Fifty-nine years ago, in recognition of the economic importance of our forestry industry and to support its development, Prime Minister Robert Menzies established the Australian Forestry Council.
Twenty-six years ago, in signing the first of many regional forest agreements, Prime Minister John Howard said it was a win for jobs and a win for the preservation of environmental values.
Nine years ago, in saluting your industry, Prime Minister Tony Abbott described the people who work in our forests and with timbers as the ‘ultimate conservationists’. He said, and I quote, ‘we will never build a strong economy by trashing our environment, but we will never help our environment by trashing the economy either’.
Federal Liberal leader after federal Liberal leader has been a friend, not a perfect friend, but a very strong friend of your industry, and I want to pledge our continuing support and friendship to your industry, to your sector.
In the last term of the Howard Government, I served as the Assistant Treasurer. I had the honour to work very closely with Peter Costello, including on reducing regulatory burdens for businesses and producing the 2007 Intergenerational Report.
It was in that role I think that I gained a much deeper economic appreciation for the contribution which Australia’s forestry industry makes to our economy. The contribution that we should remind all Australians today is $24 billion annually.
But on a personal level, I’ve always had a great admiration for those who work in your sector. I come from family who come off the land. We have a small farm where we are now and I have a great appreciation for the trials and tribulations of many Australians who live in regional areas.
As your industry appreciates much more than most, without forest conservation, the creation of new things with wood is absolutely constrained. In speaking about your industry, Jonno (Liberal Senator for Tasmania Jonno Duniam) put it best and simplest when he said and I quote, ‘trees grow, you cut them down. You use them, you replant them, and they grow again’.
Now, he’s right – the resource you manage is the ultimate renewable, and the contributions the forestry sector makes to our nation are truly significant. Whether it’s products which Australians rely on every day – timber for construction, for all those houses that he spoke about before and many other products in the built form.
Whether it’s the jobs you create, the revenue you generate, it helps motor our economy, or whether it’s your sustainable practices which help to protect and nurture our environment. The most commendable attribute of Australia’s forestry industry is your ability to balance economic and environmental imperatives.
Frankly, I think there is a very strong argument that you do it better than any of your international counterparts.
The Australian standard here is world leading.
Most Australians would be surprised to hear that only six out of every 10,000 trees are harvested annually – just 0.6% of Australia’s forests, and I include that because it’s no surprise to any of you, but I want other Australians to gain a better appreciation of the sector of the industry.
Now we know that more over that 0.6% must be regenerated under law. Meaning that in Australia there is no net loss to our forests through harvesting.
The remaining 99.94 % of forests are either protected or not suited for forestry operations, and it’s important that we remind ourselves also from my perspective, of Labor’s record on forestry:
Premier Andrews decided in 2019 to phase out native logging in Victoria by 2030, a move which would adversely affect thousands of Australian jobs.
Even more egregious was his recent announcement to bring forward that ban to the end of this year, following the example set in WA by then Premier Mark McGowan.
Now, I think these decisions show a callous disregard for your industry. They pursue a populist line within a segment of society. But the workers, the families, small business owners and the towns behind the timber industry deserve to know why these decisions were made, and they, I think, demonstrate the profound economic and environmental ignorance.
We all know the ramifications of winding back our domestic forestry industry:
- People lose their jobs, or jobs will simply be pushed offshore.
- Families will face the difficult decision to leave the regional communities they love, that they’ve grown up in.
- Australia will forfeit forestry expertise, the skills and the sovereign capabilities.
- Demand for timber products will increase – particularly for building the homes that we desperately need, the additional 1.5 million people Labor proposes to bring in over the next five years through migration.
- Consumers will be subjected to additional costs.
- Housing availability will be further restrained.
- Timber shortages will see us become even more reliant on imports.
And that’s the crazy part of the approach – not just in this area, but more generally, where there will be no environmental gain by importing products that we’ll continue to use domestically.
There’s no net benefit to the environment – we know that our reliance on other markets will only increase carbon emissions when timber is transported.
Indeed, we’d need to accept timber from countries with inferior environmental standards, and as a country we should wake up to that fact.
Then, of course, there’s the often-forgotten job which the skilled timber workers perform – you help manage our forests and protect communities during our bushfire season. I think the Victorian and Western Australian Governments have simply not thought through – certainly not sufficiently – the implications of their rash decisions.
While the Federal Government can’t intervene in the decisions made by the Victorian and West Australian Governments, it’s far from powerless.
Labor, as we know, is in power in every state and territory across mainland Australia, as well as federally. Prior to becoming Prime Minister, Mr Albanese wrote to the Tasmanian forestry sector. He said he would support native forest harvesting and take up the fight against the Greens to protect jobs.
At an AFPA dinner – as Joel (AFPA Chairman Joel Fitzgibbon) referred to earlier, last November, many of you would have been here – the Prime Minister spoke of his ambition for, and I quote, ‘a bright future for sustainable forestry’, he noted how communities and families across Australia rely on your industry – fair enough.
Well, Mr Albanese’s words, unfortunately, are betrayed by his actions and, indeed, inactions.
He’s refused to stand up to the Premiers or try to temper their reckless decisions. He’s reneged on some of his original commitments on forest industry funding by giving in to the conditions demanded by the Greens to establish the National Reconstruction Fund.
And his government’s support for the 10 existing Regional Forest Agreements appears to be waning – agreements essential for both the conservation and productive use of Australia’s forests.
We know that the Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek is seeking to bring regional forest agreements under the new environmental protection laws.
It can only mean one thing: that following in the footsteps of Victoria and WA, the Federal Government is seeking to quash the native timber industries in other states.
Indeed, ahead of Labor’s National Conference, more than half of its Party’s branches prepared motions calling for the Government to end forest logging.
Now, having you buy the poisonous ideas of green radicalism, the Albanese Government, I think, has lost all sense of perspective. Labor’s willing to sacrifice Australian livelihoods and deindustrialise our economy because it’s become captive to emotionalism and rejected rationalism.
Most recently, as you know, the Government put forward the Treasury Law Amendment Bill. That legislation is seeking to make multinationals pay, in the Government’s view, ‘their fair share of tax’.
The companies working in plantation forestry, which already face significant commercial and regulatory hurdles, will unfairly fall within the scope of the proposed legislation.
The proposed laws will serve as a disincentive to investing in our plantation forestry sector, which we need to sustain and grow given demand for timber products.
So, the Coalition will be seeking amendments to the legislation to help protect your sector, to work with the sector, and of course, your sector is not the only one in the Government’s crosshairs:
It’s the mining sector. It’s the gas sector. And so are small businesses across the country.
The Albanese Government’s weaponising environmental, energy and now industrial relations policies in pursuit of a big government agenda.
And that big government agenda means curtailing the freedom of the marketplace and the autonomy of industries through more intervention, through more regulation, through more taxation and through more control.
The big government agenda is completely the wrong approach and not in our national interest.
Amidst a cost of living crisis, stubbornly persistent inflation and low productivity, government needs to put trust back into industry, into businesses, and into the free market.
We need a government which leverages the knowledge of our private sector rather than dismisses that knowledge because government thinks it knows best.
We need a government which backs our industries and businesses because their prosperity is inseparable from our national economic prosperity.
We need a government which backs regional communities and the workers that underpin them.
Our forestry industry is world-class. We need to be more proud of it. It’s world-class – both in what you produce for Australia and what you achieve environmentally.
The Liberal Party and the wider Coalition will continue to fight for you in Opposition.
Indeed, we need to stick together to fight for the future of our regional communities against a movement that doesn’t even pretend to care about regional communities.
But to end the national despair and stop the national repair, we do need a change of government in Canberra. Our colleagues, myself, are dedicated to that cause.
We back you in good times and in bad. We offer you our support so that we can ensure the survival of this industry, that it survives and thrives for another generation.
- This is an edited version of a speech given by the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton to a recent Australian Forest Products Association dinner.
Peter Dutton is the current leader of the Opposition, holding office as the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia since May 2022. He previously served as Minister for Defence from 2021 to 2022 and Minister for Home Affairs from 2017 to 2021.
