Mr O'KEEFE (1:20 PM) —I would like to follow on from the remarks made by my colleague in relation to ongoing thought and commitment to the development of Australia's heritage and environment issues. I will signal a couple of areas that remain of concern to me and I urge the government to pay more attention to them.

The first point—I believe this is a matter where the chickens are very much coming home to roost for the government—is that from the proceeds of the first tranche of the sale of Telstra the government, at the time, announced the world's greatest heritage fund, the Natural Heritage Trust—$1 billion of it. Those of us who understand these things and know how to read a budget statement properly said at the outset, `Hang on, what you have done here is added up over five years $1 billion worth of spending. But, by the way, you have made cuts here to programs that were ongoing in the budget, funded as recurrent funding.' A classic one was the funding of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission—cut back. Programs like Landcare—cut back. Programs for some of the river strategies that the member for Rankin was talking about a minute ago were cut back and all replaced with the Natural Heritage Trust. Fine, who cares where the dollars come from? The point is that at the end of that five-year program these well-established recurrent programs in the budget are gone. What has to happen instead is that you have to go to the Treasurer and ask for funding for a whole new program, except you have not got another sale of Telstra to fund it. Having made all these concessions to get the GST through, all of a sudden the government has to work out where the dollars are in its budget to support the ongoing environment and heritage allocations. That issue will come to the fore in the next 18 months as we lead up to the federal election, because, having let those programs go, they cannot be that easily written back in.

What has happened to the Murray-Darling Commission? We now have the National Farmers Federation saying that we need a rescue package for the Murray-Darling. They are assessing that the rescue package will cost of the order of $64 billion—to fix up something that every one of us has known. The first day I was sent out to teach as a high school teacher near Kerang in northern Victoria—30 years ago—I could not believe the salt and the water that I could see lying around the paddocks—and I was a city slicker! Farming practices have changed. We have come to understand what has happened to the Murray cod, the yellow-belly and other species. But now the Farmers Federation is calling for somebody to come up with $64 billion to fix the problem. I find it astounding that Australia has let itself get to this situation especially when we had the Prime Minister securing the support of the Democrats for both the GST and the sale of the first third of Telstra for the world's greatest heritage fund—and here we are going further and further down the gurgler in a major national project such as the restoration of the Murray-Darling basin. I think that needs to be understood in the rawness in which I have outlined it.

I turn now to the issue of forestry. I recently participated in a trade delegation to South American and Latin American countries. We visited several countries. One experience still has me standing here with my ears ringing and my head shaking in wonderment. We arrived in Uruguay—

Mr Murphy —It is a wonderful place.

Mr O'KEEFE —It is. The wife of the member for Lowe, Mr Murphy, who is next to me, is from Uruguay. She is a lovely lady.

We arrived in Uruguay, jumped in the car and headed to Montevideo, the capital city. The car trip from the airport to the city is about 20 kilometres. It is a beautiful drive along the coastal region, but before you reach the coastal strip you drive through eucalypt forests. I was sitting in the car looking out the window thinking, `Am I seeing what I think I am seeing? Am I seeing gum trees in Uruguay?' I asked the driver, `Are they gum trees?' He said, `Yes, we got them from Australia.'

I went to lunch with a number of ministers. I was sitting next to the industry minister and I said, `By the way, what's with all the gum trees?' Herein lies the rub, Mr Deputy Speaker. He said, `We identified 15 years ago that there would be a shortage in the world of quality timber for woodchips, paper and other resources and we analysed what would be the best tree. We selected a number of Australian eucalypts and began planting plantations 15 years ago to move into the gap we knew would exist in the world trade for that product.' I sat there and thought, `We have spent 15 years of public energy in a battle with the timber industry, a battle in government over woodchips, a battle over access to public forests—15 years in energy and intellect and have gone just about nowhere—while smarter countries have said, “Hey, let's start planting trees; let's start reforestation; let's start building for the future of this industry.' I know that you, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams, have not only a very deep-seated interest in the topic but also a sadness in your heart at the absurdity of the debate that has gone on in Australia for the last 15 years. It is a debate that for all the time I have been here sums up what Australia has become.

Within weeks of becoming the new government in 1996, this government introduced legislation to remove the ceiling on woodchip exports from Australia. The only tool the federal government had to lever the industry with was to say, `Unless you plant plantations, unless you start reforestation, we will not approve these woodchip exports.' The conservatives erased it from the legislation within weeks of becoming the government. What has happened in Australia since? The industry has gone flat out in its continuing fight for access to public forests and has done next to nothing in planting plantations and broadening the base of reforestation. When I got out of the plane in Uruguay and I saw these smart people growing Australian eucalypts, I thought `What on earth are we about?'

I call again in this parliament for the people who are involved in this debate to understand that the fight is not about access to public forest. All our energy and all our resources should be going to reforestation—sensibly and profitably—of Australia's land mass, because this is a big future industry. Other countries can see it; why can't we?

Just to conclude on this point, Mr Deputy Speaker, I might say that I was thrilled to see the change of government in Victoria, because the previous state government in Victoria had so bastardised the national forest agreement between the federal government and the state government that the Liberal minister for the forests here, Wilson Tuckey, had himself taken over the process of auditing what was going on in Victoria because he did not trust what he was being told by the Victorians. What has now just recently been signed between the federal government and the state government is the regional forest agreement covering the forest area in my electorate, which I have been highly supportive of. I am now saying to both ministers, the federal minister—and I expect I will be saying it to a Labor federal minister in about 18 months time—and the state minister: do not trust these bureaucrats and forest managers underneath this agreement, because I have evidence that they are already beginning to white-ant the agreement that has been made between the federal minister and the state minister. The shadow minister for forestry, Mr Ferguson, who is present in the chamber at the moment, is well informed on the fact that it is all very well for ministers and governments to make agreements but, if the forest managers underneath decide they want to do their own thing, it can gather pretty serious momentum. So I am just putting a little yardstick out there that I am supportive of the agreement that has been made between the Commonwealth and Victoria in the regional forest agreement, but I am asking both ministers to make sure that they stay right on the wheel of this and particularly right on the wheel of the commitments regarding investment in plantation and investment in reafforestation, because they are the bits of the agreement that I think are starting to fall off the cart already. I am certainly not going to stand by and watch that.

I believe the nation has been sold a pup with the greatest environment program of all time, the Natural Heritage Trust; the chickens are going to come home to roost on that, as they are on a lot of other things. I am saying that the Murray-Darling basin, in particular, has to be the environmental priority of both federal and state governments involved in this, because even the National Farmers Federation has said it is a $64 billion problem. For all the energy we have put into the waterfront, the Industry Commission only ever said the waterfront was a $1 billion problem. This is a $64 billion problem—64 times that of the waterfront. If Mr Reith thinks he wants to do something about something valuable, then it is the Murray-Darling basin.

I conclude by calling on both the federal and state ministers involved in the Victorian Regional Forest Agreement to keep a particular focus on the commitments regarding reafforestation and plantation. I thank you for the opportunity to make this contribution.