Senator BARTLETT (8:03 PM) —I rise to make the initial contribution for the Australian Democrats on this piece of legislation, the Regional Forest Agreements Bill 1998 , which is a very important piece of legislation dealing with a very crucial issue. I do so as the Democrats' environment spokesperson. The second reading stage of the debate will be closed by my new colleague Senator Brian Greig, who has primary carriage of this bill as the spokesperson on forestry issues.

Firstly, I would particularly like to reinforce my agreement to, and support for, Senator Forshaw's comments about the completely farcical committee inquiry process and the totally inadequate time frame that was forced upon the committee to inquire into this piece of legislation. I think it did the Senate's reputation no good at all to have such an important issue dealt with in such a incredibly truncated time frame. As Senator Forshaw highlighted, the great shame was that the committee was forced to go through that process in such a ridiculously fast time frame—I think back in February—and yet here we are, six months later, finally getting around to debating the legislation. I urge the Senate as a whole to consider more wisely in future the timetable it sets for legislation. I think that is a particularly extreme case of a major problem, but it is not an isolated case either. Another aspect of Senator Forshaw's comments that bears agreement is his reflection on the inadequate performance of the Minister for Forestry and Conservation, Mr Tuckey. I think, if anything, he has done more to move this issue in a backwards direction than anything else.

This regional forest agreement legislation as it stands risks legitimising, for an extraordinary period with extraordinary protection from review or challenge, the claims of one set of sectional interests to the detriment of other sections of the industry, the government's employment and regional development objectives, Australia's international obligations and the broader interests of the community. It will facilitate the destruction of areas of unique environmental significance, and it will do so permanently and needlessly.

The Democrats' particular concerns with the regional forest agreement process as it has occurred and the legislation can be summarised as follows. The RFA process as it has occurred fails to resolve one of the most long running and contentious issues to face the nation. It fails to deliver on jobs for impoverished and vulnerable rural areas. It unfairly discriminates against the plantation industry. It will destroy many areas of native forest, including old-growth areas. It fails to protect Australia's biodiversity, contrary to an international agreement. It discriminates unfairly against other important cultural values and social and economic benefits provided for by native forest areas. It will be mostly controlled by state governments which have vested or financial short-term interests in the outcomes, thereby leading to positions of conflict of interest. It raises constitutional issues and imposes potential legal and financial difficulties on the Commonwealth and the taxpayer. The Democrats argue that this bill legitimates a process which has been unscientific, uneconomic, illogical and immoral. We are totally opposed to this bill.

The future of Australia's forests has unfortunately become a contentious and highly divisive issue. Hundreds of thousands of people have marched in the streets, taken part in protests in the forests themselves, written letters or directly participated in public interest or industry organised groups about the issue. There have been blockades and sometimes violent confrontations in forests in several states and even a blockade of federal parliament. Successive governments—both state and federal—have tried a variety of means to satisfy competing interests and Australia's obligations under international treaties. The regional forest agreement process was supposed to bring an end to the divisiveness and conflict.

The Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee inquiring into the bill—and I attended one of the two brief committee hearings as part of that process and examined many of the submissions—heard allegations that agreements had been reached on highly unscientific grounds in bureaucratic secrecy without equal opportunity for all stakeholders to be represented, that lobbying had changed reserved areas that were supposedly set in stone and that biodiversity and conservation needs had been met with `loggers' scraps and slivers'. Even if only some of these allegations are true, the bill will set such flawed agreements in place for a considerable period and place them far beyond challenge or amendment. It is hard to see how this will reduce conflict over Australia's forests.

The motivation behind this bill—which is quite a slim bill—seems to be solely for the Commonwealth to abdicate its environmental responsibilities and legal powers to the states. The bill removes hard fought for community and environmental safeguards, favours the declining sector of the industry at the expense of the growing sector of the industry, and offers selective compensation as a means to put the schemes beyond the reach of further consideration or challenge.

The Democrats are concerned that the perception that one interest has achieved an officially sanctioned game, set and match with this legislation will exacerbate rather than resolve community conflict. Indeed, the implied lack of productive outlets for expressing widespread community disquiet over woodchipping operations in old growth forests in particular may mean that protest assumes a more extreme and confrontational aspect than has been the case to date. We only need to look—as Senator Forshaw has alluded in his contribution—to the immense community disquiet in Western Australia over the inadequacy of the process.

Speaking as a Queenslander with an RFA that has been under negotiation for some time, it clearly seems to be taking a turn for the worse and there is great concern in terms of where it might be heading. Apart from my concern about where the agreement may end up, I am certainly also concerned about what that may mean in terms of the community protests that it will engender and the increasing community disquiet and confrontation that will occur in Queensland and in south-east Queensland where I am from. I very much hope that we can avoid going down that unnecessary path.

Of course, the question of RFAs is so vexed that even Australia's larger political parties have found it difficult to come anywhere near consensus on this issue. The National Party, the Liberal Party and the Labor Party have all had public stoushes between branches, state and central bodies on the issue, with brawls sometimes becoming major news. As the legislation comes into the Senate and finally starts being debated, it is quite clear that those brawls are continuing. It will be interesting to view the careful speeches and delicate positioning of individuals who are going to have to justify themselves before their caucus, their states, their factions, their branches and their electorates as this legislation progresses. Of course, the final vote in the chamber is what counts, and it is clear that some would prefer the legislation to be started all over again—or to be thrown out all together—and that others do not agree with particular aspects of RFAs and will be voting against their own judgments.

It has also become obvious that many politicians are so confused over the massive amount of sometimes quite emotive information coming from either side and the passionate nature of the issue that they have taken the easy option of believing that you just cannot win on forests, that there is no outcome which will satisfy anybody and that the only way to deal with the dreaded `f' word is to hush it up and weld in legislation that will push the issue aside for many years to come. It was clear from the submissions to the legislative committee that examined the bill that the range of people unhappy with the RFAs will not give up and will keep making this an issue, even if this attempt to lock the forests out of the legislative protection at the federal level does actually pass this chamber.

The Democrats predict that the issue will remain a bleeding sore for major parties and individuals in those parties while ever the industry remains unsustainable, while people are not offered meaningful and continuing work and while native forests are logged for woodchips. The RFAs lock in those concerns, so it is logical to assume that the community will continue to be unhappy with their elected and aspiring representatives.

The Democrats feel that the only basis for greater community consensus on this issue lies with an open process based on more equal inputs from stakeholders, undistorted scientific and economic assessment and community education. Compensation may well be part of a long-term solution to the vexed question of access to Australian forests. However, it should be focused on assistance to affected communities rather than being—as the RFAs risk implying—a handout to companies, pork barrel for some electorates or a threatened big stick to ward off any community efforts to rearrange or alter agreements.

Yet the reason that the regional forest legislation has been put before the Senate is to provide a so-called resolution to forest issues. It is clear that this process has failed that test, and voting for this legislation will continue such conflict in the Australian community. This reason alone—among many others—is sufficient to throw this legislation out.

This piece of legislation comes with an explanatory memorandum which contains assertions that in the Democrats' view are simply not correct. I would like to focus on two of them. The first is in the general outline of the explanatory memorandum:

RFAs are the central focus of a package of measures designed to implement the National Forest Policy Statement (adopted by the Commonwealth and all State and Territory Governments) in relation to native forests.

There are some simple tests to see if this statement is accurate, and I will highlight just a few. The National Forest Policy Statement provides for the development of Australia's plantation industry. Does this bill—and the RFA process that it seeks to legitimise—in any way assist the development of Australia's plantation industry? It does not. The National Forest Policy Statement provides for a comprehensive, adequate and representative reserve system. Does the RFA bill or the RFA process guarantee that? It clearly does not. Again, I only need to point to south-east Queensland in my own state where the clearing that has already occurred puts the land there beyond what is already an inadequate and representative reserve system. Yet the industry—and certainly Minister Tuckey—is proposing that significant areas of the already inadequate remnants of native forests be further cleared.

The National Forest Policy Statement allows for areas where comprehensive, representative and adequate systems are in place. Approvals for exports of woodchips for periods longer than one year assume the Commonwealth will be able to meet its obligations under section 30 of the Australian Heritage Commission Act. The question is: will the Commonwealth meet those obligations? The answer clearly is no. Clause 5, subsection (3) provides that, for areas under an RFA, section 30 of the Australian Heritage Commission Act must be disregarded. Again under the comprehensive, representative and adequate reserve system a set of nationally agreed criteria—the JANIS criteria—were established. Do the RFAs meet those criteria? Let us have a look at a couple of examples.

A benchmark of 15 per cent of the pre-1750 distribution of each forest community was to be protected within conservation reserves, yet this criterion has clearly not been met. Another benchmark is the retention in reserves of at least 60 per cent of existing old growth, increasing up to 100 per cent for rare forest community old growth. Is that criterion met? Again, the answer is no. While on the old growth issue, this bill and the explanatory memorandum and the RFAs claim to be about ecologically sustainable development. It is patently clear that it is not possible to sustainably log old-growth forest. This fact was even recognised by that well-known left-wing, pinko, feral greenie organisation, the Resource Assessment Commission. Just going back to the JANIS criteria, another criterion is the protection of 90 per cent or more, wherever practicable, of high quality wilderness. This is another criterion that is not met.

The second falsehood in the explanatory memorandum which needs highlighting will be more fully explored by my colleague Senator Andrew Murray—it deals with financial issues which is a specialty of Senator Murray's—but is worthy of mention here. That is that the RFA has no direct financial implications. It is beyond belief that any responsible government would seek to put out such a statement about a bill before the house of review, which this chamber is, and expect to get away with it.

This bill sets up provision for massive compensation payouts to the states with a blank cheque, and the government wants the Senate to sign it—a blank cheque for about 20 years. Putting aside any environmental or social arguments about the RFA process, this simple fact alone should be enough for the Senate to force the government to suspend the legislation until it can absolutely quantify the amount of compensation the public purse may be eligible for in the future.

I would like to emphasise briefly the situation facing the forests of south-east Queensland, the area that I represent. The fate of south-east Queensland forests, in part, may be decided by the future of this legislation. As a Democrat I was heavily involved during the last state election in Queensland in the discussions with all parties about what their commitments would be on environmental issues, particularly relating to land clearing, which is a vital issue in Queensland, and the future of the forests. Clearly, the preference decisions of many Democrat voters were quite crucial to the Labor Party eventually winning government by an extremely narrow margin, as everybody knows.

I am sure they were influenced in part by the commitments that the ALP made in relation to the future of the native forests. I call on Premier Beattie to stick to his election commitment to move logging out of native forests as a matter of urgency. Queensland forests are already the least protected of any in Australia and yet they contain the highest levels of biodiversity. Fifty-five per cent of native forests in south-east Queensland have been cleared since the middle of last century. In an open letter printed in the Courier-Mail recently a range of individuals and organisations, including the Queensland division of the Australian Democrats, urged Premier Beattie to protect the native forests of south-east Queensland, pointing out such facts that scientific studies have found only 2.7 per cent of native forests in south-east Queensland are clearly identified as old growth.

South-east Queensland has the smallest percentage of forests protected in national parks and other reserves of any forested region in Australia. An expanded parks system must protect high quality habitat for forest animals and include all high conservation value forests such as Mapleton, Bellthorpe, the Conondales, Mt Mee, Tewantin and many more. South-east Queensland already has plantations providing 73 per cent of all sawlogs produced in the region. Establishing additional plantations on already cleared land will help Australia meet its obligations in dealing with the greenhouse effect and assist in a speedy transition to plantation timber production.

Polling conducted as part of the forest agreement process has indicated that 83 per cent of people in south-east Queensland do not want logging continued in our native forests and yet that is specifically the agenda that Minister Tuckey, in particular, has tried to impose on the negotiation process for the RFA in south-east Queensland. That process had for some time been proceeding in a constructive fashion between timber industry representatives and conservationists, particularly the Rainforest Conservation Society, but it was obviously a process of great concern to Minister Tuckey. He clearly put in a lot of effort to destroy that constructive working relationship and to ensure that protection of Queensland's native forests was not going to be an end outcome on the negotiation.

South-east Queensland is an area of approximately 2.7 million hectares and is the home of some of the most biologically rich and unique forests in Australia. Tall eucalypt forests dominated by blackbutt and tallowwood rise above the ridge lines of the great divide and the coastal ranges. Amongst the gullies and ravines there are precious remnants of the once extensive subtropical rainforest that dominated the landscape of south-east Queensland for thousands of years. These forests are of enormous significance to the region's traditional owners. Together with northern New South Wales, these forests include the last global stronghold of subtropical rainforests and contain at least 284 plant and animal species that are found nowhere else on the planet.

Once extensive in south-east Queensland, these forests have been fragmented and isolated by repeated unsustainable logging and clearing. The unsustainable activities of the native forest timber industry in south-east Queensland have led to a wood supply crisis. Having decimated the extensive stands of red cedar, hoop and bunya pines, the native forest industry has now nearly exhausted the available sawlog supplies of eucalypt species such as blackbutt.

Unsustainable logging and clearing has left a legacy of denuded river valleys and isolated pockets of undisturbed old-growth and wilderness forests. It is a matter of great concern to me and, as I just pointed out, a significant majority of Queenslanders that these forest remnants are now under great threat with the RFA that is being considered at the moment in south-east Queensland. I again urge the state Labor government there to ensure that their pre-election commitments are met.

The bill that we have started to debate today is crucial in terms of how it increases the threat to those forests around Australia that are subject to RFAs. In terms of my own region of Queensland, I urge the Senate not to further increase the risk and threat to those valuable forests. I also urge the Senate to explore another route to phasing out logging in old-growth forests as quickly as possible rather than locking in financial protection for woodchippers and loggers at the expense of the very important and fundamental scientific and ecological criteria that were meant to be at the foundation of the RFA process.