Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to take this opportunity to again talk about the timber industry in Tasmania, particularly as there has been much time and energy spent developing the guidelines for a new pulp mill in Northern Tasmania. We Northern Tasmanians owe it to ourselves to give the proposed pulp mill project every opportunity to prove that it can meet the Tasmanian government’s tough environmental standards. The potential economic and employment benefits are huge. The mill will require 4,000 workers during the construction phase, and more than half of those will be employed at the Long Reach site itself. Those 4,000 workers will have money to spend on accommodation, food, clothes, petrol, dry-cleaning and other goods and services. An influx of that magnitude will have an enormous effect on the turnover of so many different businesses, enabling many to expand and employ more staff. It is important for all Tasmanians that it goes ahead.

Those who oppose it because of the necessity of harvesting trees should be reminded of a recent report that found that millions of dollars worth of timber imports into Australia are from black market logging operations. The local furniture industry claims that jobs are being lost and businesses are being forced to close because they cannot compete with the cheap illegal imports. The report, entitled Overview of illegal logging, by Jaakko Poyry Consulting, found that black market timber was used in furniture, paper, woodchips and wood panels. According to this report, about nine per cent of all timber imported into Australia is illegally logged.

This black market trade, which is coming into Australian ports mostly from Asia, is estimated to be valued at $400 million per year. It certainly affects the downstream processing industries, because when wood is imported it disadvantages our suppliers by competing unfairly with legally supplied timber. Local firms would much prefer to use local timber, as they know its quality, they know where it comes from and it can be traced through all its processing, which allows much better quality control. But they have to compete in the marketplace with illegal wood suppliers with respect to both made up furniture and the raw material itself. The problem is believed to emanate from organised criminal logging rackets in Asia, particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia. This could worsen, too, because large volumes of imported furniture from China are suspected of being made from timber illegally felled in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Few people in Australia really understand what is happening, although the industry is very concerned about this. It is felt that it is high time that the industry established a company based certification system to tackle the problem. Tasmania has been talking about this for some time and wants to ensure that Tasmanian timber is marketed as a certified product coming from a named site with named qualities about the timber. This is at the moment in the process of being introduced. Although the government here has raised the issue with Indonesia, where the report estimated that up to 80 per cent of all timber is illegally logged, growing restrictions on the local timber were increasing Australia’s reliance on imported timber.

This is a warning to the Greens and others who purport to be trying to save the forests in Australia. Do they really prefer to allow our forests to age and deteriorate while huge amounts of imported timber flood our market and put our workers out of work? Should we take the cleverer path and make sure we use our timber wisely, efficiently and sustainably, allow our ageing forests to be replaced where they can be and have more trees planted across the nation to supply an industry that is one of the oldest and yet most far seeing of all the industries in this country? Those opponents of the pulp mill should look past the end of their noses and see what is happening. Let us use our materials to develop our industries and our jobs. Let us continue to grow this exciting resource across our nation. Think about this next time you set off to buy some furniture. Look at the label and look at the quality of the timber.