Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise of course to argue that this is an urgent matter. The reason it is an urgent matter is that the people who Senator Colbeck and Senator Abetz say that they are supporting are the people who are waiting for the Commonwealth money to come through to support them at this time because they have said they are going broke, they are losing their homes, they are the ones suffering at the moment and they want the money. And Senator Abetz and Senator Colbeck are saying this is not an urgent matter, that the money should not flow and that they oppose it.

Let me go through it for you, Mr Deputy President. It was because the native forest industry is in collapse in Tasmania that the logging industry approached the conserva­tion movement to try and work out a way of exiting native forest logging. In 1993-94 plantation timber started to overtake native forests in terms of sawn timber. That is the reality. So the issue here is, as the CRC on forestry pointed out recently, that 1,300 jobs were lost in the native forest industry in Tasmania during the time that Senator Abetz gave them $250 million of taxpayers' money—and they still managed to lose 1,300 jobs! Forestry Tasmania still managed to lose money in a wildly successful operation of squandering public money. And now the forest industry has signed up to this. The CFMEU supports this deal. They represent the loggers in the industry. They represent the workers in the industry and they are saying, 'That is it. There is no future in native forest logging. We have to get out. We have to transition. We need the money to transition.'

And where are people hurting most in Tasmania? It is in the regions. What has the Commonwealth set aside money for in this deal? Regional development. So what Senator Colbeck and Senator Abetz are saying is, 'No money to the regions.' Let us assume for a moment that the coalition gets its way, that Senator Abetz and Senator Colbeck are successful, and we say, 'Okay, the deal if off. All gone.' What happens is that the woodchip mill stays shut. It shut not because anybody closed it but the company controlling it closed it because it was not longer economic to operate. That is why it was closed.

The forest industry is in decline and the chip mills were closed The contractors' wheels stopped last year and the minister, Minister Ludwig, gave them something like $22 million at the end of last year to keep the wheels turning. But that ran out, because we were actually paying them to run their trucks, paying them to cut down forest they could not actually sell, and they are now broke. A total of 1,300 people lost their jobs in spite of Senator Abetz giving them $250 million. And now the Commonwealth has come back saying, 'Right, this is an end to it. This is where we finally get some solution here. We are going to pay people to exit the industry and we are going to put money into regional development.'

What we need is diversification in the regions. Of all the regions, Smithtown desperately needs diversification. McCains has just left Circular Head. They desperately need new investment in that region and they need it particularly in dairy processing. Part of this regional development money can go to building new facilities in Circular Head. If the coalition do not want it, fine. It stops today. No money goes into Tasmania. All those people broke now remain broke. They lose everything and there is no exit package for them. That is what the coalition is arguing for: no exit package and no regional development money, on the basis, they say, that the industry is sustainable. It is not sustainable. It is going out the back door, which is why those mills closed and why the industry approached the conservation movement. This is urgent because, if the coalition, who are standing up there in the rallies saying to the loggers, 'We will tear this up today,' do that, those people they say they represent will be broke and will lose their trucks, their businesses and their houses. They are going to lose them one way or the other, but this way at least the government is providing some cash for those people to exit the industry. That is the key issue.

We do not want to see good money going after bad, but we do want to see a proper transition out of native forest and proper investment in the regions in Tasmania for diversification. That is what this is all about.