Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to start by saying wood is good. It is actually a good resource. It's a wonderful material that is renewable. When trees are cut down and used to build things like the beautiful desks in this chamber and the framing of the buildings we work and live in, the trees are replanted. We don't leave deserts out there.

What we've just heard is one of the most ridiculous approaches to forest science, or so-called approaches to forest science, that I've ever heard. The Australian Greens are forest science deniers. They selectively quote from reports. One of the quotes that Senator Rice provided to the chamber a little earlier on was that forestry operations cause bushfires and increase the risk of bushfires. This is patently untrue.

The forest industry, I might add, supports 52,000 jobs in regional communities, like those in the state of Tasmania. It is worth $24 billion to the economy, including native forest harvesting, and I think it's madness that the Victorian state Labor government is planning to exit native forest harvesting when there is a market for it. I might add that we as a country are world leaders when it comes to managing our forest estates, both plantation and native. You know what? When we close down certain parts of our forest industry, the markets that want to buy our product go elsewhere to look for it, and they go to places where they don't manage the forests well, where they don't care about wildlife, where they burn the forests after they've gone through and where they don't care about jobs and the locals. We do. That's the difference, and that's what these policies that the Australian Greens bandy about would end up resulting in: worse environmental outcomes and worse economic outcomes.

I think we all need to acknowledge how devastating these bushfires have been for our nation and, as part of that, acknowledge the impact that the fires have had on the forest industry. No-one disputes the impact that they've had on the environment. I agree with Senator Rice. We do need to work together to protect our environment. The forest industry agrees, because if we trash our environment, if we trash our brand, no-one will want to buy our product. The Greens love going on overseas missions to tell the world we don't do it well, fibbing to the rest of the world about what we actually do here. It is an industry that we should be proud of. It is an industry that I stand proudly with.

To the point about salvage harvesting, Senator Rice referred to it as 'looting the forests'. The proposal by the Australian Greens to end salvage harvesting would mean that we would leave all these burnt trees on the forest floor. What happens when timber starts to rot? Oh, I think it starts to emit carbon. Salvage harvesting also manages fuel in the forest floor for the next big bushfire. So this idea of managing our forests to prevent these cataclysmic events that threaten life, threaten property, threaten the environment—you've got no plan, Australian Greens, to deal with these things. It's all emotive argument; it's not based on science. You have your head in the sand, Senator Rice.

Senator Rice interjecting—

The Australian Greens need to read the signs. I'd also invite the Australian Greens to come with me tomorrow. There are some timber contractors coming to Parliament House to meet with me to talk about things like salvage operations. I would like you to come and join them in my office tomorrow afternoon, and I would like you to explain to them why it is you think they should not be able to access this resource in a way that is environmentally sound, will protect these forests into the future and will prevent these fires from occurring to the same scale.

We hear all of this rhetoric around things like why fuel reduction burns and other measures like that shouldn't occur. The lock-it-up-and-throw-away-the-key approach is the wrong approach.

Senator Rice interjecting—

Exactly. I think Senator Rice agrees with me on that. We need to manage all of our forest estates. We need to make sure that we don't have what they call 'delinquent neighbours' with weeds and pests out of control and all the fuel-load building up the way that it is. We need to make sure that we are managing all of our forest estates, whatever the tenure, to ensure that we prevent these sorts of events from occurring in the future.

The forest industry in Australia is a proud industry. It's one that, generally speaking, enjoys bipartisan support between Labor and the coalition parties, particularly at the federal level. It's something that I look forward to growing as an industry. We've got a commitment to plant an extra billion trees, going to the point in the Greens MPI letter. I look forward to growing the industry, and I hope the Greens start listening to forest science instead of denying it. (Time expired)