David Pocock (ACT, Independent) | Hansard source

We are hearing a radical ideology that would try and convince people that we exist outside of nature and that we can somehow destroy the very thing that we rely on and not hurt ourselves. In the middle of the last century, Aldo Leopold, the great forester, conservationist and author, said:

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

These are words that we need to heed more than ever in this country—a country that still does not make decisions like we plan to be here for a long time and that is still willing to turn ancient native forests into woodchips, paper pulp and box liners, a high-volume, low-value product. It is a shame on all of us in this place that we are willing not only to allow that to happen but to subsidise an industry so that that can continue.

Native forest logging belongs in our past. It is no longer profitable. It employs a very small number of people, who can be transitioned to plantations, where there is a great future. There is a demand for timber. Timber for housing and all these other things that both sides of politics tell us we need comes from plantations. The vast, vast majority of native forests go into woodchips. We've got to stop doing this as a country. We are destroying our natural heritage. We are destroying the life that sustains us. Even if you don't care about nature, it's in our self-interest to make these changes. Taxpayers have bankrolled losses and bailouts—more than $1.3 billion in accumulated losses in Tasmania, handouts exceeding $1.5 billion in Victoria and about $1 billion in New South Wales. What a tragic use of taxpayer funds.

Yes, we need a transition; it should have happened a long time ago. With that sort of money, every worker and every community could be looked after. We could get people into plantations and invest in the types of economies of the future—in tourism, in land management, in carbon. Instead, we have this short-sighted clutching to the past and a culture war coming from both sides of politics. We've got to do better.