Wednesday, 9 March 2022

Bills

Conservation, Forests and Lands Amendment Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Mr T BULL (Gippsland East) (18:01): I was just coming to my crescendo when we had to go on to the matter of public importance, but the point I was making was that the Greens in this chamber, who want to close down and who hate this timber industry, will be the ones that will be on the steps campaigning that we are importing timber from countries with less oversight. That is what they will be doing, saying that we are killing the orangutan. This is an industry that needs support. These are families, these are people in our communities who need to be able to go about their lawful jobs without being impeded, and that is what I would hope this legislation ends up doing—supporting the timber industry to go about its business and not being used by the government to provide more impediments to this sector—because at the end of the day this Labor government is also intending to close down our native timber industry. But these families need support, not only for the long term but in the short term, and we will be considering amendments between houses to enshrine that in the legislation so that it is used for good purposes, not bad.

Ms CRUGNALE (Bass) (18:03): I rise to speak on the Conservation, Forests and Lands Amendment Bill 2022. This bill actually builds on the strong track record of protecting Victoria’s natural environment and supporting industry, and I thought it might be a really good opportunity to rattle off some of the achievements of the Andrews Labor government and previous Labor governments as well. Some of our proudest achievements obviously have been delivering major reform of the Environment Protection Authority Victoria through the Environment Protection Act 2017 and the Environment Protection Amendment Act 2018. We banned cattle grazing in the alpine and river gum national parks in 2015, banned fracking in Victoria and removed the power to grant 99-year leases over national and other parks under the National Parks Act 1975 in 2015 and delivered the Climate Change Act 2017.

To go back a step in time to the 1980s, we significantly expanded the park system in the 1980s and early 90s, including in East Gippsland, the Alps and the Mallee. We significantly expanded protected wilderness areas in 1992, created the Great Otway National Park and the new Point Nepean National Park in 2005 and ceased cattle grazing in the Alpine National Park in 2005–6. Locally of course we certainly owe a lot to former conservation minister from this place Kay Setches and also former Premier Joan Kirner.

I might just recount that back in November 1987 in Inverloch there were some 400 people at a public meeting who passed a motion calling on the then council to inform the conservation minister that they opposed the formation of a marine reserve between Harmers Haven and Inverloch. As people may know, this was planned to be the sewage outfall for the water board at the time. What they said was a marine park will spell the end for Inverloch. Well, this marine park, thanks to Joan Kirner, became the Bunurong Marine and Coastal Park, and thanks to the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change has now become the Yallock-Bulluk Marine and Coastal Park, and it is an absolute treasure for our local community—much loved, much visited as well. Also we know that Joan Kirner called for public submissions against some local opposition to the rail trail, which many wanted the landowners to purchase, and of course the rail trail from Wonthaggi to Anderson became one of the first of Victoria’s rail trails.

But I will move to the penguins, because we cannot talk about Bass Coast without mentioning penguins, and the Summerland Estate, which was on prime penguin habitat, and Anne Davie, who was part of and still is—

Ms Vallence: I do love penguins, but on a point of relevance, Acting Speaker, we are talking about the Conservation, Forests and Lands Amendment Bill 2022, which is quite narrow, about the Code of Practice for Timber Production and the precautionary principle.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Settle): So your point of order is on relevance?

Ms Vallence: Yes, on the precautionary principle.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Settle): On the point of relevance, it is a wideranging debate. I understand that we are relating to forestry and conservation, but I do ask the member to return to the bill.

Ms CRUGNALE: Okay, well, I might just quickly reference the Summerland Estate, because it is really the only place in the world where humans have been removed for wildlife, and it now has the largest colony in the world. But yes, I am quite happy to speak on another aspect of the bill, being the precautionary principle.

This bill really requires us to put in place protective measures to ensure that we do not have regrets in the future. Most recently the precautionary principle was triggered by the 2019–20 Victorian bushfires, which dramatically impacted forest ecosystems, threatened the survival of endangered species and limited timber production, particularly in Gippsland and East Gippsland. There does remain scientific uncertainty about the ability of species to recover from these impacts, and therefore consideration needed to be given to what additional protective actions would be required in timber harvesting operations. So these reforms will enable practical guidance to be given to timber harvesters on the actions that they will need to take to meet the requirements of the precautionary principle, particularly in the event of natural disasters that rapidly change the context for the management of our forests. The compliance standards will provide a pathway for timber harvesters to comply with the precautionary principle, and this is not some sort of pie-in-the-sky concept. Its practical applications are real, and in my electorate, as I mentioned earlier, with the Gippsland bushfires we certainly smelt a lot of that smoke on the Bass Coast. We all heard the statistics too—over 1.5 million hectares of country burnt, over 1000 registered Aboriginal heritage places impacted, 170 rare or threatened species had over half their habitat impacted and 10 000 livestock were lost, and we will never know the total loss of animal life.

Our government has pledged to undertake a comprehensive review of the code by December 2023 as required under our modernised regional forest agreements. I am proud to be part of a government that is committed to making our state not only sustainable but livable for future generations, balancing environmental concerns with jobs. Many of us when we last met in this chamber detailed the wonderful work happening in our regions outside of metropolitan Melbourne.

We know that forestry jobs are dear to our rural communities, and our workers in the industry certainly need certainty as they respond to changing forestry conditions and forest management. In this bill we seek to move the management standards and procedures into the code rather than have them as an incorporated document. This will give more clarity and allow the timber industry to be involved in changes to the rules in future. It also acknowledges that while flexibility is needed, constancy is also really important. We also know that we need to put in the word ‘sustainable’, front and centre of every decision we make. Transitioning away from native timber harvesting by 2030 is a brave and very wise decision, and this legislation will give a clear and enforceable regulatory framework for our timber industry during this time.

I take this opportunity to thank my colleagues the tireless Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change and the Minister for Agriculture as well. Together they have overseen the Victorian forestry plan, supporting the transition of our native timber industry to a future based on plantation supply. As the Minister for Agriculture said in the Assembly last December:

… we will stand by industry, workers and contractors … We are not just grandstanding, making statements; we are doing the hard work to make sure that our industries get the timber that they need.

We are protecting jobs with a commitment of over $200 million, undertaking long-term investment in plantations with an additional $110 million in the Gippsland plantations investment program, providing communities with not only the resources to transition but also the time, stepping down from 2024, allowing a six-year transition and supporting the Maryvale mill until at least 2050, providing security for the 1000 or so workers and stability for their customers.

Both the timber industry and community environment groups need clarity as we transition, and Victoria has 7.8 million hectares of public native forests and parks, and this land is habitat for ecosystems. This land connects our traditional owners to country, and this same land is home to and work for the timber industry workers and their families. It is land that provides employment for regional economies through tourism. It is the land we seek out when we need a respite from our chaotic cities to breathe deeply and reconnect, and we need to balance the range of values and uses of our forests. This bill will give us more clarity in what is required.

I will say a brief word about the Office of the Conservation Regulator, another Labor achievement, which has a dedicated oversight function to ensure that environmental protections are aligned with community expectations and the law. This amendment will enable the conservation regulator to create the compliance standards, giving guidance to VicForests on how to comply with the precautionary principle, and these will be recommended to the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning secretary for decision. It will also strengthen the position of the conservation regulator by adding new infringement powers for anyone breaching the code of practice. Currently the conservation regulator provides advice to VicForests, but this has no legal guarantee, and these changes also bring the conservation regulator’s disciplinary powers in line with other regulators in Victoria.

So in summary, it is technical and it is complex, but it is fundamental that we preserve our forests for the future. And I shall commend this bill to the house.

Mr RIORDAN (Polwarth) (18:13): I rise this afternoon to continue the contributions from the opposition on the Conservation, Forests and Lands Amendment Bill 2022, and I note that our side of politics is in fact not opposing this bill, but we are suggesting some worthy amendments in the upper house, which will no doubt be debated up there, but as the government really allows very little debate or any sort of interrogation of the bill in the lower house we will have to persevere with the contribution this afternoon.

I do have concerns with this bill, and absolutely, because I have seen how Labor treats native forest logging. Certainly in my part of the world, in the Otways, we saw it run out of town with very poor compensation and really flying in the face of logic. Anyway that is from previous Labor governments, but they have now put a bill forward where they are saying to the industry, ‘Trust us, please’. And in the minister’s concluding comments in her speech she said Victoria’s timber industry and forestry workers will be transitioning away from native timber harvesting by 2030. So this government are putting this bill up, and they are sort of saying to us and they are saying to the industry and they are saying to those vital forest communities throughout East Gippsland that they have got to trust them, and trust is an interesting concept when it comes to a minister’s speech in saying, ‘Trust us, but we’re going to close you down by 2030’.

The question that my community certainly ask, and I know the communities in East Gippsland ask, is: where does our timber come from when we shut down native timber harvesting? Because in every single study—and I was on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, and we had it presented by the government—there are vast hundreds of thousands of hectares required in Victoria that would need to be planted in plantations that will need to be replaced if we completely do without sustainably managing our native forests.

So what does that mean? Well, we only have to look around this beautiful chamber and we will see that there is fantastic use of timber resource. I am not quite sure where it is from, but I imagine it was most probably timber sourced locally here in Australia and most probably in Victoria. I am not a brilliant one on it, but I imagine it could well be blackwood. But whatever the timber that has been used in this chamber, it is yet one of many examples of what is truly nature’s great resource. Timber is 100 per cent renewable, it is sustainable and, most importantly in this day and age, timber locks up carbon. The Scandinavian countries know it, the Baltic countries know it, most North American countries know it: well-managed native forests lock up carbon. So despite the myth that is often promulgated by our green friends that if we chop a forest down we release all this carbon and the world is going to come to an end, that is simply not true. Victorian hardwood ash forests, which are typically the most common found here in our state, basically become carbon neutral at between 80 and 100 years of age. The simple reason is that the trees reach their maximum maturity and they just sit there. They gain carbon as they lose it through leaf loss, limb loss or the natural development of the forest and so on. They are not endless growing sinks of carbon. They in fact become very static.

The problem we have in Victoria is that we are using the false assumptions that we are forever locking up carbon. We are only locking up carbon in the one hit. However, if you act like the Scandinavians and like the Europeans and the Baltic states and other countries that produce a lot of timber for the amount of space that they have—they actively manage their forests—what happens is that when you actively manage a forest you create a sawtooth graph of carbon storage. Your initial trees grow. You sustainably harvest those. That timber fibre is locked away as we have seen in this chamber—150 years and hopefully many, many, many, many more centuries of storage. The timber in this room is in fact storing carbon. The trees that these beautiful timber panels in this chamber once were have since been well and truly replaced, and they have probably been harvested and turned into other wonderful pieces of timber furniture or construction and stored timber. So that one plot of land in one of our beautiful Victorian native forests has stored many, many times more timber than it would have done naturally.

Where the flaw in closing the timber industry by 2030 is is that this government has had no plans to find the 400 000 hectares to replace a native timber industry. In fact if you look at the basic facts on it, timber for value-adding qualities such as the beautiful timber in this chamber does not grow everywhere. You cannot grow it in the Mallee, you cannot grow it up on the Murray River flats, you cannot grow it out west of Horsham and other places. It has to be in a certain area: it has to have high rainfall; it has to have certain soils. And guess what? Most of those ideal spots are covered in forests today, and if they are not covered in forests, they have got beautiful little townships, like Forrest or perhaps the Mansfields or, over in East Gippsland, the Orbosts and many other beautiful country towns. So there are townships there, and quite typically around country townships you will find dairying districts or other high-value areas. So this land that does not have forests on it is not readily available just to suddenly turn into plantation forests, which is a myth that the Greens and others advocating and supporting this type of shutdown of forestry do not understand.

It is quite inconceivable, really, why common sense and logic are not so easily understood by them. Therefore Victoria is left in the situation where we already have a deficit of around 60 per cent of our timber use. So whether it is timber for construction, whether it is timber for furniture, whether it is timber for our floorboards or whether it is timber used for all sorts of other purposes—packaging and pallets that move our beautiful fresh produce here in Victoria, from the fruit-growing areas or from my area where you have got potato-growing districts that send and pack and store their harvest every year in timber pallets—these are critical uses for what is simply the best and sustainable resource known to mankind and is readily and actively used the world over.

So if we are not going to produce it here in Victoria, where will it come from? That is the question that is left out in this example. I read today the statistic, for example, that currently of the 60 per cent of timber that we have to import, about 20 per cent comes from, believe it or not, places like Russia. Russia and the Baltic states account for about 40 per cent. But we are actually not going to produce it from a sustainably, well-managed, environmentally sound, highest-world-standard forest like we could here in Victoria. No, we will be importing our timber from other countries. I will actually bet my home that the forests of Indonesia, the forests of Brazil, the forests of South America, Borneo, certainly Russia—and I have had the opportunity to visit that country and sees its forestry practices. If there is one Green, if there is one member of the government or anybody else in the state of Victoria that advocates getting our timber from those sources over doing properly, doing it sustainably and doing it well here in Victoria, then—

Ms Vallence interjected.

Mr RIORDAN: They should, actually, member for Evelyn. They should be hanging their heads in shame, because what we are doing is being socially, morally and ethically irresponsible by saying, ‘We’re not going to take this precious resource that we can look after and grow here in our country, we are going to get it from someone else’. And unfortunately the choice of places to be getting it from is very poor—very poor indeed.

Rather than a resource that would grow the state of Victoria, a resource that would add long-term benefits and huge environmental pluses to our state, we are clearly, in the presentation and the submission of this legislation, seeing the government actively work with the Greens and others to phase this important industry and resource out of the hands of Victorians and really leave the state of Victoria in what I would call a moral and ethical dilemma. For those of us that want to build our homes and have things around us that are sustainable, natural, made well and have the beauty and long-lasting patina that you can only get in timber for our floorboards—as we see in the panelling in this beautiful chamber—we will not be able to say that we got that from a well-managed, sustainable forest here in Victoria, sourced locally, with low carbon miles and employing local people. We will not be able to say that. Instead we will be able to say we have propped up oligarchs in Russia, forest criminals in South-East Asia and not done well here in Victoria.

Mr BRAYNE (Nepean) (18:23): I also rise to speak today on this bill, the Conservation, Forests and Lands Amendment Bill 2022. It is good to join this bill debate after many speakers on both sides of the house. I join with the member for Polwarth in admiring the timber in this chamber. It is a beautiful chamber. We are very pleased to be in it. It is very nice. I love it.

This government is of course committed to protecting and enhancing Victoria’s natural environment. This legislation is a clear example of this. Our state is home to many natural environments that do provide jobs, attract tourism and promote biodiversity and healthy ecosystems. My electorate of Nepean is home to many environmental treasures that my community loves and cares for. That is why so many people in Nepean who are dedicated to protecting and enhancing our parks and coastlines are very interested in the environment.

This government has time after time shown that it is also ready to step up and support our local communities in their efforts to care for the environment. The many environmental community groups that make up Nepean have received funding under this government. There were several groups in Nepean awarded under the last round of the Victorian Landcare grants. The Friends of Flinders Coastline has been doing great work to protect and enhance the Flinders coastline through improving its habitat and creating corridors for local fauna. Meanwhile the Mornington Peninsula Koala Conservation group has been working hard on the Cerberus to Merricks biolink project that will create corridors for koalas to safely move through. The Mornington Peninsula Landcare Network and the Red Hill South Landcare Group have also been helping to protect and enhance the Mornington Peninsula’s natural environment and biodiversity through their biolink plans. All of this is to say that we on the Mornington Peninsula love and value our natural environment.

I want to thank these local community groups, as well as many of the others that were unnamed, for their continued efforts to care for our local environment. These groups undertake such a monumental effort in preserving our Mornington Peninsula’s environment, and often the work that they do, if they did not do it, would not get done. It is also opportune to point out the many community groups such as the Peninsula Preservation Group, the Nepean Conservation Group—

Ms Vallence: Point of order.

Mr BRAYNE: I am talking about conservation right now, so if it is relevance, I am talking about it.

Ms Vallence: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member for Nepean might be very concerned about his chances at the next election, which is why he is talking about this, but on a point of relevance, this is a very narrow bill. I do not think there is any native forest harvesting in Nepean. It is the Conservation, Forests and Lands Amendment Bill 2022. It is a very narrow bill on the Code of Practice for Timber Production and the precautionary principle. I ask you to bring the member back to the bill.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Settle): Thank you for your point of order. There is no point of order. This has been a wideranging debate.

Mr BRAYNE: I thank you for the point of order. Obviously this is about conservation, and I am also not convinced that you do like penguins as well. I am not convinced by that assertion before. I am not convinced.

Anyway, obviously the Flinders Community Association, which manages land, the Rye community action group and others spend a huge amount of their time dedicated to many issues, investigating and monitoring all the changes that might take place on the Mornington Peninsula through planning, land use and environmental concerns. These groups also help conserve our Mornington Peninsula through their work.

This is a government that is obviously committed to our natural environments and the communities that live in and nurture them. That is why this government is committed to delivering programs such as Victorian Forestry Plan, which will phase out native timber harvesting by 2030, with a step down in 2024. It is more important than ever that we value our ecosystems. In the face of climate change and other environmental challenges we must protect Victoria’s biodiversity and wildlife. Our forests are a key part of our state’s ecosystem. They are home to a wide range of biodiversity and wildlife, they provide a refuge from climate change, they support regional economies through tourism and jobs and of course, yes, they provide timber for important projects across the state. As such, it is essential that our forests are effectively managed and that guidance is given to timber harvesters.

There are currently nine forestry-related cases before the Supreme Court of Victoria, with several of these related to the so-called precautionary principle. This principle is a requirement of the Code of Practice for Timber Production that seeks to address scientific uncertainty when dealing with the threat of environmental damage. Given the recent legal action, it is clear that, in order to deliver on the Victorian Forestry Plan, timber workers, environmentalists and the conservation regulator need more certainty about the precautionary principle, and providing certainty is at the heart of this bill. The Conservation, Forests and Lands Amendment Bill 2022 will ultimately enable the conservation regulator to create compliance standards. This will provide VicForests with clear guidance on how to comply with the precautionary principle. As such, this reform will likely reduce litigation like the kind we are seeing in the Supreme Court of Victoria.

I will turn to some of the specifics of the legislation now. The bill amends the power to make codes of practice under the Conservation, Forests and Lands Act 1987. In particular the bill amends section 31 of the act to establish heads of power to enable a code of practice to apply, adopt or incorporate any matter contained in any document, standard, rule, specification or method and confer discretionary authority on the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change or the Secretary of the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning and leave any matter to be approved, determined, dispensed with or regulated by the minister or secretary.

Once this bill is passed, the government will consult on an amendment to the code of practice to enable the compliance standards framework. Once this amendment has been gazetted, the government will consult on compliance standards to fully realise this reform. These standards will be developed by the conservation regulator, who will consult with industry, unions and environmental NGOs to ensure that these standards are clear, accurate and enforceable. The combination of these changes will help to provide better guidance to VicForests, which will in turn help us to better protect and enhance Victoria’s forests for years to come. This bill is another example of this government’s strong track record of protecting Victoria’s natural environments and supporting the industries. This bill will also assist in reaching the goals of the Victorian Forestry Plan to ensure a long-term and sustainable future for our state’s forestry industry and the workers who rely on it.

As I spoke about earlier, I am proud to represent a community that is so environmentally conscious, that is committed to protecting and enhancing the southern peninsula’s local environment. People on the Mornington Peninsula care about Victoria’s environment. That is why we have seen such passionate local campaigns against projects such as the AGL gas pipeline that was planned for Crib Point and the Arthurs Seat quarry that was proposed by the RE Ross Trust. The proposal of these projects brought our local community together to fight for action on climate change and the protection of our local environment.

These community-driven campaigns show just how important protecting and enhancing Victoria’s natural environment, wherever it is across the state, is to my local community. That is why the work that this government has done to tackle climate change and conserve our natural environment is so important. Whether it is the Victorian Forestry Plan or Victoria’s climate change strategy, which will achieve net zero emissions by 2050, this government has continually prioritised environmental conservation and action on climate change, and it has always done so in a way that protects jobs and supports businesses to make the changes to reduce the impacts of climate change and continue to grow our economy. This bill is no exception to this trend, with certainty for industry and local communities being at the heart of these changes.

In summary, this bill will improve regulation of timber harvesting in Victoria by providing greater clarity on how to comply with the precautionary principle. This will provide greater certainty to the timber industry while also helping us to meet the goals of the Victorian Forestry Plan by maintaining environmental standards. Ensuring that our industries are able to reference clear and enforceable regulations is so important for protecting and enhancing our natural environments. The changes made by this bill will support Victoria’s timber and forestry workers as our state phases out timber harvesting by 2030.

This government remains committed to protecting and enhancing our natural environment while supporting Victorian workers, and this bill does exactly that. I thank the minister for her work in putting together this bill, one of many reforms that have been undertaken by this government under this minister. I commend this bill to the house.

Mr MORRIS (Mornington) (18:32): It is a pleasure to join the debate on the Conservation, Forests and Lands Amendment Bill 2022. Many people say, ‘It’s been an interesting debate’, but I have genuinely found this to be an interesting debate and perhaps a low point in the manner in which we operate as a legislature.

Now, I am not having a crack at any of the speakers on any side, but there have been all sorts of commentary. The ruling is that it is a very wide debate—and again, I am not reflecting on the Chair in any way because the precedent, I am sure, was established much earlier in the debate. We have had contributions about little penguins. We have had contributions from this side on the timber industry. We just heard lots about the Mornington Peninsula, and I am tempted to take up a few of the points the member for Nepean made, but I will resist the temptation. We have also heard great slabs, I am sure, quoted from the briefing books.

The reality is most of the contributions that have been made actually have said nothing about the bill. The suggestion that these amendments incorporate the precautionary principle, incorporate the actual detail, could not be further from the truth. That is the reality. I mean, the amendment is—I have not bothered to count up the words, but it looks like perhaps 100 words in an amendment to section 31 of the Conservation, Forests and Lands Act 1987, and it is a variation on an existing power that relates to codes of practice. That is all it is. It is a variation to that power. It does not do anything else. Yes, it potentially provides capacity for the minister to then take further action. It sets up the framework. But it does not do any of the things that have been claimed for it during the time I have been in the chamber. It effectively says that an incorporated document is not only incorporated in the form that it is when it is incorporated but can be subsequently varied, and it gives that flexibility. And then the bulk of the words in this amendment are simply talking about the requirement to gazette the code of practice when it is varied and that it does not come into effect until it is gazetted.

There is no doubt that the timber industry has been a central part of this discussion, and that has played out in the contributions. Indeed there was a fairly long slab in the second-reading speech that talked about what the minister intended to do with the code in terms of the management provisions and whether they should be an incorporated document or whether they should be formally part of the code. But again, while that was a big slab of the second-reading speech, it is not part of the bill before us today; it is not actually what the bill does.

I do have some concerns about the form in which this particular amendment, as minimal as it may be, is being presented and the fact that we are dealing with a discrete bill to add a handful of words into an existing act, on the one hand. I cannot immediately recall the title of the bill that was dealt with last sitting week which incorporated a raft of amendments to a range of justice matters that were so broad that when we were briefed on the bill individual advisers were not able to talk about other sections of the bill, because they belonged to a different minister. The only common feature in that legislation was it was in the same department, but it was a very disparate range of matters. And now one sitting week later we are dealing with a bill that simply inserts a handful of words into existing legislation.

But the difficulty I have with this particular bill is not that it is complex. Someone said earlier—I cannot recall who it was—that it is complex. It is not complex. It is 100 words, for goodness sake. It is not complex. But the issue I have is about what it does, because if you work through the impact of the words, what it is effectively saying is that an incorporated document can change but it does not change the code. It really gets down to the point of where the threshold is. How substantial do the changes to an incorporated document need to be before they constitute a change of the code? We do not know that.

A concern I have had basically since I first stood up in this place in 2006 is the fact that so rarely do we actually as legislators have the opportunity to question legislation. If you read the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee report on this, it notes that it has an issue—if I can find the report—potentially with the parliamentary oversight. The committee will correspond with the minister and ask some questions about how that will be worked through in the context of section 32 of the act. That is a significant question in the consideration of this bill, which we as legislators should have the opportunity to ask. But of course the reality is we never get to consideration in detail, so we do not have the opportunity to consider and ask about the impact of this clause. I think that is a problem. Yes, it was certainly a Liberal government that introduced the government business program, the guillotine, but it was in response to ongoing bad behaviour, ongoing overnight sittings and just a complete rort of the opportunity to consider matters in detail.

We have now gone the other way, where we get 10 minutes to speak on a bill no matter what the complexity is, and we cannot ask any questions. I think it is very, very difficult for anyone, whether you are government or opposition, to say you are doing your job, you are scrutinising legislation appropriately, when we have the system that we do now. It is a criticism that arises out of questions that come up in this bill. It will not affect me, clearly, but I think we really do need to have a look at whether we are in fact carrying out our duties and the duties that the Victorian public think we should be carrying out when we process legislation in this way.

The other issue with the potential reduction in parliamentary oversight is again one that is becoming more and more obvious. We have had a series of bills come through where there is an effective dumbing down of legislation. What previously would have been in legislation is in fact inserted into regulation. What would previously have been inserted into regulation goes into a code of practice. The reality is that the only people that win out of that are the Victorian bureaucracy, because they effectively get to take up the powers that this Parliament is ceding to them by taking that approach.

It is important that we recognise this Parliament. Passage through this Parliament should not be considered a mere formality. Processing legislation through this Parliament should not be a rubber stamp, and that is pretty much where we are at the moment. There are legitimate questions about the impact of legislation, as few as the words are, and the opportunity is not there to get that clarification which I think it otherwise deserves. As others have said, the opposition will not be opposing the bill; however, there are some significant not only process issues but practical issues so we know exactly what the impact is. And as the debate has demonstrated, there is a breadth of opinion on that.

Mr FOWLES (Burwood) (18:42): It is my great delight to rise this evening to talk on the Conservation, Forests and Lands Amendment Bill 2022, and I am sure you will be pleased to learn I will be yielding the floor a little early this evening in order that my friend from Gippsland South can have his allotted 10 minutes and make sure that he traverses all the very many important matters, particularly in his part of the world.

I do hesitate to note, though, that the suggestion was made to me that, you know, perhaps this is not a bill that is particularly germane to my constituents. But in our part of the world we are all about the trees, we are all about the wood—Burwood, Ringwood, Ashwood. We are all about the wood and we are all about the trees. I was reminded by the very broad contributions made by some a little earlier, including the member for Polwarth, that when it comes to forests in Victoria there is a little bit of a laissez faire approach. Do you remember the great alpine grazing debate in this place? I know my friend the member for Mordialloc would remember this, because this was a humdinger. This was a textbook case of the Libs sticking it to the Nats by serving up this absolutely ham-fisted bunkum proposal to ‘trial’ alpine grazing again. They did it so badly—by design—that it was always destined to fail. I mean Tony Burke knocked it off, as quite rightly he should have as the federal environment minister. When he quite rightly knocked it off, it then fell to the Baillieu government to go, ‘Oh, what are we going to do here? Do you think we’ll fight this tooth and nail, or do you think we’re going to sort of put in a bit of a half-hearted effort, a bit of a show trial?’. And sure enough they served it off to the Federal Court. I think their submission ran to 80 or perhaps even 100 words before the Federal Court, at all four grounds, just roundly slapped it down. There was a lot of secret high-fiving going around the Liberal party room because they managed to knock off alpine grazing whilst maintaining the pretence of supporting alpine grazing for their darling country cousins, one of whom of course will be following me in the debate shortly.

It is an extraordinary thing, when you think about it, that the pretence for alpine grazing was reducing the bushfire load—‘Reducing the bushfire load, that’ll do it. We’ll just get a whole lot of hard-hoofed animals in there. We’ll just let them run amok. We’ll destroy all the moss and the peat and the lichen and we’ll make them eat the trees’. Because you often see cows—and I am sure the member for Mount Waverley knows this; he has got heaps of cows out his way—grazing on the tops of the eucalypts! That is where all the good grazing happens. That is the bit where the cows really did the bushfire management stuff.

A member interjected.

Mr FOWLES: And the brumbies. Dare we crack open brumbies given the email traffic we have had on that matter? But that was, I think, one of my many highlights of the Baillieu government. It was just a glorious little slap from the Libs to the Nats on that one, and it got exactly the short shrift it deserved when it was served up to the Federal Court.

This bill really goes to the issue of sustainability and how it is defined. The member for Polwarth got up and spent a lot of time talking about sustainability, but he was talking about sustainability in the context of native timber logging, not plantation logging. He suggests that if you do not have logging of the native timber, what you end up with is a whole bunch of imports. But the better model, and the model that is in fact actually sustainable, is having plantation timber. It has got a good word within it, plantation—you have got to have a plan. A plantation does not just happen on its own. It is a plantation, so you have got to turn your mind to this a little bit further in advance and invest in those plantation assets. And as luck would have it, that is exactly what we have done. That is exactly what we have done, because we have committed some $110 million to establishing timber plantations in the Latrobe Valley to support the long-term sustainability of Victoria’s timber industry.

Now, that is real sustainability. That is not the faux sustainability of, ‘Oh, we’re just going to continue to chop down native timber, but because it’s 80 or 100 years old, not 200 years old, it doesn’t really qualify as OG timber, so we can just continue to hack our way through all of that and eventually one day maybe we will have some plantations and catch up’. No, no, no. You have got to plan this stuff, and whether it is OG, old growth; whether it is OG, original gangster; or whether it is native, they are not genuinely sustainable, are they. That is not a truly sustainable model. That is a model that might bridge you to some degree, but we have got an orderly transition in place. We have got the investment happening in plantation. We have got all of the ingredients you need to make sure that this industry is properly transitioned to a model that is in fact genuinely sustainable, not the faux sustainability that has been suggested by some members of the coalition.

In the interests of making sure that the member for Gippsland South does not walk entirely off the reservation, I might leave a minute for my colleague the member for Footscray to retort to anything the member for Gippsland South puts that warrants full-throated rebuttal. I am sure the member for Footscray will do a terrific job in that regard. But can I conclude my remarks by saying that when it comes to the protection of native forests and when it comes to the protection of our great natural assets, there is only one party in this chamber who does it, who does it consistently, who does it right, who does it sustainably and who does it with a long-term view, and that is of course the great Australian Labor Party.

Mr D O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (18:49): I am pleased that I had the agreement of the member for Burwood to cut his contribution a bit short, because I fear he might have embarrassed himself more if he continued on.

Members interjecting.

Mr D O’BRIEN: I was going to be generous, but after that contribution—for a start I am actually going to mention the bill a couple of times and speak on the actual issue that we are discussing here. I have been paying attention to this debate so far on the Conservation, Forests and Lands Amendment Bill 2022 because this is an industry that I am passionate about. It is one of the reasons I came into this place: to fight for country people and to fight for industries like the timber industry against the swathe of misinformation and untruths that are told about them. The intent of this bill is correct, and that is why we are not opposing it. We have some concerns about whether it will actually achieve its aims and whether it in fact gives too much power to the minister, which as some of my colleagues previously have said could be used for nefarious purposes, not good ones. The bill itself, I think, is potentially positive if it does achieve the aim of trying to give certainty.

Plenty of members previously have talked about certainty and giving certainty to the industry. I tie that into the concept of the precautionary principle that has been mentioned and that is crucial to this debate about making sure that the timber industry can go about harvesting in a way that is as environmentally sound as it can be.

When I was the CEO of the National Irrigators Council the precautionary principle was being applied to the Murray-Darling Basin. I mentioned certainty. One of my members at the time said with respect to the Murray-Darling Basin plan, ‘Yes, we want certainty, but we don’t want certain death’. This is very pertinent to this legislation too, as is the precautionary principle, which provides:

… if there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation.

And that is true. If we had a single forest estate that we were harvesting, we would need to apply a very, very precautionary principle to it to make sure that we did protect our biodiversity and that we had representative protection. But the reality is that in Victoria we have 8.05 million hectares of public land. More than 4.2 million hectares of that land is dedicated already to conservation areas in the form of national parks and other conservation reserves. The remaining 3.2 million is in state forest, and only about 0.45 per cent is available at any given time for commercial harvesting. And more importantly, only 3000 hectares, or about 0.04 per cent, of public land is actually harvested in any given year. About 94 per cent of Victoria’s forests are not able to be harvested, and very, very few—about four in 10 000—trees in any given year are actually harvested, and they are of course replanted.

So when we are applying the precautionary principle we need to understand that our forests are largely already protected and the tiny area that we actually log is also being done applying the precautionary principle. This bill is aimed at trying to reduce the lawfare that we have seen from green groups who are intent on shutting down the industry before the government does. There is no question. You might have thought they would think, ‘We’ve won. The government’s going to shut down the industry’, but no, they have gone even harder ever since then.

I want to talk a little bit about some of the contributions that have been made by previous members. I am not even going to go to the member for Burwood; he was by no means the most egregious. But the member for Bendigo West—I heard this and I was absolutely astounded; I thought I might have misheard—talked about bushfires and said that it is frightening how many trees we have lost and that they do not regenerate after bushfires. This is the level of debate we have got in this place: the member for Bendigo West does not realise that the trees grow back. Indeed the entire Victorian mountain ash resource is based on regrowth from the 1939 Black Friday bushfires. That is what happens. The bush comes through, it burns and it grows back.

The member for Bendigo West, the member for Bass, and I will mention again the member for Burwood, and many others talked about how we are doing this transition to plantations. It has been proven time and time again now that it is a complete sham. Others over there have used the ministerial talking points that talk about the $110 million provided for plantations in the Latrobe Valley. In 2016 that money was provided—2016—and there is still not a single extra acre of new plantation in the Latrobe Valley or indeed anywhere in Gippsland.

Just recently the minister went and unveiled some works at the Gelliondale Nursery for HVP, in my electorate, and we heard then that VicForests has bought land at Stradbroke. What have they planted? They have planted Pinus radiata—pine trees, pulp. Not hardwood, not native forests, not blue gum even but Pinus radiata, which is going to be pulp for Australian Paper. This idea that we are transitioning to plantations is a complete sham. It is just as shambolic as the claim—I heard the member for Eltham say it and I heard the member for Bass say it—that only Labor is supporting workers. Frankly, that is offensive.

It reminded me of the Orwellian press release issued by the government, when they made the decision to shut down the native timber industry, on 7 November 2019. It was headlined ‘Securing the future for forestry industry workers’. An announcement about shutting down the native timber industry was headlined ‘Securing the future for forestry industry workers’. I just say: what a scam that is. For those members to say that they are supporting the workers is astounding. They should have been at the Heyfield Timber Festival a couple of weeks ago, where there were blue-collar workers and their families and members of the CFMEU telling us what we all know in country areas, particularly in timber harvesting areas—that the Labor Party has completely forgotten its roots when it comes to this and is more interested in the inner-city area

To that point, I do not want to miss the Greens on the way through. We heard the member for Melbourne talking about this bill, and she made a number of claims that I want to actually address. First of all, she said that this is a bill to allow logging to be easier at a cost to biodiversity.

Members interjecting.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Settle): Order! The level of conversation in the house is too high.

Mr D O’BRIEN: Thank you, Acting Speaker. She said that this will come at a cost to biodiversity, but again, as I said earlier, the member for Melbourne completely misunderstands that 94 per cent of our forests are not available for logging. That is the biodiversity; that is the representative reserve system that we have. Secondly, she said logging is bad for the climate. I quote from the IPCC’s report in 2019. It says:

In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit.

That is the IPCC saying if you manage your forest, if you produce timber, you store carbon in that timber. That just highlights the idiocy of the Greens—that they simply do not understand this. And finally, she said logging costs taxpayers money and that VicForests is losing money. Well, the Auditor-General said in 2013 in a report titled Managing Victoria’s Native Forest Timber Resources, on page 45:

VicForests does not receive any government subsidies.

I come back to the issue that this bill is actually trying to address, and that is the issue of green lawfare that is trying to hamstring VicForests and hamstring the industry. The member for Melbourne says that logging is costing taxpayers money. Yes, VicForests in 2021 made a $4.7 million loss. Guess what its legal fees in 2021 were: $4.8 million. So there were $4.8 million in legal fees, and we have almost exactly the same figure for a loss. So it is just absurd to say and it is wrong to say that logging costs Victorian taxpayers money. VicForests has a dual role, and its role is to return funds to the state but also to support regional areas with the jobs that it creates. It is just ridiculous, frankly, to be talking about biodiversity—with due respect to her—the member for Melbourne, with the most asphalt, concrete, glass and buildings. It is just extraordinary. This is an industry that deserves our support. I will support it every day that I am in this place.

Ms HALL (Footscray) (18:59): I am thrilled to contribute to this bill, and I am sure all of you are very excited to be in here at 1 minute to 7 to hear my contribution. We have heard about penguins; there has been lots of penguin talk.

Ms Addison interjected.

Ms HALL: Unfortunately the member for Bass’s contribution discussing the penguins was cut short.

Mr Rowswell: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, I am not sure penguins are referenced in this bill, and so I would ask the member to refer specifically to the contents of the bill before the house.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is not a point of order.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.