Senator GIBSON (9:11 PM) —I rise to support my colleagues Senator Calvert and Senator Watson on this particular bill. What is the purpose of this bill? The purpose of this bill is to provide certainty for investors in the forest industry after a lengthy scientific regional forest agreement process over many years. Because of the way they had been treated in the past, people cannot trust politicians and they require legislation at both Commonwealth and at state levels to lock in the agreements so that, if politicians want to interfere in the future, then compensation will have to be paid to people who invest on the assumption of wood flows from the forests.

It is about investment and jobs in the regions of Australia. This process is the end of very many years of argument, as my colleagues have said, going back about 20 years. First of all, there were very many years of argument between the extreme greens and those people who wanted to make use of these forests on a sustained basis. Then that was replaced by several years of scientific analysis which ended in segregating native forests into two major components—parks on the one hand, and multiple use forests, which included wood production, on the other hand. So that is the process we have been through over a very long period of time.

This bill aims to give certainty to people who want to invest in places in the forests. These include my home state of Tasmania, and there are other RFAs in the other states, particularly in Victoria, where two have already been signed and another one was signed today. People wanting to invest in those areas require certainty. Why are we playing politics with all this? From a Tasmanian perspective, here we are going through the roundabout of anti-investment and anti-jobs which is being played by the ALP for the second time.

My state, Tasmania, has been sent backwards and badly affected by green politics over the past 20 years. In the mid-1980s the ALP decided to play politics with this issue and run with the Greens because they believed they could use the green ideas to affect voters in suburban Melbourne and Sydney.

Senator Quirke —Worked well, too, didn't it?

Senator GIBSON —That is basically what happened, and what was sacrificed was the forest industry in the regions of Australia, including my home state. We went through many processes, as my colleagues have pointed out. I might add that in the early 1980s a resource assessment commission, again, conducted a scientific analysis of what was going on, and this was followed by the Helsham inquiry. The ALP did not agree with the recommendations that Helsham made and rode roughshod over the top of them—and Graham Richardson owned up to that on the ABC after the 1983 election.

This culminated in the Wesley Vale fiasco in 1988 where, as Senator Watson pointed out, a proposal for a modern, $1.2 billion pulp mill was killed by the environment minister because, again, they wanted to play politics with suburban Melbourne and Sydney. That frightened investors away from my home state and from the other forest regions of Australia. The argument went on for years but, in the end, the ALP government had to go through the scientific process and reach agreements with the states as to what was to be park and what was to be multiple-use forest. It took them a long time, but in the end they actually did that and I congratulate them for it.

We have been through that process in many of the forest regions of Australia. Agreement has been reached, and on very generous criteria, for the preservation of large sections of the native forest of Australia. I might add—for any members of the community who are listening—that the native forests of Australia being put to multiple use are well managed. They are not being destroyed; they are being managed on a sustained yield basis. That is what this RFA is about—keeping things sustained and locking them in. But what do we have today? We have the ALP proposing amendments to the legislation which would create uncertainty. Senator O'Brien claimed earlier today that they are excluding Tasmania and the two earlier Victorian agreements from this process. But, as Minister Tuckey has pointed out in the public arena, this will not work, and we have to ask, `What are the ALP up to?' They have proposed two amendments: the first to allow disallowance of the agreement by either house of parliament and the second to insert an objects clause into the bill. These are objects that the RFA must comply with. They have attempted to isolate the Tasmanian RFA from the disallowance provision, as well as the two Victorian ones, by limiting its application to RFAs that were signed after 1 March this year.

However, advice from the Australian Government Solicitor shows that the ALP has made a major blunder in this area. Rather than quarantining the Tasmanian RFA, the amendments mean that the Tasmanian RFA would not be recognised as an agreement for the purposes of the bill—that is, the Tasmanian forest industry would not receive the security and protection that the bill is designed to provide. This is because the amendments they have proposed require that, for an agreement to be regarded as an RFA, it must have regard to the objects of the act. As the objects of the act had not been specified at the time these three RFAs were made—including the Tasmanian one—and had already been signed, it is not possible that those RFAs have regard to the objects of the act. The only way this could be rectified would be by amending the Tasmanian RFA so it complies with the objects that the ALP is proposing in its amendment. However, this would then require the proposed amended RFA to go back through the ALP's parliamentary disapproval process—that is, back to square one.

Again, security is destroyed; investment is not encouraged but discouraged. Where is my home state today? Largely as a result of green politics, investment in my home state has gone backwards by 10 per cent relative to 10 years ago. By contrast, for the whole of Australia, investment is up 40 per cent today relative to 10 years ago. There is a huge difference in investment in my state versus the rest of Australia. Of course, employment has run parallel to that. Employment in my home state has gone backwards by 3.2 per cent today relative to 10 years ago; employment in the nation has increased by over 10 per cent over the same period.

It is obvious to all of us that future and rolling investment is the key to future employment. That is what we require. And here we have the ALP playing politics again in order to curry favour with suburban Perth, at the same time destroying investment certainty—a prerequisite for employment in my home state and also in Victoria. They should be condemned for their action, and I trust that all Tasmanians will chase their ALP senators to make sure that these amendments do not go through.