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

'Save the forests,' says Senator Faruqi. I will take that interjection. What the Labor Party and the Greens have signed up to today is a deal to kill native forestry and, of course, take away all of the jobs that go with it. We can't escape that fact. It is just that simple. The Greens would not have signed on if it did not mean this industry would now be brought to its knees.

Ms White, the member for Lyons; Ms Collins, the member for Franklin in Tasmania; and my good friends in the Labor Senate team from Tasmania—we should go out on a road trip and talk to the forest workers of Tasmania who have been let down by this Labor government and have had their jobs suddenly pulled out from underneath them. These are people who have mortgages. They live in regional communities like those on the north-west coast of Tasmania. These are people who have kids in schools. These are people who are a part of communities, volunteer fire brigades and sporting clubs. And the Australian government have decided that they don't support these individuals anymore. They've cast them on the scrap heap. Their jobs are not important.

They do have a $300 million bailout package—buyout package, scale-down package, whatever it is—to try and ease the pain of shutting down this industry, to soften the blow of the news that today the Labor Party have sold you out. It is interesting, though. I do wonder how the Greens managed to be talked into providing a further $300 million to the native forest industry, an industry that just last Friday Senator Hanson-Young said—

Honourable senators interjecting—

Sorry, Chair. I can't hear myself.