Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I rise to echo the words of my colleague Senator Cadell, who's the co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Forestry, Timber and Paper Products and someone who proudly stands up for jobs in our regions. What we have before us in the Senate today is yet another motion that is antiworker, antiregions and antimanufacturing. It's no surprise that it's sponsored by the Australian Greens, who continue to misunderstand the importance of forestry and its industry here in Australia.

Australia is a global leader when it comes to sustainable forest management, something that we have been proud of for decades. Whether it's in plantation or native forestry, our forestry industry harvests timber with a level of environmental care that is unmatched anywhere else in the world. Beyond that, the research and development undertaken by our industry plays a major part in global efforts to improve forest management and to mitigate climate change.

The environmental commitment is most clearly reflected in the Australian Forest Products Association's recent announcement that our forestry industry can achieve net zero emissions by 2029. That's right—this industry so irrationally demonised by the Australian Greens can reach net zero in two decades, ahead of the general economy, if we get the policy settings right. The Building a low-carbon future for Australia report by Forest and Wood Products Australia also shows that this path is real and it can serve our ambition to achieve net zero. Australian forests, both native and plantation, are carbon vacuums. They store around 14 billion tonnes of carbon and they remove 15.8 million tonnes of carbon annually, which is the equivalent of taking 3.4 million cars off our roads each year. Expanding new plantation sites will only increase this capacity. I am just surprised and gobsmacked that the Australian Greens actually are against that.

There's also great potential to boost decarbonisation in this country by encouraging timber use in construction across all sectors: in residential, commercial and industrial. We should back our timber industry not demonise it. Homes that are built predominantly from timber have a 46 per cent lower carbon emission profile than conventional dwellings that are made with steel and concrete. That is the fact. But this commendable vision cannot be achieved without a reliable supply of sustainable Australian timber.

Despite what the Greens might claim, this includes timber both from native forests and from plantations. Of course, plantation timber is critical. That is why the Albanese government is proudly investing in plantation. It is making record investments, expanding our plantation estates right across Australia. But plantations alone cannot meet our current domestic demand on producing the full range of timber that is required by modern construction and forest products industries and a modern economy. If we shut down the Australian native forestry sector, we do not reduce the amount of timber that is used here in Australia. Instead, what we are simply doing is pushing the problem elsewhere, and, as Senator Cadell mentioned, we are effectively replacing Australia's world-class industry with timber that is imported from overseas jurisdictions that have significantly weaker environmental and worker protections than what we have here.

Unfortunately, we are already seeing one of the worst examples of this risk with revelations that there are imports of Russian timber via third countries into Australia, supporting Putin's war efforts against Ukraine. I want to take this opportunity to thank the Ukrainian ambassador for bringing this particular issue to my attention and for his constant advocacy for the people of Ukraine. Timber of Russian origin is being rerouted through other countries to get onto our construction sites and avoid sanctions that we have put in place. This is a serious matter, and it is unacceptable, and I would have thought Senator McKim would be backing that and backing the people and those industries. We don't want this dirty timber in our economy; we want to back local jobs and our regions and support the manufacturing of this great country.