Senator BROWN (6:30 PM) —The Greens will not be voting for the House of Representatives resolution that we should drop the amendments that the Senate put to the House. Even with those amendments, the forest industry gets lay down misere through this regional forest agreements legislation. I will remind the committee that this legislation is basically a corroboration of the regional forest agreements whereby the Prime Minister has signed away the powers and responsibilities of the federal parliament to the states and the woodchip corporations over Australia's native forests for the next 20 years. In particular, the legislation provides that, where the forests—or the wildlife in them—are to be protected by federal decree in those 20 years, the woodchip corporations are to be compensated by Australian taxpayers for the value of those forests for which the woodchip corporations have never paid a red cent—nothing at all. What has astounded me about this whole process is that those very woodchip corporations have cried crocodile tears over jobs in the forests right down the line and yet there is no provision in the legislation and no move by the House of Representatives—that is, the government—in this process to provide for compensation for workers who lose their jobs, not even for the reskilling of them.

This is a heist of the Australian people's forests for a small number of rich corporations to maraud the unprotected forests of this nation, largely to send those forests as woodchips to Japan, Korea, China and other destinations in the Northern Hemisphere where they are converted into paper and enter the disposal cycle. The grandest forests of this country end up in the landfills of the Northern Hemisphere, and where the forests are destroyed the wildlife is destroyed with them.

As I have explained to the Senate in the previous full debate on this matter, the cycle in Tasmania is to cut down the grand forests, firebomb to prevent any regrowth of rainforest or competing species, and then poison the area with 1080 to kill any wildlife coming into the area. And this legislation is to compensate that process, augment it, foster it and extend it. As you will remember, Mr Temporary Chairman Lightfoot, during this debate when I asked the government representative about—and challenged that representative over—so-called ecologically sustainable logging that this legislation is supposed to foster, she sat glued to her seat because there is no defence of the doublespeak.

Ecologically sustainable logging, according to Prime Minister Howard's pacts with several premiers, means total destruction of the forests and their replacement with genetically modified, fast growing eucalypts or pines for the further enhancement of the woodchip corporations' interests further down the line. All this is totally unnecessary because, as you know, there are enough plantations in this country to provide all its wood needs.

Even when it comes to the balance of payments, the myth that is put about by people—including the government spokesperson on forests and so-called conservation, Mr Tuckey—is that we are somehow imbalanced in a way which requires us to continue the destruction of our native forests. In fact, we export twice as much wood as we import. The problem is that the industry, because it is rapacious and greedy, does not downstream process in this country or create the jobs here. It allows that to happen elsewhere and we import goods based on wood at twice the cost that we export our wood. So we end up basically with this terrible process where we export much more than we bring into the country, but we pay more for what we bring into the country than what we export. There is nothing in this legislation or in the amendments coming back from the House of Representatives that is going to meet that problem and get Australia the advantage that it could have through downstream processing of its plantations, protection of its native forests and a commitment by the industry, as well as government, to look after the jobs of those in the forests.

The regional forest agreement signed in Tasmania is a fraud. It is a fraud that has been perpetrated on the workers in the industry. Those Tasmanian senators who are present will have read the weekend press in Tasmania which highlighted a group of transport operators committed to the logging industry. They talked about how they had come to this parliament to protest against conservationists and in favour of the wood chipping industry but in the last few weeks, in the wake of the regional forest agreement whereby Prime Minister Howard and others indicated that they were acting in the `interests of the workers', they have been dumped. They have huge repayments on their machinery and they have no way of paying them. Some of those men and their families are going to end up in bankruptcy.

Where is the logging industry? Where is the government? Where is the Bacon Labor government in Tasmania, which supports this fraudulent process? Where is the Prime Minister to succour these people who have now been put on the garbage tip and have been thrown out of work, along with nearly 500 others who have suffered a similar fate, since the woodchip organisations managed to get the Prime Minister's and the Premier's signatures on the bottom of a regional forest agreement? Then we are asked in this Senate to endorse that process.

The sad thing about this is that even the Labor Party's amendments left Tasmania out in the cold. There is no review process in these proposals either from the House of Representatives or from the Senate to enable the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement to be vetted by the Senate. We are supposed to accept, as a parliament, a mechanism whereby the Prime Minister and the state Premier have signed an agreement to hand across the forests to the sectional interests of the big corporations who are not based in Tasmania—neither their headquarters nor their shareholders are—but at the same time to underwrite them should there be any future federal move on behalf of the nation or Tasmanians in particular to protect our forests. The whole process is shameful. It is disgusting.

Nevertheless, I am hopeful that these minimalist amendments which the Senate agreed to will be insisted upon. How dare the Minister for Forestry and Conservation, who has conserved nothing since he entered that portfolio, rail against the Senate for these minimalist amendments which, amongst other things, would see the regional forest agreements on the mainland, with the exception of the early agreements signed in East Gippsland and in Victoria, brought before the parlia ment. The taxpayers are underwriting them; should not the parliament be vetting them? Of course it should. As a Green I will be supporting these amendments for the little improvement that they do make to what is a parlous sell-out of the nation's interest, which the regional forest agreement process and this legislation represent.

I have to foreshadow that I will be moving amendments to the amendment brought up here from the House of Representatives so that if there is—and this is another gift to the industry—a forest products, taxpayer funded council set up, it is not just those who wield chainsaws that are on the council but also representatives from the forest related tourism industry, because that is where the job creation in forests is in Tasmania. There are more people getting jobs out of the preservation of our forests, intact, in Tasmania—more than 3,000 these days—than are involved in the destruction of native forests.

I will also be moving an amendment to say that there should be represented on such an industry council people who are interested in forest related water industries, because there has been a lot of contention not only in this country but also right around the world about the damage to water catchments that accrues from logging—and not just through the pollution of streams by direct run-off and by soiling of streams. I remember an indigenous person in Sarawak describing their river, which used to be pristine and full of fish but now was neither, as looking like a river of Milo—referring to the Nestle product—because that is just what their river looked like. Rivers in Australia downstream of logging operations look much the same.

Of course, there is the added hazard after the logging industry has moved in of the spraying of pesticides and, on occasions, herbicides into the fast growing plantations. These are particularly vulnerable, genetically modified plantations which replace these forests very often in the headwaters of rivers which are used for a variety of other purposes, including drinking water for people living downstream. Water is an industry these days and that very important commercial as well as environmental entity should be represented on any such council.

Earlier I supported the proposal put forward by the Labor Party as an alternative, which I think is superior, and I would make a minor amendment to ensure that a representative of the Australian Conservation Foundation is on the council that is proposed there. I support the Senate's stand on this matter. I hope that the Senate will remain resolute. I take the opportunity again to condemn the legislation while adding support to these very minor, around the edges amendments which the Senate has made and put to the House of Representatives and which the House of Representatives is, in the interests of the woodchip corporations, trying to eliminate.