John Cobb (Calare, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise at this opportunity to talk about a meeting I had last week with my forestry operations. I have to say at the outset that I think forestry is a magnificent productive sector of our country. It is totally sustainable. It employs local contractors and labour and it is part of the life cycle of man, the use of timber. Currently we use around $4 billion worth of timber in various forms, be that paper, building, furniture or whatever. Of that we actually import around 50 per cent, around $2 billion worth. I cannot speak for other states but certainly in New South Wales the majority is grown and harvested in state forests.

My industry, which covers areas like Oberon, Lithgow, Bathurst, Mount Canobolas at Orange and Mullion Creek out in Cabonne, is a very healthy industry. It is run by good people and is well accepted in our part of the world, as indeed it should be everywhere. Forestry want more product. They want more trees. When you consider that we employ 50 per cent of what we use in any year and export very little. We are importing $2 billion worth at the moment. It is obvious why they want more product, even though at the moment they are being swamped, because the building trade in the rest of the world probably has not recovered quite as well as ours has.

So they are under a lot of pressure at the moment, but these guys are looking to the medium- to long-term and they are good operators. I actually have something like four mills—Allied, who are also in Queensland, Borg, which was started 25 years ago by two brothers in their father's back yard, which are now two of the biggest producers of building material in Australia. Boral and Carter Holt Harvey are all good operations that are well run and well respected. I can tell you that Calare electorate does not want to see them go. In fact, we want them to increase.

Given that state forestry really do not have an option since Bob Carr took half the forestry land and put it into parks, they have lost country rather than gained it. So we cannot see this expansion coming from state forests. I think the state forestry guys would agree with that. In fact, the only real opportunity for expansion is not the big boys buying country for themselves and growing timber on it. No, because the economics do not go for buying. It is like Coles, Woolies and Westpac, which do not own their own real estate. By and large they lease it purpose-built for them. I think in this case the forest industry would really like to do deals with groups of farmers. It does not have to be the best land on the flats with the heavy soil. The good thing about timber is that it needs rain and a cool climate, but it does not have to be the best low lying land in the region. It can be the less productive land.

Those who are worried about it taking over from agriculture need not be, for a couple of reasons. First, a farmer is not stupid. He will make economic choices about his business and about what he does—whether or not he is able to take a contract with a mill, or simply grow it himself on spec, with neighbours, but it does need to be close together.

The international carbon accounting group now accepts that furniture and the like stores carbon. With this we are not talking multi-millions here, but given that it is at least 15 years before there is any return and before they thin it—and they are lucky to break even doing that—at $13-odd, as I think the latest sale was for carbon, maybe they would get $100 per hectare in a year. Certainly they would not get that in the first five years, but perhaps by year 15 they would be getting it. They would get somewhat more until they do the second cut. At around 20 years they have much more serious timber and at 30-odd years, when they are getting the good wood, there would be more again, plus the value of the timber, of course.

If the commercial timber industry gets a few bob, and I am talking about a few bob, it may be enough to go some of the way to paying for looking after it. With carbon accounting, given that the rules look likely to change, that would just be a good thing to make a farmer think about the land that maybe is not his best land but does have a good enough rainfall. At this point I have to say that the current ruling saying that 600 millimetres per year should be the cut-off point above which you cannot grow trees and have any carbon accounting at all, is a bit of nonsense put in by the previous leader of the Greens. I think her then deputy may not be the deputy anymore—he certainly is not the leader of the Greens. His ex-leader slapped that through at one stage. All that does is hurt the expansion and longevity of a really good industry. It is an excellent industry and, because it is so sustainable, it reinvents itself. It is not going to do harm to agriculture. To those who are worried about this sort of thing, it is nothing like an MIS. This is simply a few bob extra for carbon accounting which, a bit like rent, might help them get through the up to 20 years when they are first making some serious cuts—and I am talking about pine here, obviously.

I am trying to get it across that this is not about a carbon sink. I think a carbon sink on any decent agricultural land is the most nonsensical thing I have ever heard of. Holding country up for 100 years, simply so that somebody can get a few carbon credits of one sort or another, is something I am not into and never will be. I am talking about the commercial industry that will be regenerated every 20 or 30 years. It will be an adjunct to what a farmer does. It will be an extra string to his bow; it will not take the place of agriculture. To those who are worried, as some might be in the sugarcane country, there is no way this industry could economically buy that sort of country. The price of carbon would have to be at around $100 to even think of it, and I do not think my Western Australian colleagues and I are ever going to see that happen.

I mention this now because there are some who are worried about where the timber industry will go if it gets a few extra bob out of carbon accounting. It will not make it take over anything; it will make it more feasible; it will perhaps make some inroads into the 50 per cent of timber we use in Australia. The industry is currently worth $4 billion with $2 billion being imported—and, at the moment, that is growing. This is a wonderful industry. We need to grow up about this, do the right thing and help it expand, in the same way as the rest of agriculture. To me, a farmer makes decisions based on his choice and needs, and he will do it when it comes to this as well.