support the existing legislation around the Gunns pulp mill—or what we now could call the Tamar Valley pulp mill, for clarification—and ask whether there would be no native forest feedstock put through any future pulp mill.

I would like to say very clearly on record that both myself and the majority of Tasmanians are opposed to a pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. I am opposed to a pulp mill in Tasmania because I do not believe it is the best use of the wood in our state in terms of getting value in the value chain and what is necessary for the competitiveness of the industry to underpin jobs.

I ask this question because it is very important. That is because the Liberal Party this weekend in Tasmania swept to power—particularly in the northern electorates of Bass, Braddon and Lyons—on the promise that somehow they were going to wave a magic wand and create the 5,000 jobs that have been lost in forestry in the last decade. That was with no plan and with no details provided to anyone on how they are going to create employment in these hard-hit areas of the state. There is absolutely no doubt that they are hard-hit. These are agricultural and rural areas. Tasmania is essentially a large rural electorate and—like other rural areas in this country—it is under significant pressure, particularly in the industries that are subject to a high Australian dollar. In Tasmania, of course, we have special issues around freight and freight costs that impact on our primary industries.

But the forestry industry was under pressure for a long time. The reason that I am up here speaking on this right now is because I am concerned—with the new government in Tasmania and with a federal government that has been making very, very high-profile comments on the forestry industry in the last few weeks—that perhaps they have a home and perhaps they have some demand created for these high-conservation forests. If they rip up these world heritage forests—which I understand Senator Milne is going to be talking on in a moment—what are they going to do with them?

We know that industry has said very clearly that there is no market for contested forests from these high-conservation areas. We know that the buyers of timber and investors in the timber industry have said they will only take certified wood under a FSC certification. That is part of the Tasmanian Forestry Agreement: they do not want to buy high-conservation forest anymore. It really puzzles me how a party can sweep to power, or claim to sweep to power, on a mandate to rip up world heritage forests if they have no market, no solution and no plan for how they are suddenly going to get the industry back on its feet.

The Liberal Party has conned the Tasmanian people into the belief that somehow the collapse in the forestry industry in my state is because of a forest peace deal, when in fact Senator Colbeck sat next to me in the Senate inquiry—which Senator Milne also attended—when the head of the Forest Contractors Association gave evidence and said, 'I want to make it really clear that it is the other way around. The Tasmanian Forestry Agreement or peace deal is a response to the collapse in the forestry industry, because we have to find a new way forward for this industry; a way forward that gets high-value products and gets acceptance for Tasmanian products.'

So if suddenly we have millions of potential tonnes of high-conservation forest becoming available—let us call it wood supply—because the Liberal government at a state and federal level has ripped up some of the most magnificent and high-value conservation forest left in this country, in fact in the world, then where are they going to go? Well, unfortunately, to me it looks like they may go to a future pulp mill. All it is going to require a legislative change. If you do not think that the federal or state government has the ticker to go back and change the legislation to allow a future pulp mill to include high-conservation forest, then just look at what happened in the first week into the Tasmanian state election, where parliament was recalled to pass special legislation for the receivers—KordaMentha—of the sale of Gunns Limited assets. Special legislation was passed for special interests—again. This is the history of Tasmania.

I have no doubt that this is an area where the Liberal government in Tasmania, or federally, is planning to sell and funnel high-conservation forests into a totally unacceptable, divisive, zombie pulp mill project in the Tamar Valley in Tasmania—which is where my family lives. It is a project that I have been opposing for the last decade, as have thousands of my community members, my friends and, in fact, people right across the state. During the campaign, we have had an alliance not just of those people one might call greenies; we have also had the fishing industry, the Australian Medical Association, and a broad array of businesses opposing it. We have had people opposing it on the grounds of corruption and corrupted process. These are very deeply felt issues in my state.

Unfortunately, the jigsaw puzzle looks to me very much like ripping up the World Heritage listed forest goes hand-in-hand with building the world's most unpopular and most unloved pulp mill project in the Tamar Valley—a project that has never been economic, that has been flogged to death by Gunns Limited for a decade, and that has had every obstacle to it removed by the government. Everything has been bulldozed in its path—and yet it still cannot find an investor, because the economics of an undifferentiated, price-taking pulp mill at the bottom of the world are that it is not competitive in terms of growth rates for timber and is not competitive on any basis of costs. It cannot find an investor and it cannot find a market.

It was very important to me to see Minister Hunt—and this was supported by the Labor Party here in the Senate—make a strong statement that he would not consider any changes to the legislation. But unfortunately, the letter that I received from Mr Hunt, and which I am now talking to, used weasel words, danced around the issues and refused to acknowledge that high-conservation forests, whether they are contested forests, from forest peace deals or World Heritage listed forests, could be used in a future pulp mill. This is totally unacceptable. I and Senator Milne and others will continue to raise this issue until we get clarity on it.

It is easy to claim that you have a mandate to rip up some of the world's most beautiful forests—something that we know from recent surveys most Australians are totally opposed to. And the outrage will continue to build as this issue gets more of a profile. The mandate that the Tasmanian Liberals and their federal Liberal counterparts have to think about is not just the mandate of the people but also that of the markets. Those investors and those businesses, such as Norske Skog, who spoke very publicly and openly on election night and on 7.30 said that ripping up the World Heritage agreement and the Tasmanian Forests Agreement would be very bad for business confidence in Tasmania, because the industry has got behind this deal and it wants to see it done—for the future of jobs and prosperity in the timber industry. This is the timber industry talking. But because of a few disgruntled landowners, most of whom have been shafted by Liberal Party managed investment scheme policy over the years, and a few disgruntled Liberal voters in this state, and because of the politics of division which has worked so well in Tasmania—beat up the greenies, focus on destroying the Greens rather than creating value and employment for Tasmanians—we have a situation in front of us where we have a zombie pulp mill and a zombie government now in Tasmania with no plan on delivering employment. (Time expired)

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to take note of the honourable Greg Hunt's letter relating to the Gunns pulp mill and, most particularly, the call that the Senate made to commit to maintaining the environmental requirement that excludes wood sourced from native forests from being used as feedstock for any pulp mill.

As my colleague Senator Whish-Wilson has pointed out, the whole point of the Tasmanian forest peace agreement was that the logging industry actually came to the conservation movement and asked the conservation movement to come to some agreement, because there was no future in native forest logging. There has not been a future in native forest logging for decades. In the mid-1990s I said—endlessly—in the Tasmanian parliament that the market for native forest woodchips would be over by the end of the 1990s, and indeed it was. It has only been propped up, by subsidy after subsidy, ever since—millions and millions have been poured into the Tasmanian native forest industry to keep destroying forests, at huge cost to the Tasmanian taxpayer and to the Australian taxpayer.

Now we have a situation where, for a pure ideological attack on forests and environmental protection, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said that he will delist 74,000 hectares from the Wilderness World Heritage Area in order to log them. But the global market does not want—and has made it clear it does not want—timber from primary forests, and there is no way the timber will be bought internationally. That market is destroyed. Everyone acknowledges that, from the CFMEU through to Evan Rolley from Ta Ann—notorious in his days in Forestry Tasmania, he has come out and admitted that Ta Ann will not be able to sell any timber product overseas from these highly contentious forests.

So what is the government's plan for these forests, if it is going to rip them out of World Heritage and if it wants to log them but there is no global market? One option is to put them into a pulp mill, as my colleague Senator Whish-Wilson has said. The other, however, is to do as the IPA wants—that is where you have to go to see where the Prime Minister is taking most of his direction from. The Institute of Public Affairs is saying that we should just privatise Tasmania's forests—and no wonder you have Will Hodgman, the new Premier of Tasmania, saying there will be no subsidies to Forestry Tasmania. What we are clearly seeing here is a strategy to flog off Tasmania's forests. As Aaron Lane from the IPA has said, the easiest way of taking the politics out of forestry is to get the government out—to privatise Tasmania's forests and let individuals determine the best use of the land. He says at the end that only a free market for forests will deliver a lasting peace deal. Well, he is wrong, because there is no market for that timber.

What are they going to do with that timber, if there is no market? One of the things that I think they will do is to subsidise the construction of a forest furnace—a biomass furnace in Tasmania. They will cut down the forests and feed them into a furnace. One of the terms of reference of the review of the Renewable Energy Target is to enable native forests to be used to generate renewable energy certificates under the Renewable Energy Target. Wouldn't the coalition just love to do that—allow people to cut down World Heritage forests of outstanding universal value—cut them down and feed them into a forest furnace, generate electricity and use renewable energy certificates and then sell it into mainland electricity consumers so they could be cooking their toast with electricity that has been generated from burning the high-conservation value forests of Tasmania? If that is not a recipe for conflict and for disaster, I do not know what is.

What is more, you will have an undermining of the renewable energy market and target, because consumers are not going to want to buy energy from a source that is destroying high-conservation-value forests; they understand that ecological systems are incredibly important for maintaining biodiversity. These are the tallest plants in the Southern Hemisphere. These trees are magnificent and it is absolutely wrong for the government to be suggesting that these are areas of degraded forest. The overwhelming areas that are being pulled out of World Heritage protection are the forests of the eastern boundary of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage area. These have been protected after 30 years of conflict.

I note today that the CFMEU is out saying, 'Oh, well, Will Hodgman, the new Premier, has a mandate.' They still want Forest Stewardship Council certification. I do not think so. There is no way that FSC certification will be going anywhere near any of these operations. There will be no market; there will be no certification; and there will be massive conflict. I think the weasel words in the minister's note responding to this Senate motion make that perfectly clear.

This is a government that is determined to destroy native forests and take forests out of their protected area status for the sole purpose of destroying them. As to the contention that this is going to create jobs, that is a joke in itself. If you have seen the collapse in the forest industry over the last couple of decades, you will see that it is far from being an employer of thousands, as the IPA like to suggest. It provides tens of thousands of jobs, according to the IPA's Aaron Lane. I challenge Aaron Lane to put down on paper where these tens of thousands directly employed by the forest industry are, because they are not in Tasmania.

The tragedy is, of course, that Tasmania is going to be plunged back into conflict just at a time when we are about to move to an economy based on knowledge, information and innovation—one that recognises Tasmania's competitive advantage in its proximity to Antarctica, in the development of the university throughout the state, and in the development of our high-quality food and beverage sector and our Antarctic science hub. We have the fantastic potential in Tasmania of doing all that innovation with 100 per cent renewable energy. Tasmania could become the home to some of the world's data centres. They are energy hungry facilities that need the reputational value of being fed by renewable energy. Imagine the boost for Tasmania when we see the end of some of our energy-guzzling industries being replaced by energy-guzzling data centres of the 21st century which would rely on renewable energy. These are some of the ideas for Tasmania, but they will not happen by undermining renewable energy, by taking away carbon pricing, by destroying the Renewable Energy Target, by trying to get renewable energy target certificates from burning native forests or by ending so-called subsidies by flogging off the forests.

If you want to know where the Abbott government is going, just ask the IPA. They are taking their instructions from Gina Rinehart, Rupert Murdoch and everyone over at the IPA. Western Australia's new Treasurer was the director of the IPA from 2005 through to 2012. The IPA agenda is to privatise, ignore the environment, undermine any social justice or nets to help people, and maximise the profits of the few. With the IPA wanting to privatise Tasmania's forests at the same time as the Liberals are saying no more subsidies, we have a recipe for flogging the forests and changing the law to enable the cutting and burning of forests and subsidising the construction of a massive forest burning furnace in Tasmania. That is the direction we are going. The alternative is to change the regulations to allow native forests to be fed into a pulp mill. One thing is for sure: there is no global market; there will be no global market; there will be no FSC certification for a policy which ravages high-conservation-value forests. The industry knows there will be no market; we know there will be no market; and, what is more, the government knows there will be no market. It is about time that they can clean with exactly what they are going to do in destroying Tasmania's forests.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is probably clear that this is not a matter for which I have any direct responsibility these days, but I sit in my office listening to more and more misrepresentations and, generally, lies of the political party represented by Greens senators in this chamber.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. It is unparliamentary to be describing the contributions of senators as lies. Let us have a specific example of a lie, if you are going to make such allegations.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You might note, Mr Acting Deputy President, that I chose my words carefully. I said 'lies of the political party represented by Greens senators in this chamber'. I am not accusing any particular senator of lying; I am saying it is typical of the lies of the Greens political party.

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to relate a little story. When I was the parliamentary secretary to the then Minister for the Environment, I employed a very good staffer, who had, at one stage, worked for Greenpeace. She left Greenpeace because she said she could not stand the lies of Greenpeace and, in particular, the environment movement, because they worked on the basis that the ends justified the means. In other words, you would tell any lie, create any diversion or misrepresentation you liked, as long as you got to achieve the ends. For years the Greens political party, Greenpeace and the Wilderness Society in Tasmania have tried to destroy this industry.

I was not involved in the recent Tasmanian election but I can read the results, as can anyone. The Liberal Party and Mr Will Hodgman made it very clear what their proposals were for the forest industries. They were endorsed by a significant majority of Tasmanians. Yet the Greens will not accept this. The Greens think they know better than the voters of Tasmania. The voters of Tasmania have indicated their disdain for the Greens political party, and rightly so.

The same thing occurred back in the 2004 federal election. You might recall that John Howard finally, in the last few days of the campaign, came down on the side of the forestry industry in Tasmania. He was hedging his bets until the last minute, but he went to that very significant rally in, I think, Launceston. There, surrounded by people wearing hard hats and blue singlets, the Liberal Prime Minister was cheered when he said he was going to look after the forestry industry. From that day I thought we had destroyed the wish of the Greens political party to destroy this significant, sustainable industry of Australia. I thought we had won. I was the then forestry minister and we had spent three years working with the 'F' part of the CFMEU, day in and day out, to get a solution that was good for Tasmania, good for the environment and good for jobs. I applaud the forestry division, then represented by the current president of the CFMEU, because we worked together to get a result, against the then Labor opposition leader, who fell into some difficulties. I have even forgotten his name!

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Latham.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Ronaldson; Mr Latham. He was going with the environmentalists because he thought it meant votes in Sydney and Melbourne, and it did not matter that it was not very good policy.

The forestry industry in Tasmania is world class. It is better than any other forestry industry around the world. Yet the Greens have been on this campaign for 20 years, trying to shut down that industry, so we can import into Australia logs that are taken from forests in the Solomons and Indonesia which used to be raped by people who had no idea of how to run a sustainable forestry industry. It seemed to me that then Senator Bob Brown was all in favour of the rape of the forests of the Solomon Islands, Indonesia and Malaysia, and importing that all into Australia when Australia's most sustainable industry in the forestry industry was being shut down by the Greens political party.

What encouraged me to leave the work I was doing in my office and come down and participate in this debate was the fact that Mr Will Hodgman has just won an unprecedented victory in the Tasmanian election. His proposals for the forestry industry were not hidden. Everybody knew what they were. Did they vote for Mr Hodgman or did they vote for the Greens political party?

It is a rhetorical question. We all know that the Greens were annihilated and, if it had not been for the strange system in Tasmania, they would have been off the map. Ten years ago I predicted that the Greens had reached their peak and that they were on the downward slide. I think the result in the Tasmanian election—the heartland and place where the Greens political party was formed—has demonstrated that, as a political force, the Greens are finished. People have woken up to them. And that is a fact. People now understand that they cannot believe anything that the Greens political party tell them. They have only got to see what happened to all the sustainable logging just south-east of the city of Canberra. It was the most controlled industry of any in Australia.

I well remember, back in 1990, then Senator Richardson, with the urgings of the Greens, shutting down the forestry industry on the Atherton Tablelands, in northern Queensland. I well remember him going there and saying, 'This forest is so sustainable, we've got to protect it.' But, as the locals pointed out, it had been logged for 100 years. Yet former Senator Richardson and the Greens thought it was a pristine forest. Similarly, my colleague Senator Colbeck has over the last few weeks been pointing out photos of parts of the Tasmanian forest which are described as pristine but which have also been logged for 100 years. It is that sort of misrepresentation, those sorts of lies, which come from the environmental movement that the people of Tasmania eventually woke up to. The people of Queensland have woken up to them before.

There are all of these arguments that the Great Barrier Reef is going to be destroyed by spoil from the Abbot Point harbour project being dumped out on the reef. Of course, the spoil is being dumped tens of kilometres from the Barrier Reef—nowhere near it. If you looked at anything the Greens political party said, you would think the spoil was being dumped straight on the reef. This is just another example. Anywhere you see an environmental protest sponsored by radical groups, the Greens and GetUp, you will know there will be a fallacy in relation to it.

But do we hear anything about the Greenpeace ship that was in the Cairns harbour, with former senator Bob Brown on board? I think he is now the patron of Greenpeace or Sea Shepherd. Its ship is leaking oil into the Cairns harbour. Now, that will cause environmental damage. Do we hear the Greens moving motions about Bob Brown's ship in the Cairns harbour leaking oil into the Great Barrier Reef area? No. We do not talk about it. We only talk about it when we can attack the Liberal government here or in Tasmania. On the occasions that ALP governments have had the courage and intestinal fortitude to stand up to the Greens, the Greens attack them. But, when their ship in the Cairns port leaks oil into the Great Barrier Reef, there is not a murmur from the Greens political party. Can you imagine what would have been said if an Australian Navy vessel had done that? We would have had motions before this chamber and we would have had protests in the streets. But because Bob Brown is on board the Sea Shepherd ship, when it leaks oil into the Great Barrier Reef—not a word.

I conclude my remarks by saying that Will Hodgman was upfront and open about what he proposed. I cannot even tell you exactly what it was—I did not follow it that closely—but he was upfront. Yet on election night we have the Greens leader threatening Will Hodgman for honouring the promise he made and which the Tasmanian voters so strongly supported.

Question agreed to.