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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (16 February) . . Page.. 166 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

I stress that again. These areas will be logged unless the position outlined by Ms Tucker in her motion and adopted by the South East Forest Alliance - indeed, one of the options developed by the New South Wales Labor Government - is not implemented. That is fundamentally why the Labor Party is supporting this motion today.

The motion today reflects on some areas which have been assessed by a system known as JANIS, a system developed by the Commonwealth Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet along with all the relevant state and territory governments. This system is designed to assess and analyse the areas that should be protected to ensure a fully representative system of forests, native forests, and pre-European settlement in Australia today. It is a system which is designed to make sure that we have a fully representative system of forests protected through reserves.

The application of the JANIS system in this area sees almost all the existing areas of state forest protected. That is what the application of the JANIS system does. This is not a system developed by one party or another; this is a system agreed to by all parties as the way to determine the amount of forest needing protection. I stress that the application of the JANIS system has found that in this area of the south coast you would need to protect almost all of the state forests to ensure that you had a representative system.

Interestingly, both sides of this debate do not advocate that as a solution - it may be preferable - but they both acknowledge that to do so would perhaps leave only 51 hectares of land available for logging. So both parties, both the New South Wales Government and people in the community through the community reserve proposal, have acknowledged that you cannot go that far. But clearly there is an urgent need to protect a large amount of land that is currently forest and potentially available for logging.

This proposal is not an extreme one by any regard. In light of the comments made by my colleague in the New South Wales Labor Government, the Premier of New South Wales, about the importance of maintaining the biodiversity of the natural world and the pressures that population is placing on the natural environment, I hope that he and his Government adopt a position which protects these very important areas in a way which is consistent with the application of the JANIS system developed by Commonwealth and state governments.

That is what this motion does today. We are here to represent the views of Canberrans. We have an opportunity today to express a view to the New South Wales Labor Government on an area which is used considerably in a great way by Canberrans. That is why the Labor Party is supporting this motion today.

On two other points, I briefly say that Ms Tucker's motion also deals with the development of a local wood products industry based on plantation forests. We have already seen the success of plantation forests in other parts of New South Wales. There is no reason why we cannot see the same occurring on the south coast. Labor absolutely supports this proposal.

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