Senator CRANE (6:32 PM) —In speaking to the Regional Forest Agreements Bill 1998 before us, I would like to deal with some of the issues that were raised in the Senate legislation committee inquiry into this legislation. In that inquiry, in the two days of hearings we had in Melbourne, we probably heard every conceivable point of view in the forest debate that it was possible to put. Some of it was very constructive, and we had the extremes from both sides of the debate putting their views. While there were two dissenting reports—one from the Labor Party representatives on that committee and one from the Democrats—I think the fundamental principles we set down in the majority report really set the scene to move ahead on this. The unfortunate thing is that we did not get to the legislation earlier. I heard some comments earlier about why we had not brought on this legislation. But the filibustering that went on in this place on the tax debate back in May and June—and before that—meant that there were time constraints caused by the wasting of time, and the government was unable to get to a lot of legislation that it would like to have got to.

We did make a number of recommendations on this legislation. The first recommendation was that the legislation be passed unamended by the Senate. There is one particular issue that I wish to deal with on the amendments that have been proposed by the Labor Party, and that is the parliamentary disallowance of the agreements. I think we need to look at this from both a pragmatic and a constitutional point of view. In terms of the management of the land and the forests, there is no question that the constitutional rights of the states must stand up. If this amendment is passed, I have no doubt that, whichever state is overridden by this Senate, regardless of who is in government, the issue will very quickly go before the High Court and there will be a long drawn-out battle, with very clear right on the side of the states. It is totally impractical to proceed down that line and it would defeat the purpose of the national forest policy statement.

I was rather surprised to hear from Senator Bolkus—and I presume he was referring to the national forest policy statement—that it had changed dramatically since 1992. I am not aware of any changes whatsoever that have occurred. In fact, the principles of the national forest policy statement, which I will come to if I have time, stand as strongly today as they stood at the time they were put together. I point out that there would be constitutional problems if this Senate were given the power to override agreements that were signed by the states. There are other areas where the Senate can have that power, because the responsibility has been put in the hands of the Commonwealth, but in this instance it is not. So that amendment is flawed before it even gets off the ground. People who vote on this legislation should take careful note of that fact.

Another issue that was raised right across the board—there was no particular champion of the cause—was the consistent criticism that people did not know what was in RFAs; there was not enough public information. The Senate committee, therefore, recommended that, for their first five years, an annual report on the RFAs be tabled in the parliament, which will allow total scrutiny of any upgrading changes that are made during that time. One of the furphies the committee was able to put to bed was that changes cannot be made to an RFA. Albeit difficult in some instances, changes can be made, according to the circumstances.

The committee recommends the government establish the wood and paper industry council. This came directly from the submission of the union representatives. Minister Tuckey has agreed that a wood and paper industry council should be established, but we on this side of the chamber do not agree that it is necessary to spell out all the fine detail of the membership and structure of that committee. We would sooner have a flexible approach to this and a committee which is structured to deal with the principles required in this area but which can have the flexibility to change membership and direction and to do things that are in the best interests of the timber industry. The amendments put before us ignore the fact that rigidly setting something in concrete in legislation such as this effectively removes any flexibility that such an industry council may have. It is not necessary for it to be put into legislation.

The next issue I wish to raise, which relates partly to something I have already spoken about, is the access to RFAs. In this particular case we are dealing with the actual RFA itself, not the ongoing review on a yearly basis over five years, but we believe that, once it is signed by the Prime Minister and the respective state premier or their nominee, the RFA should be tabled in the Commonwealth parliament. That is to allow for the total transparency that the majority on the committee believes is necessary to get rid of some of the claims made about RFAs which are not true. While it is a fact that, even under the current situation, people can get access to it, we believe that we should make that totally visible. I make that point.

One of the most important resolutions relates to employment, the status of plantation development, the status of the forests in various places and the changes that may occur. For example, major fires or floods occur from time to time that do alter balances. The Australian Bureau of Statistics should run annual questionnaires to establish over a period of time what is actually occurring in the forests, whether they be on private land or on public land. During the hearings we heard from one source—I will not mention any names—that should have been reliable in telling us the situation with regard to plantation forests, that said Australia could switch very easily to the utilisation of plantation forests and rely much less on the natural forest. Equally we heard from other witnesses, who are equally qualified, that it would be some years—probably 15 to 20 years—before the plantations could fill the gap that would exist if you were to reduce on a large scale the access to the natural or regrowth forests.

We even heard from other scientists and individuals, and I have also had private correspondence on this, that there would always be a demand or a necessity for the utilisation of a percentage of natural forests because of the requirements from the timber industry of Australians as a people. It should be noted that—and not many people in this debate acknowledge this—on average every man, woman and child in Australia uses three tonnes of forest products every year. That has to come from somewhere, or you are going to have to change your habits very dramatically. There are many personal items as well as paper and furniture that are produced from the forest through that particular process.

I make this point: against the fact that we import close to $2 billion worth of timber products into this country per year, we need to share our responsibilities as a nation in terms of what we extract and harvest from our forests. It is a renewable resource, and I doubt whether anybody, except the true scientists, when they go into a forest that has been regrowing for 40, 50 or 100 years, is able to tell the difference, anyhow. At the end of the day, a tree is a living thing, as we are, and it has a life span to maturity then it starts to go backwards for a period of time and then it dies. Much of the emotion in the debate is ill-founded and not based on fact.

Another point I want to make here is that it has been claimed and argued that harvesting the forests in Western Australia has contributed to the salinity problems which exist in that state. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is not one skerrick of evidence anywhere that, where forest harvesting occurs, there has been any land go saline or any increase in the level of salinity in the water in streams, rivers or soaks. In fact, the dead opposite occurs when there is a major forest operation in an area. Young growing trees utilise significantly more water than medium- and old-growth trees and they reduce the watertable which in turn reduces the salinity take-up. Nonetheless, when you get into the heavy rainfall areas where the major forestry areas are, it is not a problem and there is no evidence indicating one skerrick of salinity.

The other point that I would make comes to the argument about the animals, birds et cetera. There is not one piece of evidence of any loss of any animals in the Western Australian forests from forest harvesting. The areas where there is a problem are areas where there has been clearing and the natural habitat has been destroyed in one way or another because it has not been fenced out. I can speak from experience on this issue in relation to the blue-green parrot, which is supposedly living only in Fitzgerald Park. There was a certain amount of land in Fitzgerald Park which was pulled back from being opened up for agriculture because of the concern about this particular parrot. We now find that we have blue-green parrots living in the tree lines which are planted across the properties, our property included. So, if you fence out the particular habitats, the protection of our flora and fauna can be accommodated and can be combined with a proper commercial farming operation. Then you find the benefits that flow to the economics of the farm operation because of the protection, the lowering of salinity and a whole range of things.

There are a lot of myths surrounding this particular debate, but I will return to the survey by the Bureau of Statistics which I was talking about. We asked to have included in it questions on assessment of natural forest areas; plantation forest areas, public and private; the tourism industry; the service industries; and other industries operating within each RFA region. Nobody was able to give us anything like an accurate clue, for example, on how many jobs were generated from tourism as against the jobs generated from forestry operations. Worse than that, they could not give us a clue on the interlinkage between the jobs which were created there. We thought that was information which was very important and which we should in fact collect.

I want to make a couple of quick observations in the time I have left in regard to the national forest policy statement and touch on the things that are included there and are required to be dealt with when developing an RFA. Of course, the fundamental purpose of this legislation is to give resource security to the people who work in forest industries. We often hear the woodchip companies cited in the capital cities, but there is a lot more to the timber industry than that. There are the contractors who own the trucks, the tractors and the various equipment that moves them around. It impacts on them and on all the employees right through the process if the Commonwealth reneges on its responsibilities.

We have the issues of conservation, wood products and industry development, integrated and coordinated decision making and management, private native forests, plantations, water supply and catchment management, tourism and other economic and social opportunities, employment, work force education and training, public awareness, education and involvement, research and development and international responsibilities. I cannot emphasise the last issue too much. Whenever we walk away from our responsibilities in supplying some of that three tonnes I talked about, it means that we send a ship to one of the countries up north and, because they do not have the rules and disciplines that we have in this country, we become part of the process of raping the forests of Indonesia, Malaysia and our other northern neighbours. Of course, they have enormous economic pressures on them at their particular stage of development.

In winding up my remarks, I say that what this legislation will do is give that resource security that is needed. Once that 20-year RFA is put in place, it will remove the double jeopardy from having combined Commonwealth and state acts operating together, and that is very important. People should have to operate under only one set of laws, not two sets of laws. I believe that if these other issues I have raised are picked up in the proper manner and if these amendments are not proceeded with, because they will put us back into the double jeopardy situation in many areas, then this legislation will make a major contribution to the development of the timber industry in this country, and not only will we see the use of the existing forests in an ecologically sustainable way but also we will see a further development of plantations and the contribution they can make to reducing that enormous timber deficit that we have at this time.

Debate interrupted.

Senate adjourned at 6.51 p.m.