Environment Protection Reform Bill 2025, National Environmental Protection Agency Bill 2025, Environment Information Australia Bill 2025, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Customs Charges Imposition) Bill 2025, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Excise Charges Imposition) Bill 2025, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (General Charges Imposition) Bill 2025, Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Restoration Charge Imposition) Bill 2025
Senator DUNIAM (Tasmania—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (12:29): The proponents of the legislation we are dealing with here seem to have a bet each way when it comes this legislation. They say it's terrible and it's bad and it's written by these awful people in Labor, but they're backing it; they're signing up to it. Have your cake and eat it too, Australian Greens!
That's exactly what's going on here. I understand that the amendments before the chair are identical to the government's amendments relating to unacceptable impact. Hopefully, the government will support these amendments when they're moved.
I want to reflect more generally on the debate before— Senator Watt interjecting— Senator DUNIAM: No? We'll talk about it later, I'm sure, Minister. I have to commend the minister for being able to pull off this deal.
It was masterful. I don't like it. I think it's terrible.
I think it's dirty. I think it's dodgy. But you did a great job of getting this mob down here, the Australian Greens, to again name a price they were willing to pay.
Of course it's the shutdown of the native forest industry. The workers out there are screaming into the phones now on radio stations across the country, and they're providing comments to journalists in print and the TV newsrooms. They are wondering how a Labor government that once used to stand for the worker has today said that they will sign the death warrant of the native-forest logging industry.
The Prime Minister, ahead of the 2022 election, wrote a letter to Tasmanian forest workers committing that he would never do this. He reiterated that commitment in 2025, saying he would never do this. Guess what, he's gone and done it now.
There's a bit of a concern now in Tasmania; I think there's a missing person report for the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Ms Collins, who's nowhere to be seen on this issue. Has she popped up to justify what the government have done? Has she popped up to defend this dirty, dodgy deal with the Greens?
The Greens are celebrating. I heard Senator McKim on the radio just before I went on, and I gave Senator McKim credit for consistency. The Greens have always been consistently against native forest logging.
The only ones who've been inconsistent here are the government. They're the ones who've changed their position today by supporting this arrangement that the Greens put to them. I did commend Senator McKim and the rest of the Australian Greens for at least being consistently against this industry for its entire existence.
They've never once changed their position, but the government now have. As I said before, at the last two elections—in which promises were made around reduced power prices, and those promises were broken—promises were made to the native forest industry and its workers around their industry being protected, particularly in Tasmania, but they are going to see this unacceptable impact of shutdown.
I would be interested to know what detail is out there on this $300 million—I think the government is calling it a growth fund, which I find rather odd, given you can't grow an industry that you're shutting down. The words are interesting, and it's kind of cute, but there are hardworking men and women out there who are now very, very concerned about their futures because of this deal done at the eleventh hour, as we prepare to rise for the year, by the Labor Party, who once used to stand proudly for the forest workers of this country but have now sold them out to the Australian Greens.
We heard Senator Faruqi before celebrating how the handbrake is going to be put on this industry and how there is now a spanner in the works. They were the senator's words, I believe. She nods in agreement.
That is something the Greens are celebrating, so the government cannot get away from this fact. As I said earlier today, the Greens would not have signed up to this deal if it didn't mean we were going to kill that industry by a thousand cuts. Senator Faruqi: Save the forests!
Senator DUNIAM: 'Save the forests,' says Senator Faruqi. I will take that interjection. What the Labor Party and the Greens have signed up to today is a deal to kill native forestry and, of course, take away all of the jobs that go with it.
We can't escape that fact. It is just that simple. The Greens would not have signed on if it did not mean this industry would now be brought to its knees.
Ms White, the member for Lyons; Ms Collins, the member for Franklin in Tasmania; and my good friends in the Labor Senate team from Tasmania—we should go out on a road trip and talk to the forest workers of Tasmania who have been let down by this Labor government and have had their jobs suddenly pulled out from underneath them. These are people who have mortgages.
They live in regional communities like those on the north-west coast of Tasmania. These are people who have kids in schools. These are people who are a part of communities, volunteer fire brigades and sporting clubs.
And the Australian government have decided that they don't support these individuals anymore. They've cast them on the scrap heap. Their jobs are not important.
They do have a $300 million bailout package—buyout package, scale-down package or whatever it is—to try and ease the pain of shutting down this industry, to soften the blow of the news that today the Labor Party have sold you out. It is interesting, though. I do wonder how the Greens managed to be talked into providing a further $300 million to the native forest industry, an industry that just last Friday Senator Hanson-Young said— Honourable senators interjecting— Senator DUNIAM: Sorry, Chair.
I can't hear myself. The TEMPORARY CHAIR ( Senator Sharma ): Order! Senator Duniam, the call is yours.
Senator DUNIAM: Thank you, Chair. Now that the temperature has been taken down a couple of degrees, we might get back to the truth of the matter, and that is that the Australian Labor Party have teamed up with the Greens to kill forestry. Let's not forget, though, that this is the same party that was toying with the idea of— Senator David Pocock: Can you ask questions?
Senator DUNIAM: Yes. I'm about to ask a question, Senator David Pocock. I've got three minutes to ask my question.
I will do that. Let's not forget, though, that we had 700 pages of legislation thumped on the table. We had a Senate committee inquiry process out to the end of March.
I'll try and find it in this pile of paper that's been put on my desk today by the government, who want these bills passed—I'm just going to quote Senator Sarah Hanson-Young again. She said in a Senate inquiry last week, 'The people know it stinks'—'it' is this legislation—'It absolutely stinks, and that's why it needs scrutiny.' Senator Hanson-Young also just said to the chamber, in asking her question before, that she appreciates the urgency with which this is now being attended to.
I don't know what's happened in the last week. Something big, something seismic, has shifted here. Senator Hanson-Young, who is normally so strident in her opposition to terrible bills, has suddenly found a way to agree with the government on this arrangement.
It was, as I say, a deal to make it harder for resources projects to start. It will make it harder to get more gas into the grid, so we're going to have problems with supply when it comes to this critical resource of energy. It will make it harder to get housing developments up, despite any rhetoric we hear from the government on this.
It's just going to be ridiculous. Of course, the crown jewel in their achievements of this week is to shut down the native forest industry and take away tens of thousands of jobs. And, of course, we won't be getting the beautiful timbers that adorn this chamber from Australian forests; we'll be ripping them out of the Congo Basin and we'll be displacing human populations and endangering even more species overseas.
But, hey, if it's over the horizon, we don't care. My question to the minister is: can the minister guarantee that not one job will be lost in the forest industry as a result of the arrangement that has been put in place here today with regard to the changes to the RFA?