Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Timber industry

Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (19:13): (587) My adjournment today is to the Victorian Labor Minister for Agriculture, and I rise today to talk about the Victorian government policies which are directly contributing to the ongoing destruction of precious ancient forests in Tasmania. The action I am calling for today is for Labor to stop accepting logs from Tasmania’s precious native forests into our state. For months now logs have been taken from Tasmanian forests and sent over to be processed at sawmills here in Victoria. I think Victorians would be shocked to know that despite ending native forest logging in Victoria, the Victorian Labor government is now facilitating and in fact supercharging the destruction of precious ancient forests in Tasmania. These are huge logs which have been taken from ancient forests in Tasmania’s southern forests or even rainforest near the irreplaceable takayna/Tarkine in Tasmania’s north-west. They are being put on boats like the Spirit of Tasmania and the Searoad Mersey and then sent to Victoria to keep the Victorian industry alive, despite the fact it should have transitioned to plantations. Some logs have been taken from habitat of the critically endangered swift parrot of which there are less than 800 birds left in the world.

Victoria has said that it has finally ended native forest logging this year, and it provided nearly $1 billion to the industry to transition to plantations. That is a huge amount of money that was supposed to be used to support workers to get out of native forest logging and move to plantations. This money was not supposed to be taken and then used to continue to destroy native forests in another state. Make no mistake, the Greens support transitioning workers to plantation timber, protecting and restoring forests and important work like bushfire prevention. But rather than taking that money and supporting the local Victorian workers and communities to develop new industries with jobs for the future, logging companies may have just taken the money and moved their business down south, double dipping in Tasmania.

Now that it is election season, Tasmania’s two major parties find themselves in a race to the bottom to destroy what is left of the precious Tasmanian forest. The Liberal Premier has just issued a catastrophic election pledge to open up 40,000 hectares of precious native forest to logging, and the Labor Party has also been spineless, abandoning any commitment to protecting nature and promising to expand logging contracts out to 2040. Make no mistake, this is an ecological and climate disaster.

Here in Victoria this government actually has a golden opportunity to protect and restore our forests, not destroy them. Imagine forests that are protected and restored, with jobs in sustainable tourism, recreation and restoration, and forests that are protected for the clean air and water and where traditional owners can finally get a chance to care for country. Instead, Labor is just using Victoria to destroy more forests in Tasmania.