Dr WOODRUFF – question to PREMIER, Mr ROCKLIFF
A key policy of your election campaign was your plan to go into 40,000 hectares of high-conservation value reserve forests to log and burn them – a climate crime. You then appointed former federal forestry minister Eric Abetz as your new resources minister. Minister Abetz is famous, or should we say infamous, for the failed plantation Ponzi managed investment scheme that bankrupted many Tasmanians, and the plantation companies themselves.
Just last week, we understand the forest policy unit and Private Forests Tasmania were moved from the Department of Natural Resources and Environment to the Department of State Growth. With them also transferred is the Forest Practices Authority, the industry’s regulator. Your government is planning to log this island’s most precious forests and you have moved the notional environmental regulator into the industry expansion tent under the watch of such an ideologue-driven minister.
Madam SPEAKER – Do we have a question?
Dr WOODRUFF – When will you stand up to your anti-science colleagues and end the assault on the environment?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the honourable member for the question. I am not going to engage in personal attacks. Regarding what we saw yesterday, not so much from you, Dr Woodruff, yesterday, but today. I will not be going there.
Madam SPEAKER – Through the chair.
Dr Woodruff – It is an important question that was based in fact.
Mr ROCKLIFF – This is a new parliament. If there is one thing that –
Madam SPEAKER – To avoid this cross conference, questions are through the chair and answers are through the chair. Thank you.
Mr ROCKLIFF – At the last election we committed our forest policy. It was clear. We intend on implementing all our commitments. We were elected 10 years ago to rebuild our forest industry. We tore up a job-destroying agreement between Labor and the Greens that almost halved the production of forest estate and gutted wood supply for industry. We have restructured Forestry Tasmania into Sustainable Timber Tasmania, putting it on secure financial footing.
Dr Woodruff – We are in a biodiversity and climate crisis.
Mr ROCKLIFF – We stopped the lockups and turned back the tide by converting land previously earmarked for reserves into a wood bank.
Dr Woodruff – It is a shame for our children’s future. This is public land. High conservation value forests.
Mr ROCKLIFF – There is nothing secret about this. It is legislated.
Madam SPEAKER – Leader of the Greens, please. I really do want to go through my first week without having to warn anyone.
Mr Abetz – Native forests, high conservation.
Mr SPEAKER – The Leader of the House will also mind that.
Mr ROCKLIFF – The wood bank provides resource security that sawmills need. We have committed to work with the sector to begin the process of unlocking the wood bank, which is legislation that went through both Houses of parliament. This should be no surprise to anyone. We want a sustainable forest industry. We want to grow our plantation resource and base as well, but our –
Dr Woodruff – What are you going to do with all the species that live in those forests?
Mr ROCKLIFF – Our sawmills are a very valuable industry in and around rural and regional Tasmania.
