Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I rise to take note of the Joint Australian and Tasmanian government response to the review of the implementation of the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement for the period 2007-2012. What a sham the regional forestry agreements are in this country. For many, many years—in fact, decades—in this country, we have had RFAs that have propped up environmentally and economically unsustainable industries, such as the native forest logging industry, particularly in my home state of Tasmania—and, of course, it is the Tasmanian RFA that we are discussing tonight.

I want to be very clear about something: RFAs are designed to enshrine resource security for the logging industry. They are designed to avoid responsibilities to look after threatened species. They are designed to avoid responsibilities to allow forests to continue to embed carbon in the fight against climate change. They are designed with no other intent than to enshrine an environmentally and economically unviable native forest logging industry in this country. They are sham documents. They are camouflage for an unviable native forest industry, which in fact in Tasmania is a mendicant, make-work scheme that every year sucks tens of millions of dollars out of schools, hospitals and other essential public services in my state. They are camouflage for an environmentally destructive industry.

The view in this RFA response document from the Liberal governments here in Canberra and down in Hobart is basically, 'Everything is fine; nothing to see here.' It is like a Flat Earth Society document put out after Vasco da Gama circumnavigated the planet. That is how ridiculous it is and that is how little resemblance to reality it bears. We have now seen a rolling series of Tasmanian regional forest agreements that have failed our threatened species. They have failed all of the ecosystems services that our beautiful, magnificent, globally-significant forests provide in Tasmania; they have failed the massive amounts of carbon that are released every year after our unique forests are clear-felled and torched and most of the carbon in them and their soils released into the atmosphere; they have failed the Astacopsis gouldi—the giant freshwater crayfish that is endemic to Tasmania and, in fact, endemic to just a small number of river systems on the north coast and the north part of Tasmania; and they have failed the Swift parrot, that beautiful little bird that continues its slide towards extinction thanks in large part to the native forest logging industry in my home state of Tasmania.

I have fought native forest logging since I was arrested at Farmhouse Creek in the mid 1980s. I have fought it through my parliamentary career. I will continue to fight until we end the industrial strip mining of our forests that are protected and delivered through regional forest agreements; until we see our beautiful globally significant forests—much of which are quite rightly reserved on behalf of all of humanity inside our Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area—and the forests that need to be protected actually protected in formal reserves and inside the World Heritage Area; until we end this mendicant, make-work industry that is the native forest logging industry in Tasmania; and until we protect the carbon that is embedded in those forests so that, in Tasmania, we can move on to the 21st-century industries and away from an over-reliance on the dig-it-up, chop-it-down mentality of the last century.

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

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President—

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On a point of order, Mr Acting Deputy President. I thought you gave the call to Senator Rice.

Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Macdonald, you have the call.

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

I would not have minded if Senator Rice went next, as long as I would get my opportunity to proudly say that I was the minister that actually introduced the regional forest agreements and guided them through this parliament in a debate that, I think, went for some 35 hours by the time your former leader tried the effluxion of time as a way to get across the point that he, and not many others, agreed with.

The Tasmanian forest used to be a wonderful source of timber to Australia and the world. It used to mean that imports of timber to Australia from forests that were nowhere near as well managed as Australia's forests were lessened. And it meant that there was an industry, and that there were jobs created, in Tasmania. As a result of the work of Senator McKim and his allies in the state parliament and by some of the Greens and Democrats in this chamber over the years, I have to say to Senator McKim, somewhat reluctantly almost: congratulations. You and your lot have succeeded in, really, all but shutting down the Australian forestry industry—an industry that meant so much for Australia and that was sustainably managed.

I still remember when then Senator Richardson, on behalf of the Labor Party, shut down the forests in North Queensland. He went to the little town of Ravenswood to address about 1,000 angry people. The town was only about 200 or 300 people; there were 1,000 there to greet Senator Richardson. They had a sign across the street—I still remember it to this day—that said: 'Senator Richardson, you are wanting to save this pristine forest? It has been logged for 100 years.' That is the stupidity of the Greens and those who would do away with the sustainable forestry industry in Australia. Selective and careful management of our forests did provide for sustainability and for an industry. It provided some wealth for Tasmania, in particular.

I often ask people like Senator McKim: how many trees have been destroyed in the Tasmanian forest from wildfires that have burned out of control? That used not to happen in the days when there were forestry tracks through the Tasmanian forest and when there was a workforce on hand to get to the source of an outbreak of fire as it happened so to control that fire. But thanks to Senator McKim and to his lot, those tracks through the forest no longer exist. That skilled workforce which could get straight to the source of the fire and put it out has gone. As a result, there are hundreds of thousands of hectares of burnt forest in Tasmania—and in Victoria. That does far more damage to the forests than selective, careful management of the forests ever did.

The regional forest agreements, the subject of this debate, were a good attempt at that time—back in the early parts of this century—to try and regulate and to ensure that, forever, there would be a sustainable forestry industry in Tasmania. Regrettably, over the years—and when I left the job as the minister for forestry—the Greens and the Labor Party had their way. The forestry industry in Tasmania now is but a shadow of what it was and what it should have been. The regional forest agreements were a good attempt. The response by the government highlights some of the successes of the regional forest agreements, but, lamentably, the whole forest industry in Australia is now at a stage where it is a very tiny industry—a fraction of what it should be. As a result, of course, we import timber from forests around the world that are slashed and burned, and that are not sustainably managed at all. To the Greens, that seems to be okay.

The regional forest agreements were a good idea. They worked for a while. Regrettably, they did not achieve their ultimate goal.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak to the motion that the Senate take note of the Australian and Tasmanian Government Response to the Review of the Implementation of the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement for the Period 2007-2012. We have had regional forest agreements for almost 20 years. The very first of them, the East Gippsland Regional Forest Agreement, is due to expire in February next year. This Tasmanian one is due to expire soon after, later next year.

It is clear that regional forest agreements have failed to do what they aimed to do, which was to implement what we were told would be ecologically sustainable management and to maintain jobs in the industry. The reviews that have been done of regional forest agreements over the years have laid this bare. They have laid out clearly for all to see that regional forest agreements have not fulfilled their purposes. In particular, I read the independent reviewer's report on the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement's last five years. Although his recommendations were lily-livered, weak and weasel worded, you only had to read between the lines to see where those failures were. In particular, it went to the heart of whether it was possible to have intensive industrial scale clear-fell logging of our precious native forests and call it ecologically sustainable forest management. It was very clear that this independent reviewer was saying that even after almost 20 years we still do not have the monitoring in place and we still do not know what the impacts, overall, on forest species are going to be. In fact, he went further than that. He said not only do we still not know what the impacts of the logging industry are on threatened species and our precious natural forests but that the monitoring regime is actually likely to get worse over the coming years. This is the reality of what the current logging industry is doing to our forests.

We had what was clearly a politically correct report from the reviewer. It said let us improve some things and get the monitoring right. For example, one of his recommendations was that the state builds on its existing monitoring framework to develop a long-term forest condition monitoring system across all forest tenures to assess changes in ecosystem health and vitality—'to develop', mind you! We have had 20 years of the attacks on our forest and 20 years of threatened species becoming more and more threatened, and yet only now are we saying, 'Let's develop a monitoring system so we can really see what the impact of that logging is going to be.' We know what the impact of the current logging processes is. We can see what is happening to threatened species, with swift parrots going from threatened to endangered to critically endangered and with the giant Tasmanian crayfish on the verge of becoming endangered as well. Yet the government's response to this—to finally, after 20 years, put in place a long-term monitoring system to see what is happening—is the state agrees to consider implementing a statewide forest monitoring information system!

The regional forest agreements are not going to protect our forests. They are not going to protect our wonderful forest wildlife. If we have the continuation of the regional forest agreements, we are going to see animals like swift parrots in Tasmania going extinct. We are going to see animals like Leadbeater's possums in Victoria—which has gone from being threatened to endangered to critically endangered—go extinct. This is the reality of industrial scale intensive damaging logging in our forests. It is very clear that we need to say that the regional forest agreements are now something of the past. Let us put them away. That is how we used to do wood production in the past. We need to move on to producing wood in a way which is consistent with sustainability of our forests, and that is to use plantations to get the bulk of our forest products.

Senator Macdonald claims that the timber industry has shrunk compared to what it used to be, but the reality is there has been a shift and we now have 85 per cent of the wood products that come out of Australia coming from plantations. We know that to protect our forests and to protect jobs, we have to make that 100 per cent. We can do that. We can have a thriving wood products industry in Australia but not one which is based on native forests. We can protect our forests, protect jobs and produce wood. To do that is just a matter of moving forward into the ways of the future rather than the ways of the past.