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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (16 February) . . Page.. 194 ..
MS TUCKER (continuing):
In commenting on the strategic approach that should be adopted, Clarke states:
The basic building blocks are already in place to enable NSW to keep the jobs in the State, rather than exported together with unprocessed plantation logs and chips. The NSW plantation industry already has a strong processing base and infrastructure support on which government and industry can build; the NSW plantation industry has a high manufacturing ethic; and plantation sawlog supply could be doubled within two years.
What's missing is the commercial signals to encourage investors in plantation processing. If the NSW Government want to reap the jobs potential of its plantation investment then it must change its policy direction and resource focus to be compatible with encouraging investment in plantation processing rather than undermining it. Government must consciously decide to cease propping up the declining native forest industry because plantation forest products compete in virtually every market currently supplied by native forest timber. Currently, governments Australia-wide are providing industry welfare to prop up what is the historical equivalent of "the typewriter industry" thereby imposing a direct commercial handicap on computerised word processors.
On the jobs issue - Mr Smyth and Mr Humphries, as Treasurer, might be interested in this - it is quite clear that tourism buoys rural economies more than the timber industry. The ACT Government of today does understand, I think, the impact of jobs in the region on Canberra, so it might be interested in what I am saying. In the Eurobodalla and Shoalhaven shires tourism is worth $500m, fishing, $100m, and oysters, $4m, compared with $3m from the forest industry. The Commonwealth social economic assessments did not comment on threats to industries such as the fishing and oyster industries and nature-based tourism. It is totally unacceptable that we have not seen a proper analysis of the long-term opportunities and threats for the various policy approaches being put forward. I do not find it acceptable for this Government, which is so business oriented, to come up with such superficial and ridiculous arguments on this serious topic for the region.
The discussion about the long-term environmental impacts has also been very light on from the Government today. As Mr Corbell correctly said, the SEFA options for which I have asked for support here fall far short of what a full JANIS would require. Mr Smyth was trying to make some smart political point about Labor having signed on with the national forest policy. (Extension of time granted) He made political comments about Labor's position in 1992 on the national forest policy. Mr Smyth might like to know that that was actually agreeing to the full JANIS. Mr Smyth, as Minister for the environment, has not commented on JANIS. Of course not; he is not across the issue or is not interested in it.
The point is, as Mr Corbell said, that if we did apply the full JANIS, we would be seeing very little of the land being used. It would all have to be reserved and conserved because of the importance of the environmental values of the areas. Today, I am asking for
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