We have the sad remnants of a Labor Party—I remember when the old Labor Party used to stand up for the battlers. They would stand up for the timber workers. They'd stand up for people who were involved in the forest industry in my community and be proud of the work they were doing in Gippsland. But the modern Labor Party sells out those workers. It sells out their jobs. It ignores their economic contribution to the nation and puts our lives at risk in our communities. When you stop the native hardwood timber industry, you put us in danger because people die and animals die in poorly managed forests—and we have more than enough public land in Gippsland being poorly managed by the Victorian state government right now; we don't need more reserve areas and more areas being locked up.

We need more boots and less suits. That's more boots on the ground doing practical environmental work and less suits in metropolitan areas making excuses, less suits from the Labor Party in city seats telling us how to live our lives and less suits actively, deliberately, trying to take away the jobs of hardworking Australian timber workers.