Timber Communities Australia State Conference

Tamar Valley Resort, Grindlewald

Saturday, 4 July 2009

I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Leterremairrener people.

I also wish to acknowledge my Parliamentary colleague Tanya Rattray-Wagner MLC, Councillor Mark Shelton, Mayor of Meander Valley, other invited guests and members of Timber Communities Australia.

It is my absolute pleasure today to represent the State Government at this Conference and to address the Conference on behalf of the Premier, David Bartlett and I thank the TCA State Manager, Barry Chipman, for the invitation.

Timber Communities Australia is a proud organisation representing an important industry and the communities it supports.

And you should be proud.

Your industry supports over 6,000 direct jobs and adds at least $1.4 billion in value to Tasmania’s economy.

Currently, it employs almost 77,000 people Australia-wide.

The industry supports a number of rural and regional communities, and this is why TCA has established 82 branches.

TCA’s 16 Tasmanian branches support regional communities throughout the State including Preolenna, Meander, Liffey, Derwent Valley, Circular Head, St Marys, and – in my electorate of Franklin – the Huon Valley and Bruny Island.

There is far more to timber communities than just the workers directly employed in the industry and TCA recognises this in its membership.

Timber communities are not only the harvesting contractors, the log truck drivers and the mill operators.

They also include local businesses and services that rely on the timber production economy – farmers, shopkeepers, hairdressers, real estate agents, doctors and teachers. Bankers, solicitors, butchers, bakers and grocers.

When you include the families of the workers in these local businesses you realise that tens of thousands of Tasmanians rely on the industry for their livelihoods.

TCA helps these communities to network and organise to serve a common purpose.

It is a truly grassroots organisation and one of the largest membership-based organisations in Tasmania.

It gives a voice to people who are fighting for a simple and fundamental right – the right to use our nation’s renewable resources in a sustainable way and to create wealth that puts a roof over their heads and food on the table.

You should also be proud of the commitment your members have to supporting each other in a time of need.

Many Tasmanian TCA members have been dedicating their time to help their Victorian counterparts by replacing fences damaged and destroyed by the Black Saturday bushfires.

For farmers who have suffered drought and foresters who have experienced a downturn in their industry, it is an extraordinary act of kindness to take an entire week off work to lend a helping hand to your fellow man.

Another reason why TCA members ought to be proud is that your industry is one of the few industries in Australia that makes a positive contribution towards offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.

We know that the sustainable harvesting of forests provides a carbon sequestration benefit.

This fact has been confirmed by the Federal Department of Climate Change, MBAC Consulting, the Co-operative Research Centre for Greenhouse accounting, a myriad of forest scientists and more recently the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It is a fact that exposes a fundamental contradiction in the thinking of the so-called conservationists who given their way would put an end to the forest industry in Tasmania.

Why would the self-proclaimed champions of tackling climate change want to shut down an industry that is leading the way on greenhouse gas reduction?

It clearly shows that they are not truly committed to the challenge of tackling greenhouse gas emissions.

If they were, they would support the proposed biomass power generator at Southwood, which will drastically reduce the emissions from regeneration burns.

They would also support the Bell Bay Pulp Mill, because the reduction in carbon emissions from shipping will massively offset the emissions from the mill.

But of course the Greens and the Wilderness Society have never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

They instead manufacture the facts to suit their story.

They use discredited sham science to lend weight to their claims.

And they have a large and sophisticated fundraising and PR machine to peddle their misguided claims.

Their promotion of the ANU’s Green Carbon report is a great example of the movement lending false credibility to their arguments.

The ANU research was funded by the Wilderness Society and peer reviewed by people with links to the Wilderness Society.

It made claims about carbon storage in the forests of South Eastern Australia based on a small and selective sample.

It then went on to recommend an end to native forest harvesting, even though the study had only looked at the amount of carbon stored, but had not examined changes in carbon storage due to harvesting and replanting.

Even taking the conservative assumption that all carbon is released into the atmosphere when a forest is harvested, sustainably managed forests have a carbon sequestration benefit.

But the Greens and the Wildnerness Society won’t accept that fact, even when the science proves it.

Just like they won’t accept that the industry’s forest practices provide protection for waterways, heritage and threatened species.

They are still fighting old wars and still trying to engage the industry in those wars when the majority of Tasmanians have moved on.

We all know that the true conservationists are in this room.

Long ago, the forest industry found the right balance between environmental and economic sustainability.

They achieved that balance through Australia’s Regional Forest Agreements.

And the industry moved forward, with innovation, with value-adding and with continual improvement in sustainable forest management.

Let’s not forget that Australia’s RFAs were developed through the largest scientific assessment and stakeholder consultation process ever in the history of the forest industry.

Through the Tasmanian RFA and its successor, the Community Forest Agreement, Tasmania’s forest industry not only meets but exceeds national and international forest reservation standards.

Tasmania’s forest reserves bring our state close to being the most protected place on the planet.

Almost half of our land mass is contained in national parks and other protected areas.

And the industry is planting more trees than they harvest.

And they are replacing native forest with – guess what – more native forest!

The Tasmanian RFA is independently reviewed every five years to ensure that it is meeting its objectives.

But if you believed the claims of the Wilderness Society, you would think that Tasmania is being turned into a dustbowl.

This is a lobby group that generates $12 million in revenue each year, and they use that money to attack the livelihoods of working families.

And each wound they inflict is celebrated as a victory.

The devastating impact of this lobbying effort was revealed in a poll commissioned by Forestry Tasmania in September last year.

67 percent of respondents believed that the company was converting native forests to plantations and 27 percent believed that harvested native forests were being permanently stripped of trees.

These are not matters of opinion, they absolute falsehoods that are not borne out by the facts and Tasmanians are believing them.

How much does it cost the industry to combat these lies just for the sake of its own survival?

Why, for example, should you have to chase these troublemakers around the globe to combat their campaign of misinformation?

Why should you have to convince our export markets that the products their buying are from a sustainable source when that effort could be put into expanding Tasmania’s markets?

While the Greens claim to be a party with a commitment to social justice, they sanction this economic sabotage – perpetrated by their footsoldiers in the Wilderness Society – despite the damage it causes.

As if the deception has not gone far enough, Senator Bob Brown, the Messiah of the anti-forestry movement, decided he would even try and dupe his own supporters.

Despite already raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Wielangta case – under the false pretense that biodiversity in the forest was threatened by logging – he made an impassioned plea to supporters to send him more money or he would face bankruptcy and ejection from the Senate.

It was one of the best pieces of melodramatic theatre I have seen.

But how is it that someone who earns an annual salary of $220,000 cannot secure a loan to pay a $240,000 debt?

He knew about this debt for 12 months and yet somehow it was a surprise to receive his final demand?

This elaborate con represents a new low in the Greens’ tactics.

Even if Senator Brown’s claim of imminent bankruptcy was true – which I doubt – why was it up to his donors to help bail him out?

Apparently the old adage of ‘if you make your bed then you lie in it’ doesn’t apply to the Senator.

The debt was of his own making – it was brought about by his vexatious litigation.

The costs awarded to Forestry Tasmania were nowhere near what they incurred and now the Tasmanian taxpayer will have to pick at least part of the tab for Bob Brown’s antics.

If these are the depths of deception the Greens are willing to sink to then the industry has a huge challenge on its hands.

When the Government and the industry want to move forward – to start addressing the real issues the industry faces – the constant opposition from the anti-forestry brigade is like an anvil around our necks.

We cannot let this weigh us down.

Despite the challenges it faces, the forest industry has a history of adaptation and innovation.

Continual improvement and progress is essential to the industry’s growth.

We need to pursue projects that add value to existing products.

The most significant value-adding project in Tasmania is clearly the Bell Bay Pulp Mill.

The Pulp Mill will be Tasmania’s largest ever private sector investment.

It will add $6.7 billion to the Tasmanian economy.

The mill’s construction and its flow-on investment will create some 8,000 direct and indirect jobs and a further 1,500 jobs will result from the mill’s operation.

The announcement from Gunns that they have decided on a joint venture partner is welcome news.

He all hope for positive announcements on the company securing finance and Federal approval.

If the mill is built, it will prove once and for all what value-adding can do for jobs in our state.

But what will be especially satisfying is seeing the egg all over the faces of the anti-mill campaigners when their predictions of doom and gloom fail to be realised.

In the current economic climate, the Bell Bay Pulp Mill is so much more vital now to Tasmania’s economy than it was before.

Of course, regardless of whether the pulp mill proceeds, we need to continue to add value to our forest products.

Our sawmills will need to adapt to future changes in the resource as they face a reduction in the supply of old growth wood and an increased supply of plantation timber.

This wood will require different processing and market development.

We also need to do our utmost to address the threat of climate change, and I am hopeful that international climate change negotiations will find a way to recognise the carbon storage benefits of harvested wood products.

I am confident that together the Government and the industry can meet the challenges of the future.

I want to assure you that the Tasmanian Government is fully committed to a vibrant and sustainable timber industry.

I also wish to congratulate Timber Communities Australia for its staunch support of timber families over the years.

I am proud to have recently become one of your members.

I look forward to participating in this weekend’s Conference and I wish your organisation every success for the future.