Mr NAIRN (10:35 PM) —Australians are great gamblers. They have always had a reputation for being willing to bet on such things as two flies crawling up a wall. Each week tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of Australians cross their fingers and hope that their special numbers will be drawn out of a barrel—a barrel which is often Lotto, Powerball, Keno, the old-fashioned lottery or something very similar.

Mr Lloyd —It's always good to win the lottery.

Mr NAIRN —Normally, it is always good to win the lottery; the member for Robertson is right. But today, unfortunately, a number of good hard-working Australians desperately did not want their number to come out of the barrel—and this was the lottery that nobody wanted to win. It took place in Eden in my electorate. It was a lottery conducted by the company Harris Daishowa Australia to decide which contractors would not have their timber harvesting contracts renewed for five years.

One can ask: why was this lottery taking place? If we go back—well, where do we go back to? It is a pretty emotional thing for the people of Eden-Monaro, and particularly for the timber workers in that Eden-Bombala area. We had a process, a Regional Forest Agreement process, which was based on science, and it was working quite well. We were doing studies, scientific studies, to decide what areas should be protected and what areas should be allowed to be logged.

But the New South Wales Labor government decided that it could not wait for the scientific process to take place; it much preferred a political process. Several weeks ago it announced an agreement. To this day, we still cannot work out who the agreement was with. I think it was between a couple of ministers, probably around a coffee table or some other sort of table, a few weeks ago who said, `This will do,' and away they went.

Mr Lloyd interjecting—

Mr NAIRN —Probably as well. They came to an agreement. This agreement basically says: let's throw out a few more timber jobs—and this applies to an area which has sacrificed so much in the way of jobs over the last decade, as one piece of forest after another has been locked away.

As I have said, we had a process which was very scientifically based, and it was working quite well. Six months, nine months ago, the Eden management area of hardwood timber had a quota of something like 59,000 cubic metres. The New South Wales government, in part of the RFA process, said that reductions had to take place—and it guaranteed that reductions would not go below one-half of the current quotas. From when I did mathematics—and mathematics was part of my profession—one-half of 59,000 cubic metres is 29,500 cubic metres. But the so-called agreement put out by the New South Wales government gave a quota basically of 23,000 cubic metres, which probably cannot be sustained anyway.

The difference is not a great deal, and that is the tragedy in this—that the New South Wales Labor government did not have to give much. It has taken far more in reserves than it ever promised when it went to election in 1995. There are significant areas locked up into national parks. That government did not have to move very much at all, and we could have had a win-win situation. It is a tragedy.

Today we had contractors—the Slaters and Coxes from Eden, and the Rodwells and Norm and Wendy Wilton from Bombala—with three contracts having to go. The Slaters, Bob and Maree, split their contract into two crews; they drew the first two balls out of the hat thereby losing both their crews. The Rodwells were the third to go; and the Coxes and the Wiltons have remained. And 30 jobs now go as a result of what the New South Wales government has done.

What has happened today is really a tragedy. I wonder whether Bob Carr understands what he has done to the people who have lost their livelihoods. Unfortunately, I doubt it; in fact, he could not care less. He is only interested in keeping his urban constituency happy—and these hardworking Australians are expendable, as far as he is concerned. (Time expired)