Dr WOODRUFF question to MINISTER for BUSINESS, INDUSTRY and RESOURCES, Mr ABETZ
Over the summer, we met with locals from Lilydale, Golconda, the Fingal Valley, and St Marys. These are communities adjacent to protected high conservation value forests that you plan to convert for logging and burning. One of the threatened lots is home to the iconic PANAMA music festival, held last weekend. The thousands of music and forest lovers there were shocked when they heard of your plans. PANAMA organisers and worried Lilydale locals have written to you and Forestry Tasmania for answers, only to be fobbed off.
Of the 27 lots you are focusing on trashing, you have chosen five to be first. You were due to receive a report detailing the five most suitable parcels for FPPF land for conversion to PTBZ by last December. Will you be transparent with Tasmanians and let them know which forest you are planning on destroying? Have you received this report? If so, will you table it in parliament?
Mr Ellis – It has to come back to parliament.
The SPEAKER – I remind minister Ellis to stop helping.
ANSWER
Honourable Speaker, the question by the Leader of the Greens shows a complete ignorance of the way this is going to work, if it does work. Any proposed lot for harvesting will need to come before this parliament. Therefore, there is no secrecy about it. There is nothing. Of course, when your task in life is to be the ventriloquist doll for the multi-million-dollar non-taxpaying Bob Brown Foundation and wanting to raise funds for that organisation to assist your own political cause, you will ask loaded questions of that nature to try to get more donations and scare people. That is something I find absolutely reprehensible.
As a leader of a political party, the Leader of the Greens should be understanding the situation, not concerning people – not only unnecessarily, but might I suggest, deliberately, to assist with the fundraising and the political cause. Let us make no mistake, when we stop native forestry, as Labor has done in Victoria and Queensland, what do we see? A mass import of hardwood from around the world, logged in the Solomon Islands, Malaysia, and South America.
Dr Woodruff – Honourable Speaker, point of order, Standing Order 45, relevance. It was a specific question about the report that the minister was to have received in December for five lots. Will he please table that to parliament and provide communities with the information?
SPEAKER – I will take the point of order. I will remind it is much easier if you wait for me to give you the call before launching into the point of order. I will draw the minister to the question.
Mr ABETZ – Thank you, Speaker. Can I remind the Leader of the Greens that there was a huge amount of other verbiage around her question and I am seeking to answer those specifics. If there was one specific question, I could answer that, but when a whole host of allegations are made, it is right and proper that those allegations, especially when they are false, are answered and the record is corrected. That is what I am seeking to do in relation to the matters that the member has raised.
Will I receive a report? Yes, I will. Have I received it as yet? No, I have not. Will I table it? The tabling of these matters will be at a time if the government makes a determination. As we said at the time, a determination on these particular wood lots would be determined on the economics of it, the environmental considerations of it, the certification of all the other matters –
Members interjecting.
The SPEAKER – The minister’s time for answering the question has expired.
SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTION
Dr WOODRUFF – A supplementary question, Speaker?
The SPEAKER – I will hear the supplementary question, but there were three answers just then.
Dr WOODRUFF – Thank you, minister, for confirming that you have not yet received that report. Can you please tell us when you expect to receive it, since it is late?
The SPEAKER – I will draw the minister to it as it arose out of his answer. I draw the minister to the question.
Mr ABETZ – In due course.
Dr Woodruff – So much disdain.
The SPEAKER – Order, Leader of the Greens.
