Goodhew Jo: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is subject to correctionGoodhew Jo: West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 June 2014. Volume:702;Page:18941. Text is subject to correction.]Hon JO GOODHEW (Associate Minister for Primary Industries):It gives me much pleasure to rise and take a call in this debate as we debate the West Coast Wind-blown Timber (Conservation Lands) Bill. I want to begin by spending just a moment on the purpose which I know we will debate a little later but just to remind members why we are here. The purpose of this bill is to allow the Director-General of Conservation to “authorise the removal from certain conservation areas and reserves in the West Coast region of timber irreversibly damaged by Cyclone Ita.” Wind-blown timber is what it is known as.I rise to take this call as the Associate Minister for Primary Industries with responsibility for forestry and having a very real interest in this area. I would like to pay tribute right now to my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith. I do so because—and I think my colleagues would join with me and agree in saying—there is no greener member of our blue party than the Hon Nick Smith. Therefore this is a member who gets biodiversity who gets the importance of the environment and who understands that there cannot be any economy without the environment and that they go together hand in glove. That is in fact why he has championed these causes within the National Party for so long. However I want to say that it is this party that sees beyond blind ideology. It sees that we must have a thoughtful response to an unusual event which was Cyclone Ita.I visited the West Coast and I was there on 3 May. I visited to look at the windthrown timber which largely was in the Crown forestry estate. I also got to see a lot of the native timbers that were down on the ground. I was struck by the patches of devastation. I was struck by how long it was going to take for the recovery to occur. What the Hon Nick Smith saw in this was an opportunity for there not to be as much devastation—for in fact a principled thoughtful measured response to this particular event.I have to say we take our hats off also to the candidate for West Coast - Tasman Maureen Pugh because right there on the coast she has been besieged by people who have a view that something should be done about this. The people of the West Coast absolutely get that fallen timbers are required for biodiversity—that you actually need to let things rot—but this was on such a large scale compared with anything that had been seen before.So what this bill does is it takes a pragmatic approach. Let us face it: there does need to be some urgent action when we talk about beech timbers. The other timbers over the course of the period that this legislation will exist for will not have such a pressure to be logged or extracted. This was an extreme event. This is the sort of event that requires a pragmatic approach keeping in mind the principles that any revenue from this event from actually logging this timber should rightly go back to the Department of Conservation and that in fact safety—as a previous member has already said—will be paramount. This is the most dangerous logging experience anyone working in forestry will undertake. They have to be specially certificated to carry out this sort of recovery and the Coasters know that as well. It will be jobs for Coasters. It will be jobs that the Hon Damien O’Connor should be thinking very carefully about. This is an opportunity that should be very carefully managed. I commend the Minister and this bill for what I believe is a pragmatic way forward to achieve that.