Reverend the Hon. Dr GORDON MOYES: I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Christian Democratic Party on the Brigalow and Nandewar Community Consultation Area Bill. The stated objectives of this bill are to reserve forested land in the Brigalow and Nandewar areas in order to create a community conservation area that provides for permanent conservation of land, to protect areas of natural and cultural heritage significance to indigenous people and for sustainable forestry, mining and other appropriate uses. The bill also aims to give local communities a strong involvement in the management of that land. In the interests of time I will endeavour to keep my remarks brief, although I have taken quite an interest in this particular subject and have visited the area. The Christian Democratic Party expresses concern with respect to this bill. Though the Christian Democratic Party observes that the objectives of the bill have great merit, it is also at the same time important to realise that the livelihoods of many individuals in the Brigalow area are at stake.

For many years timber workers and pastoralists have depended on natural resources to fend for themselves and for their families. For many years, the environment has provided these individuals with the necessary income to make a living. This bill will cordon off the ability for timber workers and pastoralists to make a living. It will devastate the small towns and villages that are wholly dependent on the environment for their viability. What will happen to these individuals and their families? Their ability to gain an income, their self-esteem, their morale and their disposition will be gravely affected. How will the Government respond to the ramifications of this decision for those affected? What will be the real cost to these communities if this bill is passed? On a material, social and emotional level, the costs to these families and also to the Government will be immeasurable. I envisage that many workers have been employed in the timber industry for years. I understand that there are many pastoralists in the affected areas. This decision will cut such people off from all they know.

It is difficult for people to be retrained or learn new skills when they have performed certain tasks for a number of years. The Deputy Prime Minister, and Federal member for Gwydir, John Anderson said, “Over the years Gunnedah has lost two coalmines, an abattoir and a pet food factory and has endured floods, drought and a reduction in water allocations.” Gunnedah is, of course, one of the main towns affected by the Brigalow decision. The Deputy Prime Minister also stated that the closure of the town’s timber mill would be disastrous. The Manager of Gunnedah Timbers, Patrick Paul, has said that about half the new area offered by the Government—the additional 15,000 hectares of cypress forest—had been logged out and would not be available for use for 15 to 20 years, and that the other half contained mainly low quality timber. He estimates that the Brigalow Belt South bioregion decision could cost 472 jobs across the bioregion. This decision will continue to exacerbate the incredible environmental conditions that pastoralists face. Senior Vice President of New South Wales Farmers has expressed the view that “rural New South Wales residents suffer under the worst drought conditions since European settlement”.

The Government will certainly add to the woes of those people by taking away the very source of their livelihoods. Dr Craig Emerson, an economist and environment adviser to former Labor Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, who was head of Queensland’s Environment Department for five years and is currently the member for Rankin south of Brisbane, has denounced the Brigalow decision. He informed the Land that he knows both ends of the argument. As a high-ranking official within the Queensland environment department he would definitely have the nous to understand the implications of the Brigalow decision for the environment, and also for the timber workers and pastoralists. Dr Emerson has vehemently opposed the New South Wales Government’s decision to lock up the 348,000 hectares of the region in reserves and restrict local timber mill access to the forest’s cypress pine. “The decision has the potential to devastate country towns like Gulargambone, Gwabegar and Baradine”, he told Federal Parliament. The Christian Democratic Party concurs with that position. National Geographic noted:

In the Brigalow ecoregion there are the spectacular gorges and escarpments of the Carnarvon Range [that] bisect low, sweeping forests dominated by brigalow trees—slender acacia trees with silvery crowns and dark trunks. A variety of other habitats can be found here as well, including semi-evergreen vine thickets, bogs, and eucalyptus forests—each with their own endemic wildlife.

That being said, there are also reports that suggest that the Pilliga forests, one of the main treasured forests in the Brigalow, are a relatively recent phenomenon. Peter Austin in an article titled “Forest’s roots not in ‘dreamtime’”, found in the Land, recounted the history behind the Pilliga. Apparently, when the first explorers traversed the area in the 1820s and 1830s, they reported grasslands and open woodlands where today’s forests stand. Settlers followed the explorers and the story of the post-European development of the region is well told in Eric Rolls’ acclaimed historical study, A Million Wild Acres. That book has been referred to by several other speakers tonight. The plains were soon taken up in grazing leases and by 1875 it was estimated that 30,000 head of cattle, 10,000 horses and 25,000 sheep were running the area now covered by forest.

There were heavy rains between 1878 and 1885, which triggered a massive germination of pines and eucalyptus that the depleted numbers of livestock failed to keep in check. Without going into the detail given by Eric Rolls and others, it is asserted that for many years large sections of the forest were used for sawmilling. In fact, the value of the forest as a commercial resource was recognised by the New South Wales Government, with the dedication of 182,000 hectares of State forests in the area in 1917. By the 1950s the Pilliga supported a major sawmilling industry, producing cypress pine timber for the post-war building boom. That was the state of play for many years until the moratorium on logging was imposed in early 2003, which damaged completely the viability of the timber industry.

In March 2005 Peter Meredith, writing in the Australian Geographic, reminded us that in 1818 explorer John Oxley damned the Pilliga as a forbidding and miserable place. The word “scrub”, with its associations of unkempt scrawniness, was applied, and the term “Pilliga scrub” stuck for decades before it was rehabilitated into “Pilliga State Forest”. Whatever the name, there is no denying the subtlety of this 5,000 square kilometre splash of State forest and nature reserve between Narrabri and Coonabarabran in northern New South Wales.

It should also be recorded that indigenous people have lived in this area for thousands of years. They marked caves with hand stencils that can be seen to this day. One can see etchings of emu and kangaroo feet and a tail—perhaps that of a goanna. These stencils and etchings are estimated to be between 10,000 and 12,000 years old. Judging by the number of hand stencils, this seems to have been a special place for indigenous people. It also appears that families came here because the handprints are of different sizes. The Aboriginal people, the Kamilaroi, inhabited an area embracing the Namoi, Gwydir and Baron rivers, and numbered about 15,000. They left ample evidence of their presence throughout the Pilliga at campsites and rock shelters.

Becky Featherbe, a resident of Baradine and secretary of the Baradine Progress Association, says that, without thinning, young cypress forests stop growing due to a shortage of nutrients and become dense, fire-prone scrub. Natural thinning takes a long time. Thinning by human hand encourages the development of a healthy and productive forest. Today much of the Pilliga—4,000 square kilometres—is State forest, with an 802 square kilometres National Parks and Wildlife Service nature reserve slotted into the south-east. It is important to understand what is happening in that area. The Pilliga’s native plant species and exotics grow in a mosaic of communities. White cypress dominates in the Pilliga’s west and centre, usually associating with box and ironbark. Black cypress grows in the east among bloodwood and ironbark. If one looks west from any promontory in the east, one sees a rolling grey-green sea, which pokes through the darker spires of the cypress. There are some rugged sandstone outcrops and cliffs and occasional gorges.

The State forests—more than 80 per cent of the area—are in many ways very different and are being used rather than conserved. Overall, their vegetation is more open and less wild. Unlike the nature reserve’s tracks—which are mostly closed to vehicles as only day walking is allowed—their tracks are generally smooth and wide because they carry logging traffic. The differences between the two zones mirror the polarisation that has been building up around the Pilliga. Since August 2000 the New South Wales Government’s Resource and Conservation Assessment Council has been consulting interested parties about the future of the bioregion. Because of its size and significance, the Pilliga was the main focus. At issue was whether, and to what extent, its State forests should continue to be logged—mostly for cypress—and whether the extraction of coal and gas should be allowed there in the future.

We note the large gas reserves in the area and the Premier’s desire to move from coal-fired to gas-powered electricity generators. However, in August 2002 the Western Conservation Alliance protested against any gas exploration in the Pilliga. The parties have formed into two camps on this issue. Most of the conservation bodies, under the umbrella of the Western Conservation Alliance, espouse the slogan “Saving what’s left”. They want cypress extraction in the region cut by 76 per cent. In the other camp is the Brigalow Region United Stakeholders Group, representing parties such as the local sawmillers, farmers and other private landholders. They have argued for continuing the harvesting of cypress and ironbark, and for mining and other commercial activities to be allowed in the forest. Their primary point is that local sawmills and the communities they support will die without the Pilliga’s timber. A secondary point is that without management the forest will deteriorate back into a dense, fire-prone scrub.

Between those two extremes is a number of different positions proposed by the Government. The Government was originally due to announce its decision on the region’s future at the end of 2002, when the matter was debated quite vigorously in the House and many questions were asked. But the Government’s decision has come to us in early 2005. The area has a rich habitat. It is home to 33 native mammal species, more than 200 bird species, 23 lizard species, 13 snake species, 14 frog species, one tortoise species and 12 introduced species. Some 21 native animal species are threatened at present and as many as 17 mammal species may have become extinct since European settlement. But there is some real growth in the area as well. The number of red-necked wallabies is up and, as has been mentioned tonight, koalas are thriving but there are fewer dingoes and brush-tailed rock wallabies. The largest population of barking owls in New South Wales can be found in the area.

There is quite a bit of evidence that fire frequency increased after the arrival of stock management in the area. This produced a mix of dry, grassy forest, various woodland types and ironbark ridges. Into this landscape stepped the squatter, with his sheep and cattle. Within 30 years, opportunistic overexploitation, punctuated by natural disasters, produced major problems. There was a big drought in the late 1800s that led to a crash in animal numbers. Subsequent wet years encouraged phenomenal cypress regrowth. Unchecked by animals, the pines kept growing—densely packed saplings even recolonised cleared land. The last great bushfires were in 1997. They burned for 30 days and human lives were lost.

For the first half of the 1900s rabbits restricted further regrowth. But by 1950, when a long wet fostered another cypress explosion, rabbits were reeling from myxomatosis. The result was dense stands of young pines that have locked up, reaching the point where they will not grow further until they self thin or are thinned by human hand. Timber extraction has also had a huge impact. Cypress was harvested for building and ironbark was milled for railway sleepers. To encourage the cypress, foresters and timber getters ringbarked and poisoned the ironbark. The forest that has survived is undoubtedly different from that which Oxley saw. Conservationists believe there was once a greater type of tree species. People say that there might be more cypress now because of fire suppression—in a natural habitat wildfires would have thinned the forest.

But although there are more cypress stems, there is reduced habitat for animals. Most of the big ironbark and cypress pines—the habitat trees—have been chopped down. Fewer old trees mean fewer nesting and roosting hollows for animals. That is why the number of hollow-dependent creatures, such as masked owls and ringtail possums, are declining. The lack of large nectar-bearing trees is hitting nectar feeders, such as the little lorikeets and regent and painted honey-eaters. Like the unkempt hairdo of a flower child, red and bearded lichens sprout from the branches of the white cypress, the Pilliga’s dominant tree species. Lichens are composite organisms: a combination of fungi and algae living in a symbiotic relationship. The fungus absorbs water and the algae produce food with the aid of sunlight. Lichens have no roots and grow only when they are moistened by dew or rain. Many lichens are highly sensitive to airborne pollution.

Cypress pine is the hardest of our softwoods. It makes a superb building material—not just because it is beautiful. It is also durable, it shrinks little, and, as the Hon. Rick Colless pointed out, it resists termites. Cypress milling was under way in the Pilliga region by the 1860s, but demand mushroomed in the post World War II building boom. It should be pointed out that there are a large number of employment opportunities in the area. I cite, for example, the well-known Pilliga Pub, the Pilliga artesian bore baths, and Pilliga Pottery, in Coonabarabran. The forests of the Pilliga employ about 180 locals directly and 140 indirectly. Every year State Forests overseas the harvesting of 50,000 cubic metres of cypress pine and about 7,000 cubic metres of ironbark from the Pilliga. State Forests considers this to be sustainable.

As with most things, we have to balance conservation and timber extraction. The way things are going we will be more active in promoting conservation and increasing biodiversity through good management. The future for the Pilliga is as a managed forest. Its welfare must lie in improved forestry practices, signs of which have already been seen. Humans are part of our environment. If we can learn to benefit the environment and ourselves at the same time, we would get a much better system, but that requires significant good management.

The bill will enable payments to be made to the Consolidated Fund from the Environmental Trust Fund, to offset payments from the Consolidated Fund for the purpose of implementing forestry restructure, assistance programs, and schemes in the Brigalow and Nandewar areas. It remains to be seen whether the families affected will be put in the same or a better position than that which they are currently in. What is apparent, however, is that the lives of families affected will be shaken, uprooted and dishevelled, and there will be no absolute guarantee that they will recover from the implementation of this bill, if it passes through this House. I believe that the Government is not doing enough for the residents of small towns. We will support the Opposition amendments to be moved in Committee.

Tuesday, 21st June, 2005, 11:53 pm | Articles