Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to support my friend and good colleague the member for Gippsland on this motion because I know how passionate he is about the timber industry, timber workers and regions like ours that grow, make and manufacture things. We have incredibly talented people that make world-leading products. The people that make them are world-beating people.

I am incredibly concerned about where our timber industry is headed Australia-wide, no more so than in our shared region of Gippsland. I'm proud to represent blue-collar workers. I look at the Victorian state Labor government. They have waged an absolute battle against regional communities, against blue-collar workers and particularly against our timber industry. Our entire forest estate in Victoria is about six per cent—sorry, of what we harvest—on 80-year rotation for the hardwood industry, which the Victorian state government has absolutely decimated. If you are going to harvest hardwood in Victoria, it is basically 1/80th of six per cent. That is the entire forest estate that was being harvested.

The ramifications of the closure of the hardwood industry in Victoria are absolutely profound. Don't even get me started on the fire risk as we approach a very hot, dry summer. Many farmers in Gippsland and my electorate of Monash are still drought-impacted—right now—so, heading into summer, we are heading into extreme fire danger. A lot of those timber workers are CFA volunteers. A lot of the harvesters use their harvesting equipment to be able to maintain a lot of that forest estate in a way that prevents and mitigates significant fire risk.

I'm proud to have had an association, prior to coming to this place, with Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, which is in the electorate of my good friend and colleague the member for Gippsland. They made a variety of incredible products using Victorian hardwood—Vic Ash—but now, because of the state Labor government's policies, that timber mill, like many timber mills in Victoria, is having to import timber and wood products from other areas, such as jarrah from WA and glacial oak from the United States. You will see a timber truck coming up the Monash Freeway with a trailer load of Tasmanian hardwood products, taking it to a manufacturing business like Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, and it will come back in the opposite direction with finished products. Now, that is just a crime against good economic management. It's a crime against good environmental stewardship as well.

I have real concerns for the communities and the blue-collar workers that are being left behind. This doesn't protect the environment, and it does nothing to advance blue-collar workers. Often one partner might work in a mill, and the other might be a teacher at the local school or a nurse at the local hospital. If you take that timber job out of a regional community, that whole family will go somewhere else. We have seen that in small rural communities Australia-wide, where those little communities have just been left to wither on the vine because of really poor decisions made in Melbourne or Canberra with no regard to regional communities. Those employers do so much good work in supporting the local Lions and Probus clubs. They are really good corporate community citizens in the towns in which they operate.

I have huge concern about where the future of our timber industry is heading under state and federal Labor governments. We need to make sure that we've got a manufacturing future in this country. Timber products are in high demand. They're in increasing demand for construction, for homes. If we want to build more homes and more buildings, we need timber and wood as a good renewable product. We replant in Victoria—or we did, with the hardwood industry—everything that was harvested. It is the ultimate renewable asset. I really condemn the direction that Labor and the Greens are taking the industry at a state and federal level, and I support wholeheartedly the motion of my friend and colleague the member for Gippsland on this issue.

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