I view with great anxiety, the new Regional Forest Agreement contract that allows 20 years of logging in native forests. Isn't it enough that Australia leads the world in extinct animals and plants without further destruction of plant and animal habitat?
One-third of native animals are extinct, rare or threatened. Almost one-third of our native plants are extinct, rare or threatened. More than half of our tallest forests, including 75 per cent of our rainforests have gone. Twenty-seven species of Australian mammals and birds and 100 species of Australian plants in the past 200 years have vanished forever. When will the penny drop that the forests we still have are worth saving?
Tourists from Asia and Europe come to Australia to view our delightful bushland, having placed their own forests, in many cases, in a state of decline or obliteration. In my area of Central Gippsland, 100,000 visitors visit annually. It seems if the political lobby is big enough and affluent enough, the Government will allow people's assets like native forests, to be signed away for immediate dollar gain. Never mind what is not left for future generations.
The Federal Government subsidises the native forest timber industry
to the tune of $140 million a year. Australian taxpayers spend $2.25 for
each one dollar the Government earns in royalties on export woodchips.
Would not this $140 million be better spent invested in timber towns to
create new kinds of jobs? Establishing businesses to process special timbets
for furniture or wood products or creating eucalypt plantations on cleared
land for paper production would be a much more far-seeing use of timber
products and available land in timber towns. It would not be the first
time an industry has had to reorganise to survive. We need the bush to
replenish our sense of wellbeing. Tourism needs the bush. Beyond the environmental
and scientific value of native forests, many Australians believe our remaining
bushlands should be saved because, as the late Australian historian, Professor
Manning-Clark said, "they bloody well like them".