Timber Industry
TIMBER INDUSTRY
Matter of Public Importance
Debate resumed from an earlier hour.
Mr YEADON (Granville - Minister for Land and Water Conservation) [7.30]: I would like to acknowledge and welcome here this evening those in the gallery from the Bennelong Australian Labor Party federal electorate council. The people of New South Wales were confronted on 25 March with a stark choice on forest conservation. They chose Labor's balanced approach. They rejected the conservative's plea that we could have forest conservation or jobs, but not both. They rejected the previous Government, which settled for inaction rather than trying to resolve a difficult issue. That was the hallmark of the previous Government - inaction. Timber industry workers and their families have been callously and needlessly traumatised by the false claims of the honourable member for Monaro and his cronies that the deferred forest area process would cause social dislocation. Their cynical scaremongering ought to be exposed - and it will be. The facts are that there will be no shutdown of the industry as a result of deferred forest areas. When the Federal Government announced its draft list of deferred forest areas, or DFAs, on 29 September, I also released a list of 2,130 forest compartments potentially available for timber supply over the next nine months. These maps have been sent out progressively since last Tuesday. Even more explicit maps and details of forest types have been sent out over the last week.
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Mr Cochran: Which was a week after it started.
Mr YEADON: The initial maps were available almost immediately. The interminable whinger on the other side, the member for Monaro, did nothing when in Government, but now as a member of the Opposition he has all the answers. When I made these maps public I was confident that both Governments had taken into account the reasonable needs of industry to maintain production and employment. This pool of compartments should provide an adequate log supply over the next nine months without compromising forest values or foreclosing any future conservation options. The Federal Government's announcement of provisional DFAs followed months of consultation, which ensured that the Commonwealth list would meet the needs of forest conservation without undermining our strategy to protect jobs. This Government has been involved in continuous consultation with the industry both prior to and after the election and right up until this point of time, and will be so involved into the future - more consultation than the honourable member for Monaro ever thought of when he was a member of the previous Government. Our representations with the Commonwealth Government ensured that our forest policy objectives have been integrated in the deferred forest area process. We have protected forest but have maintained supply to the industry - something the coalition could never do.
Importantly, this Government has retained the central role of the regional resource and conservation assessment council. The areas of deferred forest will be defined and replaced by the RRCAC assessment, a process which involves all stakeholders, and for which this Government has a clear mandate. In reaching agreement with the Commonwealth, New South Wales proposed the interim protection of an additional 1 million hectares of forest outside existing reserves. We have met the 15 per cent benchmark for biodiversity, but in meeting those conservation objectives we have kept the needs of the industry in mind. In regions where the Commonwealth criteria would have affected timber supply to a committed level, we have ensured sufficient areas remain available to the industry. In the Grafton-Casino areas we have used this pragmatic approach to take account of socioeconomic imperatives. We have applied a lower percentage to the reservation of certain forest types - spotted gum to be particular - which are critical to industry in the region.
[Interruption]
The honourable member for Clarence is being all too cynical. We are taking a very practical approach to this policy. If the honourable member had any concern for his constituents he would stop scaring the daylights out of them about their future employment prospects. Spotted gum is well represented elsewhere, and so our conservation values continue to be protected. Timber workers, sawmill owners and dependent small businesses can be confident there will be no job losses as a result of DFAs. But uncertainty and anxiety have been spread by the doomsayers of the State and Federal Oppositions and by some industry spokesmen.
Mr Cochran: People are losing jobs. Can you get that into your head? Can you wake up to it?
Mr DEPUTY-SPEAKER: Order! The member for Monaro will have an opportunity to respond at the appropriate time.
Mr YEADON: They lost jobs on the forest floor when the coalition was in office because that Government would do nothing about it by value-adding the industry and creating jobs. The honourable member for Monaro did nothing. He should not sit in this Chamber spouting his pious rhetoric. He is a disgrace to his constituents and to this Parliament. The honourable member for Ballina, the honourable member for Monaro and their political cronies have been all too willing to make political capital by exploiting the inevitable anxiety being experienced by timber workers and rural communities faced with changes to their industry. Those changes were long overdue, but all the member does is exploit their anxieties. He ought to be ashamed of himself for that. Let us examine some of the claims made by the Opposition spokesman on forestry and others about the implications of DFAs. Mr Page has said that the DFA process was a mere political exercise and predicted a devastating social impact on communities. What a shameful and disgraceful statement. Mr Page is scaremongering among his own constituents. When Mr Page and his mates were in Government, the industry shrunk by 13 per cent.
Mr Kerr: On a point of order: in accordance with previous rulings, the honourable member should use the name of a member's electorate to refer to that member.
Mr DEPUTY-SPEAKER: Order! The Minister will refer to the member by his electorate.
Mr YEADON: The honourable member makes such a worthwhile contribution to this Parliament. When the honourable member for Ballina and his mates were in Government, the industry sank by 13 per cent. Members opposite did nothing - they just sat and watched. Six hundred and fifty-five jobs were lost, but the honourable member for Ballina and the honourable member for Monaro have the hide to say that Labor's policies will have a devastating social impact. They sat and watched while their policies - or lack of them - had a devastating impact. If Labor had not won power the industry would have continued to shrink. It would have been crushed under the pressure of conservation demands and lack of investment, and by lack of competitive viability in the international market. Workers would have had no support from the Government to help them through this inevitable decline. The honourable member for Ballina and his cronies would have abandoned workers in the same way they are preying on their anxieties now. The industry would not have had the promise of resource security which we are going to offer - and will deliver. They would have been faced
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only with continual conflict. That is all we had under the previous Government - seven years of continual conflict.
Late last month the Federal Leader of the National Party of Australia, Mr Fischer, claimed that many jobs will be lost in the timber industry, particularly in northern New South Wales. Mr Fischer must lack a sense of irony, because after making that dire prediction he went on to call for a better working relationship between the Premier and the Prime Minister. How profound! I can assure this House that this Government's relationship with Canberra is, and always will be, far smoother than the former Government's relationship with Canberra. Even on drought assistance, all that Government did was to play politics; it did not care at all about its constituents.
The Executive Director of the National Association of Forest Industries, Dr Robert Bain, is another doomsayer, both in his public statements and through his association's irresponsible advertising campaign. Dr Bain referred to the "alarming social and economic cost" of the decision, and claimed that "the economic development work just hasn't been done". Dr Bain should be well aware that the DFAs represent areas afforded interim protection pending comprehensive regional assessments as laid down in the national forest policy statement, signed by the coalition when in Government. He also knows that the socioeconomic values of forests will be assessed side by side with their environmental values. The State and Commonwealth Governments based their decisions on DFAs on the precautionary principle. This Government does not endorse the extreme approach of the lock-everything-up brigade. It is neither necessary nor desirable to close down the entire native forest dependent timber industry.
Once comprehensive regional assessments have identified the areas required for a reserve system those areas will be permanently preserved and will continue with well-managed and sustainable logging. The honourable member for Monaro went on and on about extremes. It is ironic that he does not realise that he takes an extreme position on his side of the debate. The Government does not pander to extremes on either side of the debate - that includes the honourable member for Monaro and it includes extreme environmental groups. The Government has always said that it will always take a balanced approach to forest policy and conservation, and that is precisely what it is doing.
Mr CAUSLEY (Clarence) [7.40]: The Parliament could well do without the kind of nasty comments heard from the Minister, and I dare say that it will not be long before it does do without them. Frankly, the Minister knows nothing about forests or the management of forests. He has accepted the arguments put forward by the extreme environmental movement; those arguments have captured him. The Minister says that the deferred forest areas will not have any effect on the timber industry. I should like the Minister to explain to New South Wales why that process will not have an effect on the industry because, of the 1.9 million hectares available to forestry in this State, 1.5 million hectares are in deferred forest areas. How can the Minister possibly say with any credibility that there will be no effect on the timber industry? Yes, we do have agreements that state that there will be a resource for six months. The Minister is putting timber cutters back into areas that should not be logged until the year 2011.
Mr Yeadon: That's rubbish.
Mr CAUSLEY: The Minister should come to Grafton - that is the problem with the Minister; he sits here in his little foxhole and will not come to the country to examine problems. There are 800 jobs on the line but the Minister will not even listen. The Minister has absolutely no idea what he is talking about, which is why John Laws says that he is wet behind the ears, that he is a shop steward. John Laws is right: the Minister does not know what he is talking about. The fact is that people's jobs are on the line. There are little towns such as Woodenbong, Urbenville, Drake and Grevillia - does the Minister want me to go through them?
Mr Yeadon: If you like.
Mr CAUSLEY: Those small towns have sawmills, and the Minister is about to destroy them. What else do they do? In Lismore the other day Gavin Hillier said that people would be retrained and relocated. I would like the Minister to tell me how someone who owns a house in Woodenbong would be able to sell his house after the Government has closed down the sawmill there. The Government's move is based on a false premise; an international convention that was signed by the Federal Government, without debate in the Parliament.
Mr Yeadon: You signed the national forest policy statement.
Mr CAUSLEY: The national forest policy statement mentions nothing about 15 per cent.
Mr Yeadon: It talks about a comprehensive reserve system.
Mr CAUSLEY: Yes, but it does not talk about 15 per cent. Where did that figure come from? The Prime Minister's office thought that figure was a good idea. Then the greenies wanted to expand it, so they talked about the forests as at 1750. No-one knows what the forests were in 1750. We now have the National Parks and Wildlife Service trying to carry out computer modelling to find out what the forests were in 1750. There is no species at risk.
Mr Yeadon: No?
Mr CAUSLEY: I was reared in the forest. The Minister should listen and he might learn something. There is no species at risk but there are plenty of jobs at risk. Saying that there will be no loss of jobs is the greatest lie ever perpetrated; the greatest lie ever put forward to try to lull people into a false sense of security. We have a Federal member of Parliament in our area too, the Federal member for Page. He has not opened his mouth to support his local community, the small towns that will be decimated.
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Mr Yeadon: He has not preyed on their anxieties.
Mr CAUSLEY: Has he not? Of course he has. The Federal member for Page has not opened his mouth because he is going along with the Government's little ploy. Today in the budget there was mention of 24 national parks. I challenge the Minister to tell the House where the 24 national parks will be.
Mr Yeadon: They are written in the policy.
Mr CAUSLEY: The Government has told us about four. It will not be long before I go to the electorate of Page. The Labor Party cannot hold the seat. The Labor Party holds the seat by 193 votes, and it will not retain it. The Government has no idea about industries in New South Wales and how they operate. The budget that came down this afternoon is doomed to failure because the Government has destroyed the very industries that are trying to produce income for the budget. People are not stupid -
Mr Mills: Is that right?
Mr CAUSLEY: The honourable member for Wallsend should listen to John Laws for a while to hear what the country people are saying. The one thing that the Government has done is to consolidate the National Party vote in country New South Wales for two generations. [Time expired.]
Mr COCHRAN (Monaro) [7.45], in reply: Thank you, Mr Deputy-Speaker, for another opportunity to refute some of the arguments made by the Minister for Land and Water Conservation. In regard to the result of the State election, I want to make it clear that the number of votes for National Party and Liberal Party members who represent forestry areas was increased in every instance. All of those members represent their areas in such a way that people are confident that the views of their electorates are being represented, and therefore the number of votes for those members increased in the election. The Minister cannot claim a mandate to close down the forest industry. He cannot claim that in some way the 48 per cent of the people of New South Wales who voted for the Labor Party gave the Government good reason to take the actions it has in forest areas across the State.
It is incomprehensible that the Minister should stand before the House as he did today and say that there would be no shutdowns as a result of the deferred forest areas process and that no jobs would be lost as a result of the Government's policies. In fact, jobs have already been lost and uncertainty has already been created as a result of Labor Party policies enunciated before and since the election. The Minister spoke of uncertainty, anxiety and anguish about the future of the timber industry. He alleged that this was being caused by the honourable member for Ballina, who is the shadow minister for land and water conservation, the honourable member for Clarence, me and others.
I want to talk about the uncertainty created by the Labor Party when in opposition until March this year. The anxiety and concern in the industry resulted from the Labor Party's introduction and support of the Endangered Fauna (Interim Protection) Bill and the South East Forests Protection Bill and its support of the honourable member for Bligh in her undermining of the timber industry. The Labor Party refused to accept regulations that would have overthrown the Chaelundi decision. It is such actions that created the anxiety in the minds of those in the timber industry - families who were traditionally Labor Party supporters. It should not be forgotten that the seat of Monaro was held by the Labor Party for 12 years.
Mr Causley: So was the seat of Clarence.
Mr COCHRAN: Indeed. The reason that voters there now vote for the National Party is that National Party members have supported them unequivocally for the past seven or eight years - certainly since I have represented the Monaro electorate. In the minds of those that support the continuation of the small communities there is no doubt where their faith lies. There has been no anxiety created by the National Party. The predictions that I made about the timber industry have come true on each and every occasion. I predict now that as soon as the Federal election is over, regardless of the outcome, the Minister for Land and Water Conservation will preside over the greatest reduction in manpower in the forest industry in the history of this State. The forest industry of New South Wales provides 25,000 jobs. Those jobs are at risk because the Minister for Land and Water Conservation holds that portfolio and he is in the hands of the greenies. The Greens have him well and truly.
People in the northern part of the State depend heavily on the future of the timber industry. Members in these electorates must now be concerned about the future of their schools. A number of those small schools rely on 25 students. If one timber worker and his family are lost, the school could lose one teacher. Hospitals in these small country towns depend on the population base to sustain their viability. Service stations, shops and other services depend on the continuation of the timber industry. The Minister is presiding over the destruction of the timber industry as no other Minister in no other government has done before. He will be called to account at the next election and the Opposition will make plenty of capital about it in the meantime.
The Minister has been asked in a question upon notice whether he will undertake to provide compensation from a promised $60 million to the O'Reilly and Johnston families of Cooma, who have been displaced by the forest policy. He has not provided a dammed cent to them. He has lied through his back teeth. Where is the money? [Time expired.]
Discussion concluded.
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