Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Lyons for putting his private member’s motion forward, because it gives me an opportunity to speak about the importance of the timber industry and forestry to my seat of Page and to the whole north-east. There are a couple of things in particular I want to talk about. I know that the motivation was to give protection to the industry. In Page, the whole north-east and the North Coast there is a strong environmental movement that is decades-old, but the timber industry is a lot older. I have lived through the regional forest agreements, the RFAs, and I have lived through a whole range of conflict. We are at a stage now where we have the RFAs and we have some certainty, but there are still real problems in the industry.

I want to thank Southern Cross University, particularly Professor Jerry Vanclay, who hosts our Forest and Timber Industry Forum. That Forest and Timber Industry Forum has a range of people involved in it, from Planted Forest Operations, Forests NSW; Koppers Wood Products, the Hurfords Group, 4STree Pty Ltd and Timber Communities of Australia. I thank Tony Wade from Timber Communities of Australia for providing me with some information tonight on the industry.

It is hard to break down the figures specifically for Page, but for the upper north-east of New South Wales from Coffs Harbour north a lot of timber comes from private native forest. This equates to about $84 million of manufactured output, $26 million per annum in wages to about 650 employees in harvesting and processing. There is also $15 million to landholders for their trees. It is estimated that an additional five people are employed for a certain area of timber harvested, which in this instance would equate to about 1,300 additional jobs.

I also want to talk about the managed investment schemes. I have a briefing paper here called A framework for a sustainable forest and timber industry from the Southern Cross University Forest and Timber Industry Forum. I met with them recently. They asked me if they could have a meeting with the minister. I have put that request in and I am sure that that will be able to happen. I am hoping it can, because there are some good things they have to say and some specific things they want to ask. Some of those are about a sustainable industry. It is about creating jobs and income opportunities, delivering high-value renewable green products to current and future generations. It sustains biodiversity and clean water, captures carbon and provides renewable energy options. These are the words from the forum themselves. There is a proposed action plan which covers a legislative and policy review and renewal. It has immediate measures in there about the disposal of small wood and mill wood waste. There are short-term, stopgap measures to assist forest plantation owners. That includes provisions in the MIS about tax concessions.

I have already spoken in this place about the review and a report on MIS. I said that that was a good start but that it did not go far enough. While managed investment schemes might be applicable to what they were designed for—which was international equity trusts and a whole range of other financial products—when we are looking at forestry and agriculture different provisions within the MIS are needed. It needs to be quite specific and there needs to be a whole lot of people involved in it—particularly more involvement with local government. Forest research is another area within the plan. Key considerations are forest plantations as long-term infrastructure investments. We know forests take a long time to reach maturity—up to 40 years. Thus, long-term, patient capital is required. Patience is not always operative when we have managed investment schemes, because MIS promote short-term rotations and low-value product. There are also forest plantations supporting environmental services. (Time expired)

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