Positive future for the timber industry - address by SENATOR THE HON RICHARD COLBECK

Excerpt from an address made by SENATOR THE HON RICHARD COLBECK, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture and Senator for Tasmania to the FOREST INDUSTRY GALA DINNER AT PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA, 25 March 2015

"...We don’t want this industry to look at its future through the rear-view mirror as we get too narrow a view. We know from the things that are happening internationally that this industry is going to be much more than it has been in the past, we know because it’s been starting to happen.

I mentioned last year the opportunities that exist around high value cellulose based chemicals. That is coming to a reality in Australia today. We talked about CLT and the opportunities that exist there. I’ve had three large businesses talking to me in the last six or eight months about $60-$100 million investments in the forest industry in this country and that is good news.
To hear that employment in this industry has increased by about 10,000 people over the last 12 months is really heart-warming because we’ve been told by those who don’t support us that we’re a sunset industry. The reality is the forest industry is actually the sunrise industry in respect of natural resources. It’s a carbon positive industry because everything made from timber becomes a carbon sink. There is real value in that. The science, as I said before tells us that if you manage a forest you’ll store more carbon than you will if y The science, as I said before tells us that if you manage a forest you’ll store more carbon than you will if you just leave it in an undisturbed state. There’s a whole range of values that we can put in place.".