Senator DENMAN (4:38 PM) —I was actually going to comment on exactly that issue. In September last year, in regard to the forest industry in Tasmania, the federal member for Braddon and Parliamentary Secretary [Cabinet] to the Prime Minister, Mr Miles, said:

In regard to Tasmania and the Regional Forest Agreement, there is no doubt there will be a good solution come out of it for Tasmania and for the Australian people. It has listened to the Australian people and to the Tasmanian people. It is not complacent. There is stability coming into the forest industries and this debate, and there will be security for 20 years.

At the signing of the regional forestry agreement, the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, and the Premier, Mr Rundle, said that the agreement would provide more jobs, greater certainty for the industry, development and better conservation for Tasmanian forests.

They were heartening statements on the face of it, but they were flawed from the outset. Those statements were not flawed because of the signing of the RFA. The RFA is crucial to providing certainty. With certain ty comes the opportunity to address our trade imbalance. It is ludicrous that last year Australia imported forest products to the value of $2.6 billion, while we exported only $1.3 billion worth. Unfortunately, the coalition, which is only too happy to adopt the line of least resistance in policy development, believed that the signing of the Tasmanian RFA would be a panacea for the struggling local industry. How simplistic.

As Senator Murphy has said many times in this place before, the jobs that the member for Braddon promised would flow from the signing of the RFA have not materialised. The coalition wanted to continue travelling down easy street. It wanted to continue allowing major companies to export boatloads of woodchips for a couple of hundred dollars per cubic metre. The coalition has never been prepared to put its shoulder to the wheel in the quest for industry, investment and value added exports.

To what extent the Asian crisis will have an impact on Tasmania's woodchip industry is difficult to gauge. As we know, many economists disagree on the extent to which the economic crisis in Asia will have an impact. However, there is consensus among economists that, in the forestry sector, there will be an increasing downturn in the demand for Tasmanian woodchip exports and more competition from Indonesian hardwoods.

The difficulty is that the Tasmanian economy is currently so fragile that, with the expected rebound in Asia still some way off, the damage to the economy of my home state could be devastating. The impact of the crisis in Asia should be taken in tandem with events like the recent loss of 250 jobs at the Burnie pulp mill. There is also the prospect of massive job losses if hundreds of Tasmanian forest workers are stood down within the next few months, while private owners of timber reserves are compelled to ensure the legality of their operations. Further, as my Senate colleague Senator Murphy pointed out last night, there are some deeply rooted problems associated with the Forestry Corporation and the industry as a whole. Taking into account the sorts of difficulties being experienced, one can understand the reason for this matter of urgency.

In particular, Australians and Tasmanians are becoming increasingly intolerant of Australia losing employment generated investments by exporting woodchips. With these types of events occurring, you can understand why people like the AMWU organiser Brian Green, who has worked tirelessly for the workers since Amcor's announcement at the Burnie mill, are frustrated. Mr Green was quoted in the Advocate yesterday as saying:

Workers are frustrated. They know how much it costs to produce pulp in Burnie, they know how much Amcor's proposal to bring imported pulp will cost, and they are frustrated—Burnie is a profitable operation.