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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (16 February) . . Page.. 190 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

I wonder how many of the local councils and the local members of parliament Ms Tucker went back to and consulted. The opportunity is there to consult at the local regional leaders forum. I am not sure that has been done. Maybe she will take up the offer to visit the shire presidents at the end of the week.

Mr Kaine, in his address, got it right. Mr Kaine said:

The standout speech in that first round was by Mr Osborne, who displayed wonderful knowledge - quite to the amazement of Ms Tucker - of the environmental issues. At the end of his speech, Mr Osborne said:

We know that the Labor Party hedged its bets. It has now come back with the St Augustine option, which is: "Yes, we will be pure, but we do not want to be quite pure here and now". It is quite clear from this that we should not be discussing this issue here today. The Government has made it quite clear that we do not support this motion. We said right from the start that we do not believe that we should be supporting this motion.

The southern regional forest agreement is a collaborative process between the New South Wales and Commonwealth governments. There is no doubt about the beauty and value of these areas and the importance and significance to the residents of Canberra who recreate down there and enjoy that beauty. We had the litany from many speakers outlining the nature and the beauty. But what we have no doubt about is whose control and responsibility it is, and it is not appropriate for us to be writing to the New South Wales Government on this matter.

The RFA is designed to achieve ecological and sustainable development in the forest sector, as well as protection for environmental, heritage and cultural values in the forests of southern New South Wales. The RFA process is set out in the national forest policy statement of 1992, to which all governments agree. Who was in control in the ACT in 1992? Would that have been a Labor government? Who was in control federally in 1992? Gosh, would that have been the government for which Mr Stanhope worked? I think it was.

The southern RFA is essentially a matter between the governments of New South Wales and the Commonwealth. The area concerned lies entirely within New South Wales, although there are strong ecological links to the ACT. It is comforting to know that the majority of the native forests in the ACT are reserved for conservation purposes; there is no logging in them. All the timber marketed by ACT Forests is derived from plantation forests. Also, in the vision for 2020 we are committed to ensuring that the amount of plantation forest in Australia is tripled by 2020. So, what do we log? We log forests

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