.2
PRIME MINISTER
STATEMENT BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. J. KEATING, MP
THE FUTURE OF OUR FORESTS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
NOVEMBER 1995
Mr Speaker, I seek leave of the House to make a Statement on forest policy.
Mr Speaker, today I announce the Government's broad policy direction on
Australia's forests and forest industries. I am also announcing several
related initiatives vital to the future of our native forests and the industries
which depend upon them. Full details of these measures will be released
tomorrow by the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, the Minister
for the Environment, Sport and Territories, and the Minister for Resources.
Mr Speaker, Australia's forests are a defining feature of our landscape, a
priceless element of our environment and heritage, a national resource of
immeasurable proportions and a profound national responsibility.
All Australians have a stake in these forests. All of us have a responsibility to
insist that they are properly managed and carefully conserved.
They are a national treasure and their management must be ecologically
sustainable and economically clever.
Our native forests are of inestimable conservation value. They are vital
repositories of biological diversity indeed, new species of plants and
animals are still being discovered. They are a haven for endangered
species. They are vitally important as water catchments, they influence our
climate and act as carbon sinks to limit the greenhouse effect.
Just as importantly they are places of unique and unrivalled beauty. They
are aesthetically and spiritually important to us. They are important to our
sense of belonging to this land. Our respect for and enjoyment of them is
part of our communion with Australia.
Mr Speaker, the national interest quite simply demands that we protect our
forests.
This same national interest also demands that we use the forests intelligently
for the things we need and for the communities that live with them.
Our forests have economic significance. They are an important renewable
resource, contributing to the wealth of the nation, and providing us with
essential commodities.
Many Australians, and many Australian communities, depend on our native
forests for their livelihoods. Whatever we decide are our priorities, their
interests must be attended to.
This perception of an irresolvable conflict between the environmental and
commercial values of forests has produced deep divisions in the Australian
community. The debate presents itself as a conflict between absolutes: the
absolute necessity to protect these priceless parts of our environment, and
the absolute necessity to protect Australia's economic interests and the
well-being of Australian working men and women.
The conflict is easily understood. No Australians want to see these forests
destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Nor do they wish to see the economic
interests of Australia damaged or the livelihoods of their fellow Australians
threatened. We on the Government side number ourselves among these Australians.
No policy is going to satisfy everyone. Neither side of this debate can expect
to get everything they want. The aim is to see that Australia is the winner,
that the Australians of the next century are the winners. In the end, the
essential goal is the protection of the long term national interest.
Mr Speaker, it is towards this goal that the-Government has steered a course.
Our cause will be greatly advanced if, on both sides, the debate is conducted
with the national interest in mind. We should all remember that no-one in this
conflict has a monopoly on truth or virtue, or a mortgage on concern for the
future of our forests. Those who presume they do and claim it exclusively will
only debilitate the efforts of people of good will to find the best solutions.
We recognise that this is a debate which will of its nature arouse great
passions. But, equally the solutions and the path to them cannot be other
than rational.
We will not find solutions without cool thinking and a genuine desire to find
common ground and a degree of shared good will.
Mr Speaker, if the task of devising a national forest policy which meets
community expectations is made difficult by polarised opinion and emotion, it
is made even more complex by the fact that, under our Constitution, the
States have the primary responsibility for land management, including the
management of our forests.
Many in the Australian community expect the Commonwealth to take more
responsibility for Australia's forests than the Commonwealth has the ability to
take. It is expected of the Federal Government that we develop an effective
national policy, yet the Federal Government does not effectively have the
power to do so. What powers we do have can never deliver the long term
changes we are seeking to the reserves, to sustainable management and to
the industry without the States.
The recourse to the Commonwealth Government underlines the failure of
interest groups to secure the appropriate undertakings from those who do
manage forests in Australia and that, of course, is the State governments.
In lieu of actual powers, the Government has taken the lead in developing
with the States a cooperative approach to managing and protecting our
forests. This policy has depended upon the States recognising that there is a
national interest to be served, and success in the long run will in large part
depend upon the States continuing to recognise this.
Mr Speaker, we started on this difficult journey towards a common approach
to forest management with the development of the 1992 National Forest
Policy Statement, to which all State and Territory Governments are now
signatories. This was itself no easy matter and some parties have only more recently
joined. Embodied in that Statement are the shared economic, social and
environmental objectives which all governments have made a commitment to
achieving. Through the National Forest Policy Statement, the Commonwealth and the
States agreed to the ecologically sustainable management of Australia's
forests. Realising that we did not know enough about our forests, the
Statement provided the basis for thorough, cooperative assessments of their
values, leading ultimately to the concept of Regional Forest Agreements with
the States. These Agreements offer the real possibility of a long term
framework for the protection and management of these important national
assets. As an idea it is probably unique in the developed world.
The Policy provides for the development of a National Forest Reserve
System, which would ensure the protection of high conservation value areas
required to maintain biodiversity, old growth and wilderness values.
Earlier this year, the Commonwealth through a panel of scientists, developed
a set of criteria for determining which areas should become a part of this
system. They include;
a broad benchmark of 15 per cent of the pre-European distribution of
each forest type to be protected within the reserve system.
retention in reserves of at least 60 per cent of existing old growth,
increasing up to 100 per cent wherever practicable for rare old growth
and * protection of 90 per cent or more wherever practicable, or areas of high
quality wilderness
These criteria are recognised as at the leading edge in world terms.
But, Mr Speaker, before we can arrive at a position from which we can
negotiate Regional Forest Agreements and, through them, a comprehensive,
adequate and representative National Forest Reserve System, we must put in
place interim protection measures for forests which might be required as
components of such a reserve system.
The device we are using for this is a Deferred Forest Area or OFA process.
The Deferred Forest Areas process has been designed to provide the
appropriate degree of interim protection needed for the longer term RFAs. It
is not meant to be the last word on which areas would be logged and which
would be turned over to forest reserves. Rather, it was meant to provide an
essential building block on the way to Regional Forest Agreements. The
decisions to be announced tomorrow therefore, are but the first step in a
longer, more rigorous process. But for the forests, a giant step.
For most of this year, the Commonwealth has been negotiating with New
South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, and Western Australia to identify forest
areas to be protected pending further assessment in the development of
Regional Forest Agreements.
In cooperation with these Governments, the Commonwealth has recently
concluded a very extensive consultation process in which interested
individuals and groups have had their say in an open and transparent
process. Through their contribution they have been able to influence the
outcome and, I am pleased to say, our Deferred Forest Areas are the better
for it. At the same time, I believe, these consultations have underlined the
fact that the policy approach we have chosen is undoubtedly the right one.
Through the Deferred Forest Areas process, we have delivered a positive
and I stress immediate outcome for all Australians who have a stake in our
forests which is to say, albeit to varying degrees, every Australian.
As a first step, the decisions we have taken this week offer sound
conservation outcomes as well as predictability for our forest industry.
We have taken a precautionary approach, so as to ensure that future
reservation options are kept open.
Cabinet has agreed on the areas of state forest to be deferred. Detailed
maps of these areas will be released tomorrow.
Our objective has been to ensure that options for establishing the reserve
system, based on criteria developed by the Commonwealth are not
foreclosed while longer term assessments are conducted.
Mr Speaker, I am confident that we have achieved this objective.
In the next few weeks, the Commonwealth expects to sign Deferred Forest
Agreements with the States I have mentioned. I will be writing to the
Premiers later today inviting them to enter these Agreements.
I have on a number of occasions talked about creating in Australia a forest
reserve system the equal of any in the world. With the signing of these
agreements, we will have taken a huge step towards this objective.
Mr Speaker, the management of those parts of the forest estate outside the
reserve system is just as important as the reserves themselves.
The Government is committed to ensuring that the management of these
areas, some of which will be available for harvesting, is truly sustainable.
As part of the longer term process, we will be joining with the States in a
thorough review of forest management and codes of practice.
Our aim is to ensure that the full range of values we attach to our forests are
maintained in perpetuity. We must adopt the view that these precious assets
are held in trust for the future, they are not ours to neglect or degrade.
The forests industry should be a model of ecologically sustainable
development. Our objective is to ensure that it is.
Mr Speaker, the annual turnover of Australia's wood and paper industry
based on native forests and plantations, is in the order of $ 10 billion, or about
one per cent of Gross Domestic Product.
The Government believes it is imperative to have a viable wood and wood
products industry.
Investments of between $ 4 billion and $ 6 billion are at present under
consideration. Industry and unions predict between 15,000 and 25,000
potential new jobs over the next decade.
The associated Wood and Paper Industry Strategy also to be released
tomorrow sets out the Government's long term vision for this industry. It is
the Government's aim to transform it to make it both internationally
competitive and ecologically sustainable.
As part of this transformation, we will encouraging increased investment in
value-adding processes for wood and wood pulp, and give priority in issuing
woodchip export licences to applicants who invest in domestic processing.
We are determined to sharply improve domestic value-adding of residues
currently being exported as unprocessed woodchips. We will, through this
industry, expand job opportunities in regional Australia.
We will clear the way for value-adding to forest residues by the release of
strict environmental standards for Bleached Eucalypt Kraft pulpmills.
And through Regional Forest Agreements to be developed with State
Governments, we will provide industry with increased assurance about
resource supply and greater regulatory certainty.
We will continue to remove duplication in environmental impact assessment
processes at the Federal and State levels and reduce administrative and
compliance costs.
Through Auslndustry, we will provide add-itional funding for enterprise
development to firms in the wood and paper industries, and so promote best
practice and competitive efficiency.
We will provide additional assistance to small and medium firms in the wood
and paper industry who are seeking to move into new markets or upgrade
existing facilities.
And through the Wood and Paper Industry Council, we will develop industry
sector approaches to investment and improved import replacement and
export performance.
Underlying all of these initiatives is a fundamental commitment to sustainable
job growth and opportunities for Australian workers.
Mr Speaker, while the Government is committed to the long-term
sustainability and prosperity of the native forest based industry, special
recognition will also be given to the increasingly important role of plantations
and farm forestry.
These sectors represent the best sources for future growth in the wood and
paper industry. Plantations already supply a significant proportion of our total
wood and paper products and major value-adding investment proposals are
currently under consideration.
In 1995, the industry set a target of trebling the current plantation resource by
2020. The Government supports and welcomes this initiative. It will act to
remove impediments to plantation establishment and establish a policy
environment which will help industry to realise this target.
Mr Speaker, every effort has been made to minimise necessary disruption to
the timber industry arising from the Deferred Forest Areas process. State
Governments have been asked to re-schedule logging operations away from
deferred areas. However, the Government recognises that in some cases rescheduling
may not be possible and that logging operations will be affected.
Accordingly, the Wood and Paper Industries Strategy contains details of a
generous Structural Adjustment Package which will provide financial and
other assistance, including retraining, to proprietors and workers in the timber
industry, those detrimentally affected by the Deferred Forest Areas process.
Mr Speaker, we are especially conscious of the disruptive effect on some
operators and communities of these changes. We will do all that we can
reasonably do to help.
Mr Speaker, let me turn to the vexed question of the woodchip export
licences. Applications for woodchip exports for this year were about nine
million tonnes. However, as indicated last year the Government wants to
reduce the amount of wood exported in this unprocessed form. The
Government has therefore decided on a much lower volume for this year
which will be 5.25 million tonnes. This amount is a fair and consistent down
payment on that objective.
Licences will be issued for 80 per cent of that volume. The remaining 20 per
cent will only be available in regions where there has been significant
progress towards Regional Forest Agreements with State Governments.
Details of this year's ceiling will be announced tomorrow by the Minister for
Resources. The Government has made a commitment to phasing out woodchips exports
by the year 2000 from areas not covered by Regional Forest Agreements.
We remain committed to diverting these exports into further domestic valueadding.
The industry is on notice that unless we get the progress and the
agreements, woodchip exports will be phased out.
Those on the extremes of the debate in the timber industry and among their
more uncompromising opponents should understand that the Government
will not waver from this course or these decisions.
Mr Speaker, no Australian government has ever made such a conscientious
attempt to resolve this huge and vexed issue. Most governments would run a
million miles from it. We have been at pains to strike the right balance; to
find the means by which environmental and economic necessities can be
reconciled in the national interest; the means by which a profitable industry
and prosperous communities can be reconciled with our responsibility to
preserve a unique and magnificent part of our natural heritage for our
children and the Australians of the 21 century and beyond.
Mr Speaker, it can be done. This statement demonstrates that driving an
intelligent course can reap substantial and permanent benefits for both sides
of the debate and for the nation more substantial and more permanent than
any we might derive from pursuing one direction to the exclusion of the
interests of the others.
The moral comfort of extreme and certain positions may be warming to those
who hold them, but they do not confront the real moral challenge, to deliver
real, worthwhile, lasting and democratic solutions. Ones that everyone can
respect. Mr Speaker, no-one should be under the illusion that with these decisions the
difficulties and sensitivities surrounding the issue will disappear. Of course,
they won't.
But I hope the process will decidedly help to create a more cooperative and
analytical environment. An environment in which the common goal of the
protection and renewal of our forests can be achieved with a forest products
industry that has a future based on sustainability and ecological decency.
Mr Speaker, this statement will bring us much much closer to ecologically
sustainable management of our great forests. And, with it, much closer to
meeting our responsibilities to the Australians of the next century and
thereafter.