Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr President. I congratulate you on your election to the esteemed position which you now hold. In doing so, as a fellow South Australian I acknowledge that, for today at least, you have replaced the Adelaide Crows as the pride of South Australia. My question is to the Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation, Senator Eric Abetz. Is the minister aware of the recent call by the CFMEU that the Australian government ratify the flawed Kyoto protocol? What would be the consequences for Australia’s forest industry and for the environment if this action were taken?

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr President. I congratulate you on your appointment as President of the Senate, and I congratulate Senator Bernardi on a very perceptive and important question.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Carr interjecting—

Paul Calvert (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, Senator Carr.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am aware of the unsurprising yet counterproductive call by the CFMEU and others that we ratify the flawed Kyoto protocol. This is unsurprising because this is Peter Garrett’s Labor and the unions in lock step all the way—yet counterproductive because, as the evidence clearly shows in New Zealand, it has been the very signing of the Kyoto protocol which has caused a significant decline in the carbon positive timber industry. It may interest senators in this chamber to know that, unlike Australia but just like 30-plus countries including Denmark and Norway, New Zealand is going to miss its Kyoto targets by a substantial amount. In fact as a result of signing Kyoto the latest estimates are that New Zealand will be forced to pay a $1.7 billion Kyoto fine. That is more than just a slap on the wrist. In a very perverse environmental outcome, the New Zealand forest sector, which actually takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, has been particularly hard hit. Allow me to explain.

As a result of signing the flawed Kyoto protocol, New Zealand landowners who harvest trees after 2008 and who do not replant them now face a Kyoto carbon tax of up to $13,000 per hectare. As a result, it is estimated that nearly one-third of New Zealand’s carbon-sequestering plantation forests harvested in 2006 have already been converted to other land uses such as pasture. Additionally, it has caused a glut of timber on the market—much of it immature. It has also resulted in ridiculous instances of immature forest plantations being sprayed and killed where they stand. This is all to avoid the pending Kyoto tax. Worse still, in addition to clearing existing trees, New Zealanders have simply stopped planting new plantations. This is all because of Kyoto. No wonder Martin Ferguson is a climate change sceptic. Unlike Australia, where our forest estate is growing by about 70,000 hectares per annum, New Zealand’s plantation estate has actually fallen by 70,000 hectares per annum. As a result—and here is the real killer for the CFMEU—employment in the forest industry in New Zealand has fallen by over 20 per cent.

Yet the CFMEU and Mr Garrett say that it is in the interests of forest workers to ratify the Kyoto protocol here in Australia. The New Zealand experience clearly shows that that is not the case. I remind those opposite, and in particular the CFMEU, that, unlike what Joe McDonald might think, the ‘F’ in CFMEU actually does stand for forestry. If the CFMEU and Mr Garrett were acting in the interests of forest workers, like the Howard government is, then they would instead be advocating well thought out, practical, sensible measures to reduce Australia’s CO emissions. What we have is a Labor accord with the Greens; whereas the coalition has an accord with the environment and the workers of Australia. (Time expired)