Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to acknowledge one of Australia's most sustainable and renewable industries: forestry. Our forest industries not only support many regional communities, providing income for tens of thousands of families, but also make an enormously positive environmental contribution. Each year, around 70 million new and renewable trees are planted to support our sustainable forest industries. Nationally, enough seedlings are planted annually to cover an area equivalent to 136,000 footy ovals, a fact I'll be celebrating this Thursday, which is National Forestry Planting Day. These are trees that, as they grow, absorb carbon from the atmosphere before they are harvested to create a range of sustainable and renewable fibre products, products that lock-up and store that carbon. Sustainable forestry plantings ensure Australia has a continual renewable resource that contributes to long-term carbon emission abatement. In fact, Australia's current plantation estate an estimated 258 million tonnes of carbon. And we want to do more. Our government is supporting industry to deliver a billion new plantation trees. We're investing $20 million in our National Forest Industry Plan, which will turbocharge our renewable timber and wood fire industry, tripling economic value by 2050. The message is clear: our forests and forest products industries not only contribute to the economy and do some heavy lifting for the environment.