Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, it was disappointing, Senator McGauran. But, despite such a terrible diet of information provided to him, Mr Thorpe was able to say: ‘A lot of people rely on the forest industry for work, so obviously just saying you can’t touch the trees wouldn’t be appropriate.’ On that basis he is streets ahead of Senator Bob Brown and the Australian Greens. It is instructive, isn’t it, that when we are talking about the development of the forest industry, with the Greens asserting that they always support downstream processing, there is a very large gap in the chamber and not a single contribution being made by them.

In this newspaper article, Mr Thorpe said that when he saw some of the forest practices they were quite confronting. I agree with him. I would invite him to have a look at the next steak that he eats—I assume he is a meat eater—and then go to the very beginning, look at a peaceful cow in a pasture and follow it through the process chain to the abattoir. I am sure he would similarly say it is very confronting. However, I am sure at the end of the day he, like so many of us, still enjoys his beef and his good meal of meat. Similarly, I say to those people: ‘Yes, we still enjoy reading our newspapers. We like having toilet paper and tissue paper and we like to have wooden furniture et cetera.’ Well, there are some confronting processes that have to be gone through. The test is not whether it is visually confronting but whether it is scientifically sustainable.

The challenge I continually throw out—that Senator Bob Brown, the Wilderness Society and others always refuse to deal with—is simply this: tell me where in the world do they do forestry better than in Australia? I ask that question continually and not one of these anti-forestry campaigners are able to say to me: ‘Look, Eric, what you ought to do is look to country X for a better practice.’ The simple fact is they cannot, and they know it, and it is about time that they were honest in relation to this debate on forestry.

The third issue that concerns me is that some sectors of the forest industry are, unfortunately, bending over backwards in trying to avoid confrontation and, in doing so, I think, are offending common sense, good practice and good public policy. It pains me to say that in recent times Forestry Tasmania, albeit a government corporation in Tasmania, entered into a memorandum of understanding with a green group to get them out of the forests and stop them from demonstrating. And the Premier welcomed the agreement. Today, Madam Acting Deputy President Kirk—and with your legal background I am sure you would fully understand this—I am calling on the state Attorney-General, as the first law officer of the state, to have a very close look at this memorandum of understanding, repudiate it and ensure that it is ripped up.

This memorandum of understanding has as one of its operative clauses—and this is a matter of great concern—that the activists agree to not damage the completed road. The last time I read my Criminal Code, damaging property was a criminal offence. The MOU then says that the activists agree to ‘not hinder’, to ‘remove all impediments/obstruc-tions’, to ‘not block or prevent movement by motor vehicles’. These are all criminal offences. Good public policy dictates that you cannot enter any binding agreement with another on the basis that one of the parties agrees not to commit a criminal offence.

This memorandum offends every principle of sound public policy. For the Premier to welcome this is unfortunate, as it indicates what he is now doing in a bid to get Kevin Rudd elected. Mr Lennon himself has not been willing to reconfirm his absolute commitment to the Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement. In fact, he has said that he has not said that he would rule out any more lock-ups. That is a major concern to the industry and a major concern to all those who worked so hard, along with Senator Ian Macdonald, in putting that balanced Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement together.

Here is an agreement that is endorsed by the Premier. He says that this memorandum of understanding between industry and the activists is a good move. This is a group of people who are saying, ‘If you remove yourself from the forest, we will no longer commit criminal offences.’ Guess what that group has done? The Huon Environment Centre got themselves out of the Florentine. But where are they today? Set up in the Weld. They agreed not to do damage or obstruct people in one forest and then they moved into the forest next door. To deal with these people in the way that the state government has means that there is state-sanctioned blackmail, and it needs to be condemned by every single person who has a concern about the rule of law in this country—particularly anyone who is concerned about the future of our forest industry. For Mr Lennon and others not to have condemned it, when it offends every principle of public policy, clearly shows what state Labor is doing in Tasmania: it is vacating certain forest areas to clear the way for Mr Rudd to announce further lock-ups in the lead-up to the election.

I plead with those opposite to desist from this ridiculous activity. After the last election, I thought Labor would have learnt its lessons about this. We had a good bipartisan policy: no further lock-ups. We now have 47 per cent of the state locked up. One million hectares of old growth is locked up, and so the list goes on. Surely we can leave that which remains for the forest industry to enable it to make the transition, which will come in due course, to a fully plantation based sector. I commend the bills to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a second time.