Senator BARTLETT (4:23 PM) —In the brief time I have available, I would like to indicate the support of the Australian Democrats for this matter of public importance. It is an important matter in the specific context of this attempt by the National Association of Forest Industries to censor free speech, to try to intimidate competitors and to try to ensure that information about encouraging the community to move away from native timbers does not get out into the broader community. The broader issue is one of intimidating anybody that tries to put forward an alternative point of view that might threaten the commercial position of a large commercial operator.

The broader position relates to a specific piece of legislation which this Senate will debate when the government gets round to bringing it on for debate—the Regional Forest Agreement legislation. This sort of action is a perfect example of the reason why we as a parliament at Commonwealth level representing the Australian community nationally cannot afford to sign away our legal rights for over 20 years to monitor the activities of forest industries. This sort of action shows the lengths to which the National Association of Forest Industries will go to try to protect their commercial interests. Yet here we are as a parliament being asked to remove legal protections for our native forests and to put them in the hands of organisations such as the National Association of Forest Industries.

It shows the sort of undue and excessive influence which can be brought to bear by large operators such as this one simply using legal processes to intimidate people who are trying to put an alternative point of view and get the facts out into the community. In this case they would seem on the surface to be fairly benign suggestions—encouraging people to increase their understanding of alternatives for utilisation of timber in building, renovation and design. And even in a case such as that we have the legal sledgehammer being brought down.

I suppose one of the positive things out of the action of the Association of Forest Industries is that the publicity has in many ways probably led to greater sales for the book that may otherwise have been the case. As often happens with attempts to censor what people say, the resultant attention actually raises people's awareness to what is being put forward than would otherwise have been the case.

We can see another example of that with the recent uproar amongst a small number of people about the film Lolita, which has led to it getting substantially larger numbers of people going to see it than would otherwise have been the case. I am not sure of the building links between Lolita and the native forests timber industry, but the issue of censorship is an important one.

I hope the Association of Forest Industries does rethink its stance on this particular issue. Certainly, from the Democrats' perspective at both federal and state levels, any attempt by large industry organisations to try to stifle alternative viewpoints must be opposed. I know my colleague in the Western Australian upper house, Norm Kelly, has spoken out equally strongly about the actions of NAFI in this regard—with the Western Australian parliament and the Western Australian community more broadly being embroiled in the current debate over the regional forest agreements and the current threat to Western Australia's forests, which even the WA National Party have finally recognised are very much under threat. I do hope this federal parliament does not aid in the destruction of those forests.