Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

As all senators know, the National Reconstruction Fund will set aside $15 billion to help us rebuild an industrial base in our country. It is beyond doubt that our manufacturing sector has declined significantly over recent decades. It would be fantastic to see Australia become a bit more of a country where things are actually made rather than just a hole in the ground or a whole bunch of forests that we export the raw materials from and then they are value-added somewhere else in the world.

I can that say for my home state of Tasmania—and we just heard from Senator Tyrrell, and I thank Senator Tyrrell for her contribution and for putting up an amendment for the consideration of the Senate—I've sat and watched our native forests absolutely destroyed for many decades, the overwhelming majority of them to be exported for woodchips and as whole logs. I can see Senator Hughes shaking her head over there on the Liberal benches, but I say to Senator Hughes and anyone else: go and have a look at the woodchip pile on the Burnie wharf. Go and have a look at the stacks of whole logs on the Hobart wharf. They are massive. There are literally tens, and probably in the case of Burnie hundreds of thousands of tonnes of our beautiful native forests. I have seen that Burnie woodchip pile glowing pink from the myrtle woodchips that have been piled on. I see the best logs out of our native forests exported as whole logs to the peeler mills in other countries—exporting jobs and exporting our forests; massive carbon bombs and massive destruction of our landscape for the enrichment of the few and the impoverishment of most of the rest of our beautiful state of Tasmania.

Make no mistake: native forest logging does not have a social licence. It is a carbon bomb and it is a mendicant industry that can only survive due to ongoing taxpayer subsidies. Let me tell you one thing, colleagues: if you pulled all the public subsidies out of Australia's native forest logging industry, it would finish the next morning. The next morning it would be over, because it is the taxpayer who is subsidising the profits of the corporations that are driving the destruction of our native forests and the massive emissions of carbon and carbon equivalent gases that that involves. We're very proud in the Australian Greens of the amendments that we have negotiated which make it clear that none of the money—

Debate interrupted.