Senator BROWN (8:43 PM) —Once again I would like to commend Senator Murphy on his contribution. He comes at this debate from a different angle and certainly with differently weighted priorities from me. But his concern for the workers in this industry underlines everything he says, and his analysis of the failure of this industry to deliver when it comes to average Australians is absolutely spot-on.

If we take today as an average day of logging activities taking place in Australian native forests, 600 to 700 log trucks have taken logs out of this nation's native forests to woodchip mills. The vast majority, 80 to 90 per cent—up to 95 per cent in Tasmania—of those log trucks carting our native forest heritage out of those wild forests are going to export woodchip mills. From export woodchip mills, those forest products go through the paper process and end up largely on the rubbish dumps of the Northern Hemisphere, with a 1,000 per cent mark-up in the base product going to overseas interests.

There will be those who will talk about the importance of jobs in this industry, and I only wish the industry felt that was the case as well. Since the export woodchippers set up their mills, first at Eden on the South Coast of New South Wales—which is now the wholly Japanese owned Daishowa mill—and, shortly after, at Triabunna on the east coast of Tasmania, the industry has shed 20,000 jobs. This is largely due to the big corporations—operating overseas or out of the states in which the forests exist in the main—moving in to close down small operators, small sawmills, and bringing in technology which gets rid of workers in the bush where the little processing that remains occurs in Australia. They have got rid of workers both in processing and in transporting.

It pains me a lot to know that such workers are out around the parliament of Western Australia tonight—much the same as they were out around the parliament here a few short years ago—at the bidding of the woodchip corporations, the big city based operators that fund the Forest Protection Society and the other extensions of the woodchip industry. There is no security coming from those corporations for the very people who sit out there at night blockading parliament and, in the case of Canberra—I do not know about Western Australia—breaking the law with impunity, something which conservationists certainly do not get away with in the forests.

It needs to be said that the hypocrisy of this industry, crying crocodile tears over jobs, is one of the reasons why it has lost the public. In my home state of Tasmania, the Regional Forest Agreement was signed by the Prime Minister, John Howard, and by the then Liberal Premier of Tasmania, Tony Rundle, and it has been taken up with gusto by the now Labor Premier of Tasmania, Jim Bacon, who wanted to log even more of the forests. In the short time since that was signed—less than two years—we have seen the closure of the Burnie pulp mill, with a loss of 280 jobs last October, and 10 per cent of the big woodchipper North's work force axed, with another 31 jobs lost in May and the sacking of 33 workers—which is the entire work force, including the disabled work force—who were brought here to Canberra to campaign for logging in the Tarkine against so-called greenies. The lot of them have been closed down and sacked since the Regional Forest Agreement came in.

North then shed another 40 contractors' jobs in February. Sixteen jobs went in the shake-up at Australian Newsprint Mills down in the Derwent Valley in June. Ongoing insecurity in the pine sawmilling industry due to Forestry Tasmania's refusal to give Auspine and Wynwood secure contracts continues. There has been the temporary closure of the Burnie paper mill in June this year. There has been North's recent decision to sell its private forests and plantations and its decision the month before last to transfer nine information technology jobs from Tas mania to Melbourne. Besides that, Boral, the other big private woodchipper, in May this year cut its work force by nine jobs.

Over 400 jobs have gone west in my little state since the Regional Forest Agreement was signed, yet we have these corporations that are interlinked through the National Forest Association crying crocodile tears in Western Australia and saying that the change to the Regional Forest Agreement is causing the loss of jobs. We have a mass manipulation going on there by these big corporations with the workers manipulated in the middle. I agree with Senator Murphy that it is time that the workers' interests were put at the forefront in this industry and the undue influence of these big corporations was expunged from the political decision making process.

I have only to reiterate to this chamber the major decision made by the last government after Senator Faulkner, as minister for the environment, made a very impressive stand for the wishes of most Australians that more forests be protected in this country. That was reversed under pressure. On the very day that the then forestry minister, Mr Beddall, issued licences to the woodchippers—21 December 1965 is the date, if I am not wrong; I will correct that if necessary—the biggest suite of woodchip donations went to the big parties in this parliament. That was not a coincidence. That is undue influence, and it is only the tip of the iceberg when one comes to analyse the power of these big corporations against not only the interests of the forests the people are concerned about but also the interests of their own workers. Their major interest is profit: downsizing, getting rid of jobs which cost money and putting that across into their profit line for the following year.

The big failure of this whole process and this legislation is to not look at the prudent and feasible alternative, which is the massive plantation establishment in this country, most of it paid for by taxpayers' money over the last 30 years. Those plantations are available. They are mature. They can provide all the wood requirements for this country, including the current export woodchip aliquot. You have mainly only softwood available but, as far as our important interests are concerned—including structural timbers for building in this country—that is totally available from plantations. We do not need to be destroying our forests and, what is more, the plantation industry is at least involved in downstream processing. Outside this whole process, the good news for jobs in this country is the new mill at Tumut which is going to employ 1,000 workers in New South Wales and is totally based on plantations. That is happening at the same time as this crocodile tear shedding industry is putting hundreds of people out of work, RFA signed or not RFA signed, in the native forest industry.

What about the lost job opportunities? In my home state of Tasmania there are 18,000-plus jobs in tourism. Compare the 3,000 jobs that are dependent on forests and wilderness to the 2,400 jobs dependent on logging forests. These are on a collision course; you cannot have it both ways. The smaller the wild forest aliquot the less interest, the less international renown and the more people are going to go elsewhere. So we have a choice here: on the vertical, wild forests for the tourist and recreation industry, which is creating jobs, and they are good quality jobs; or, on the horizontal, forests on the back of a log truck going to a woodchip mill to be processed elsewhere in the world where jobs will be created while we lose jobs.

I am amazed that we are still having this debate in this place. Moreover, this legislation is a lay down misere for the woodchip industry. I am amazed that the Labor Party is going to support it, amendments or not. Let me look at the pivotal amendment of the Labor Party: it is that regional forest agreements ought to be vetted by parliament. I am sure One Nation is going to agree that it is not good enough for a Prime Minister and a Premier to sign an agreement outside this parliament and say that that is how a publicly owned resource is going to be worked for the next 20 years. Of course parliament should be vetting those regional forest agreements. But due to internal pressures, including the enormous pressure of the Bacon Labor government in Tasmania on the Labor caucus, the notable exceptions in the Labor amendment are Tasmania and East Gippsland in Victoria—the first RFAs that were signed. They are not to be brought before parliament. There is no way Labor can explain this inconsistency. That is why I will be moving an amendment to ensure that all regional forest agreements are brought before this duly elected parliament so that we can debate, analyse and give feedback as far as these regional forest agreements are concerned.

In particular, if there is one thing I take objection to in the provisions of this legislation it is section 7. It was the last section added to this legislation, and it is the section which says that in future any Commonwealth minister who acts to protect part of Australia's forest heritage makes the taxpayer liable to pay the woodchip corporations and the other logging corporations who will lose access to the destruction of those very forests as far as their profit making future is concerned. There is a compensation clause in this legislation added at the last minute under pressure of the woodchip corporations. But there is no compensation in here for workers who lose their jobs—none at all. Is Labor going to support my amendment that puts that to rights?

Why should we, as a parliament, be offering compensation to these big woodchip corporations, including internationally based corporations like Daishowa, but failing totally to even get reskilling for workers who lose their jobs because of the action of those very same corporations? It is totally wrong. This is, again, the parliament becoming involved in this manipulation by the woodchip corporations to their own interests. I foreshadow that I will move an amendment to remove that compensation clause. I challenge the Labor Party and the Democrats to back that. It is very important that we do not make the taxpayers of this country responsible for future moves by elected parliaments to protect the nation's heritage in the interests of future generations or even in the interests of more job rich alternative industries which depend on those forests.

In my home state there is an enormous amount of heritage at stake in this legislation. For 20 years this will give the logging indus try based outside our state with boards of management meeting elsewhere, most of whom have never set foot in the wild forest we are concerned about, the power to determine what happens in those forests and it will strip the federal authorities'—we, as elected parliamentarians—right to stand up for this nation's heritage. I noted the contribution by Senator Bartlett. I note that all nine Democrat members will be speaking in this second reading debate. I put this to the Democrats and I ask the two new ones to look to those who were here six weeks ago and ask this question: how could you, how could the Democrats, without exception pass the so-called environment protection bill—guillotine it so that it could not be debated properly, knock out the amendments through that guillotine process and in so doing endorse this very legislation?

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Ferguson) —Senator Brown, I think you should address the Chair.

Senator BROWN —How could they, Acting Deputy President? They will need more than your protection before I am through in this debate, Acting Deputy President.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Is that a threat, Senator Brown? Are you threatening the Chair?

Senator BROWN —If you read it that way, it will not be the first mistake that has been made in this place.

Senator Sherry interjecting—

Senator BROWN —And it will need more than Labor interjectors to come to the Democrats assistance on this. Just six weeks ago the Democrats passed, with the use of the guillotine, legislation which set in concrete the pivotal provision of this legislation which strips the Minister for the Environment and Heritage of the power to move to the protection of the forests and their wildlife wherever an RFA is in place. That includes endangered species. It overrides the endangered species provisions of that legislation. That involves half the species of this nation's plants and fauna. The legislation which the Democrats voted for in total says that a person may undertake RFA forestry operations—that is, whole scale woodchipping—without approval of the minister if they are undertaken in accordance with a regional forest agreement.

I drew the attention of every Democrat to this provision back in June. But they voted for it, and the destruction of the forests from here on in is on their plate. It is their responsibility. They voted for it. To come in now and vote exactly the opposite way shows at best, if we are going to put a good spin on it, a complete confusion about their approach to forests. More than that, it shows a culpability. It shows a failure to carry through the rhetoric of so many years of forest protection, and that has just been exemplified by what Senator Bartlett had to say, which, no doubt, every Democrat in this debate is going to follow up with. I do not bring this matter up just as a political point score. I drew this to their attention before those votes were taken in June. They went ahead knowing what they were doing.

This is dastardly legislation. It is awesomely destructive legislation. This locks this nation in for 20 years to the ongoing destruction of our forests, our ecosystems and our wildlife against the wishes, as the opinion polls show, of 80 per cent plus of people right around this nation. This is a failure of the political process. This is a failure of the major parties. This is a tribute to political influence of the corporate sector, including multinational corporations. It lets down not only the environment but also the workers and tragically coopts them in the sort of event that is occurring in Perth tonight and which we saw around this parliament only a few years ago.

I put this on notice: those who think that this is the end of the fight to protect, amongst other things, the world's tallest hardwood forests and ancient living ecosystems in my home state of Tasmania and to prevent them being turned across to this evil system inherent in the regional forest agreements of logging, then fire bombing and then 1080 poisoning—a complete destruction of ecosystems as a presage to putting in quick profit making, genetically manipulated plantations—and those who think that the spirit of the people who oppose that is going to go away, are very, very wrong indeed. If this legislation passes this Senate, and the signs are that it will, the fact that it is being sheeted home in the way it is will be on the heads of not only the government but also the Labor Party and the Democrats.

There will be a turnaround. It may be difficult to achieve. It may take a lot of turmoil, but it will come. Worst of all is that we should leave that simply to the marauding woodchippers to run out of profitability in the forests that they are destroying at the moment and say, `Well, this industry's come to the end of its life.' It should be transferred to a plantation basis now. It is a failure that, with the political system in this country, that is not the outcome we are voting for in this legislation. I move:

Omit all words after "That", substitute "further consideration of the bill be an order of the day for the first sitting day after the first day on which all regional forest agreements have been completed between the Commonwealth and Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia".