I second the motion. We've just heard from a regional member of parliament who actually understands what a sustainable timber industry looks like. Throughout his speech, I saw many members opposite shaking their heads, occasionally laughing, but they represent seats where there's no timber industry. There are no plantations or a native hardwood timber sector in their communities. There are no forestry workers. There are no indirect jobs affected. They sit here and vote on issues that are a matter of economic and social life and death in my community and in the member for Wannon's, and they never take the time to understand the issue itself.

When it comes to timber, you have two simple choices. You use your own timber grown in your own country in a sustainable way, or you use someone else's timber. If you don't believe me, take a look at what the Victorian state government has done with its ban on the native hardwood timber industry. In Victoria we are still using everyone else's timber. In Victoria, look no further than the beautiful St Kilda Pier in Port Phillip Bay. Go to the Parks Victoria website. On the Parks Victoria website, they actually gush about the beautiful aesthetics of the hardwood timber decking as it curves around the bay, giving wonderful viewing opportunities for the people of Melbourne. Every piece of timber used on the decking on the St Kilda Pier is Darwin stringybark, brought to Victoria for a couple thousand kilometres of transport costs and the greenhouse emissions that go with that. That is the hypocrisy of Victorian Labor government.

There's not just one example. You can go for a little drive across the western suburbs to the West Gate Tunnel and out onto the Werribee Plain. There's a new structure on the freeway as you drive through the West Gate Tunnel and out the other side. I don't know when we got to a point where you need to have architectural works on the side of a freeway; I think they should just fix the roads. Anyway, there's this architectural structure there that's promoted on the Victoria's Big Build site, which describes the impact of the Indigenous people in western Victoria who used eel nets to capture eels. This huge timber structure that stretches across the freeway is meant to represent the Indigenous people and their eel nets. That timber was provided by Red Stag Timber in New Zealand. We're still using timber in Victoria; we're just importing it from New Zealand, Queensland or the Northern Territory.

The best one since the ban on native hardwood timber harvesting in Victoria is the Anzac Station on St Kilda Road. It's one of these examples of a tram and train interchange. It's a nice piece of engineering, I've got to admit. Go on the website there and read the description of this piece of work. It says it's 85 metres long and 23 metres wide. There's this timber canopy on St Kilda Road. May I say St Kilda Road is basically in the shadows of the Shrine of Remembrance just down the road. That beautiful timber canopy was made using spruce imported from Europe by a company called Hess Timber, housed in Germany. That is what the Victorian Labor Party has done to the native hardwood timber industry in our state. Two choices: use your own timber in a sustainable way, or take someone else's. The Victorian government has decided to keep taking someone else's.

Just 200 kilometres away from St Kilda Road in Victoria, there's a business called Australian Sustainable Hardwoods in my electorate of Gippsland. It's based in Heyfield. It employs more than 200 people. Despite all of the efforts of the Victorian Labor Party to shut them down, they have managed to survive. They are bringing in timber from interstate and overseas to compete against imported products in Victoria on a daily basis.

My interest in this issue is both personal and professional. I've had family members work in the timber industry in Gippsland for decades. I had one cousin killed in a logging accident when he was just 21 years old. My professional interest relates to the economic value of the timber industry and its importance to the future of my region, because the timber industry, and the native hardwood timber industry in particular, has social, economic, environmental and cultural importance to our community. If those opposite bothered to spend any time in a regional community, they would start to appreciate just a few of those elements.

The social elements are incredibly important because these are the communities where these people grew up. This is where their jobs have been and where they've added value to timber products. They've managed to build houses and provide the componentry for hardwood or for window framing. To people who live in the suburbs who say, 'I don't need timber; I don't like the forestry industry,' don't take your kids to an indoor netball court, indoor basketball court or indoor gymnasium and run around the hardwood floor. If you don't want timber, don't take your kids to those facilities, because you can't do that with pine; it has to be hardwood, and it has to be hardwood sustainably harvested here in Australia. The people in my community are proud of the jobs they've had and the jobs they've done in building the infrastructure in their own communities and also right throughout Australia.

The economic importance is well understood on this side of the House—80,000 direct jobs and 100,000 indirect jobs associated with the timber industry. But those opposite, in their self-righteousness, in their desperation to appease the Greens, have never bothered to understand the environmental argument for a native hardwood timber industry. They are so desperate to make sure they get those preferences from the Greens, to shore up some of that left-wing vote and make sure it votes for the Labor Party to keep their own primary vote higher, that they've never bothered to understand what a sustainable hardwood timber industry does for the environment of this nation. Well-managed, harvested forests are part of the solution to reducing emissions, because a young re-growing forest absorbs more carbon than a mature deteriorating forest. That's a simple fact.

The member for Fremantle says, 'No, it's not.' I invite him to stand up at some point—I'm sure he'll get his opportunity—and he can run through how he came up with this strategy. He was the architect of methodology that Labor's applying here. The assistant minister, Mr Wilson, was the architect of this methodology. Shutting down the Australian native hardwood timber industry is the deliberate design strategy of what he's trying to achieve here. He has stated on many occasions that he hates the native hardwood timber industry. From the wooded suburb of Fremantle, from the heavily timbered suburb of Fremantle, the member for Fremantle has always wanted to shut down the native hardwood timber industry. He was happy when they shut down the industry in Western Australia. He was happy when they shut it down in Victoria. He would love to see all harvesting in the native timber industry end. Tell me that's not true. The silence says it all. This bloke wants to shut down the native hardwood timber industry right across Australia—