Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Eden-Monaro for bringing this motion forward, because it gives me, as a Western Australian who represents timber communities, an opportunity to discuss some of the WA Labor government's policies relating to timber. But I'll come back to that. I first want to address the motion as brought forward by the member for Eden-Monaro.

Yes, Australia is experiencing a shortage in timber products. In some respects, we're a victim of our own success. Certainly the HomeBuilder program has turbocharged the construction industry. As speakers before me mentioned, in July and August of last year the construction industry in Australia was facing a cliff. Applications for homes had dropped off that cliff, and they were looking down the barrel of some seriously hard economic conditions. The construction industry across this nation employs over a million people. The government took swift and decisive action, and I want to commend the Assistant Treasurer, Michael Sukkar, for his policy initiative in this space. Across my electorate in some of the smaller regional towns we've seen an explosion in housing approvals. Blocks of land that had been sitting idle for up to 10 years with no offers have all been snapped up, and that has turbocharged the regional economy.

But let's get the facts straight here: this timber shortage is a worldwide phenomenon at the moment. A particular beetle in eastern Europe devastated the plantation estates in Europe. Much more of the product is ending up in wood pellets to power electricity generation plants across Europe. So we are seeing high demand at a time when production is dropping off. As previous speakers mentioned, this is a 30-year investment. A forestry plantation takes 30 years to grow. We can look back 30 years to see what the policy settings were then, and it's interesting to note that there was a Labor government in power at the time. But let's not look at the past; let's look to the future.

As my colleague the member for Barker pointed out, the federal government is investing an enormous amount of money in the forestry industry going forward. We've committed almost $20 million to establish 11 regional forestry hubs around the country. One of those hubs is partially situated in my electorate, and it's already giving confidence and kicking goals in terms of forestry industry investment in that part of the world. We've delivered almost $80 million in funding recovery and resilience activities following the bushfires, and I'm sure that much of the $80 million ended up in the member for Eden-Monaro's electorate. We've also delivered $6 million in funding for new and existing National Institute for Forest Products Innovation centres. At this stage, they're situated in Gippsland, in Mount Gambier and in Launceston. These centres are delivering targeted regional research and development activities, which we know are key to developing the forestry industry.

In the time I have left, I want to come to the Western Australian situation. What has happened to our native forest industry in WA is quite alarming. As we know, a long-term investment such as forestry needs confidence. It needs confidence that government are going to back them and it needs confidence that government are going to keep to their word. In terms of the impact across Western Australia—and much of this is in my electorate of O'Connor—the native forestry sector directly employs over 500 people and contributes $220 million to the WA economy each year. In addition to those directly employed people, the industry underpins many small businesses across towns like Nannup, Manjimup, Bridgetown and many more across my electorate. Ninety per cent of the jobs in the figure that I quoted are based in those regional communities.

How did this come about? How did we arrive at this situation? In 2020, the state government and the minister responsible—Minister for Forestry Dave Kelly—made the statement in relation to Parkside, which invested $50 million in processing facilities:

Parkside has come to Western Australia and made significant investments because it had confidence that this government supports the ongoing native forest industry. For the member to say that we are undermining confidence is simply not true.

And what did Minister Dave Kelly announce on 9 September 2021? That they were pulling the rug out from under the native logging industry and closing it down in 2024. It's an absolute disgrace. (Time expired)

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