Page 2572 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 1991
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the northern reaches of Western Australia, what prospect is there in this area? I wonder. I could not help being struck when we made Australian history and I sat on six or seven ministerial councils every few weeks or month or so and got the flavour of the States. I found Western Australia to be conservative and reactionary on issues relating to social justice. I saw traces of a bit of old-world judgmental conservatism in Queensland, under the Goss Government, and I certainly felt uneasy about the competitiveness and the prejudice against South Australia - which has been a great innovative State in the delivery of programs - from other States.
I disagree fundamentally with untying the welfare grants, if you can use the word "welfare" loosely. I do not disagree with our aspirations in transport. I do not disagree with the great urban initiatives that Brian Howe particularly sees us taking, to deliver affordable, accessible housing, and better cities - I have things to say about that, and I am sure my colleague Mr Jensen will in due course - roads and so on. But I think Mr Kaine did not make that clear declension - we were not able to get that in the Alliance Government - between what is achievable through the goodwill of the people of this nation in transport issues and where there is a straight stewardship involved, where responsibility lies on a very few people in the community to deliver a lot of megabucks for welfare and welfare related services.
Mr Speaker, I turn to another area, the resource security legislation that the Commonwealth seeks. I have just been up in Japan. That country is covered in vast forests. Probably 80 per cent of the country, I was advised by my contacts in Tokyo, is covered in forests. Yet they are woodchipping ours. As you go to remote places in Japan you see great big silos. They are not all holding grain; some are. Some of them are holding woodchips, and they are Australian woodchips. When you are down in the port area you smell that indefinable presence of Australia in those remote northernmost latitudes - eucalyptus. It is a sad sort of aroma. Additionally, you see in Tokyo itself vast areas of the bay set aside for floating tropical logs. There is a sea of logs there today.
When we talk about getting proper catchment areas to retain heritage values under the resource security legislation, why do we make the initial premise that woodchipping should continue and that it should continue down in the Eden area particularly? I am totally opposed to woodchipping. It denies our heritage. None of it should exist. Since Canberra is now the centre of a region, we now have a legitimate role as an Assembly to take that issue on. I give notice that we will be taking that issue on shortly. There should be no woodchipping in our region. We still do not have, despite urgings, a proper embargo on the use of tropical rainforest timbers by the Territory in all of its contracts. I know that Mr Duby was working on that. It is a very complex area, but it is sort of brushed over in the
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