Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Hansard source

If only what the previous member said was true. What she said actually sounded quite reasonable to the naked ear if you were just listening to that debate. But what she was remiss in saying was that the state Labor governments and what they're doing here—it's exactly the opposite of what the previous member just said. I commend the member for Gippsland for bringing this debate on.

Firstly, I think we need to get clear—for people who may not know—the distinction between what a plantation is and what hardwood-selective harvesting is. Many people would have driven through the most common of pine plantations. You drive past them. They're planted. They're not biodiverse; they're literally planted for the timber that they produce. They grow for the next 20 or 30 years—however long it takes—and then they are just harvested. You'll drive past them, and they're flawed. You'll see hundreds of acres where that plantation has been cleared.

That's the difference between what you call plantations and what we're talking about here—hardwood harvesting. And what that is is that they're going into more diverse areas and biodiverse areas. In Australia, the forestry industry with departments have done this exceptionally well—world-leading, environmental best-standard. A logger can't just go in and start randomly cutting down hardwood. These trees are identified, they're selected in advance, and it's done in a very scientific, very environmental, best-science way. It's been going on for a long time. The foresters themselves—believe me—know that they need this industry to be sustainable. The type of timber that they get from this is very different from that from plantations. Everything the previous speaker said about sustainability, about enhancing the industry, is true. But what the state governments have done is exactly the opposite of that.

Now, there are the other perverse effects of this, because what the state governments are doing is locking it up. They're saying to loggers and harvesters, 'You can't go into these areas and you can't selectively harvest hardwood timber.' What does that mean? That means they're not going in there and doing this. So the result of that is that it's not kept. I've got many areas in my regions. I invite anyone opposite who speaks against this private member's motion to come and I'll show you exact examples in my patch. It's not kept. So what happens to it straight away? Weeds start to grow. We have a weed in our area called lantana. It takes over. There's actually scientific proof of this. What happens to koalas? They leave the national parks because they can't get around anymore because it's not kept. When they come down a tree, they can't go around the ground and go up another tree, so they actually leave the area. The numbers of koalas in that area—I'll show a report I saw just last week from the New South Wales government which supported that. So the desire of what they're trying to achieve is perverse to what they're getting.

The other thing that harvesters do, when they go and maintain fire trails, is maintain a system whereby, when there are fires, it's easy to manage and to do that. Of course, now what happens within national parks—what they're doing in New South Wales—is that those fire trails aren't kept up. Those companies would often, too, donate and give their equipment when there's a fire on to help fight fires and to go in and do management of that. That all disappears. So you can't get access to these places when you're trying to do firebreaks or you're trying to contain a fire outbreak. You can't get access to them. Of course, what you've also done is—our Indigenous brothers and sisters were mentioned earlier—the things that our Indigenous brothers and sisters would do all the time, what we call cultural burns. All Captain Cook, as he was sailing up the coast, was talking about was the fires he saw. They were doing that as a land-management process, which we do. When you lock up a national park, you pervert that, because you can't do the firebreaks that you used to do and, of course, there's more fuel and these things become a huge tinderbox as well.

The other thing—okay, you want to be righteous, and you still think that's a good idea—is that we still need the hardwood. Our demand—we want to build more houses, we want more furniture, you want to build some bridges and you want to do that carbon friendly. Guess what the most carbon-friendly way to do that is? Not concrete, not steel—it's actually timber, which sequesters carbon, as we know.

So what are we going to be doing now as Australia? The states who pre-led this and banned hardwood timber harvesting in the states have had to go to other states to get it. Now there will be less, so you know where we'll go now? Overseas. So we are now going to be importing hardwood timber into this country from countries who don't do it in the sustainable, environmental way we do this. I commend the member for bringing on this motion.

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