Bills
Conservation and Land Management Amendment Bill 2025
Second reading
Resumed from an earlier stage of the sitting.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas (South West Region) (7:57 pm): Thank you, President. It might have been through gritted teeth, but I appreciate the call, thank you very much!
If you might indulge me, President, just for a minute before we return to the very important issue of the Conservation and Land Management Amendment Bill 2025, I will just make a brief comment and say it has been an absolute pleasure to listen to three valedictory speeches from members for the South West Region this afternoon. I thought they were fantastic.
A member interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Sorry, three? Was there one I missed? No, I do not think so. There were three fantastic contributions this evening. Hon Louise "Call me Ishmael" Kingston absolutely presented herself with honour, as she always does. I have known Hon Louise Kingston for decades and I get away with calling her that name because we have been friends for that long. Her contribution to and passion for her community has been absolutely outstanding. Hon Sophia Moermond was here for only a short period as well. I actually think Hon Louise Kingston might have stayed with us longer. There are lots of things I did not necessarily agree with Hon Sophia Moermond about, in particular around vaccinations, but her contributions have always been honest—sometimes breathtakingly so—and that has been fantastic to see in Parliament, because we actually need all opinions. We are supposed to be about a battle of ideas and conversations around the things that we believe in.
A member interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: No, there is always an exception. Both those members have made magnificent contributions.
If I could, I will just make brief mention of Hon Dr Sally Talbot. The disturbing thing about Hon Dr Sally Talbot is how often we actually agree on stuff. That is a little scary, I have to say!
Hon Dr Sally Talbot interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: No, I am definitely not! But your contribution is well recognised and I could wax lyrical about it. Although we have been on opposite sides of the chamber, I absolutely respect your passion and your role and all the things that you have contributed, particularly as a member for South West Region.
There is always one exception to the rule. I am not going to name them because I refuse to use the name. There are not many people who I—
Hon Kate Doust: Which one are you going to use? Whichever one he's using today?
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I am not going to say that.
I am happy to accept a range of opinions. They do not always have to agree with me; I am happy for other people to be wrong. But in all my experience from my now 20 years in Parliament, I can say that these three ladies have made a magnificent contribution.
A member interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Hon Shelley Payne did, but not from my patch; she was a member for the Agricultural Region and not a member for the South West Region. There are other members who are leaving for whom I have great respect as well, but because the South West is the best region in the state—the only significantly important region in the state—
Hon Stephen Dawson: Point of order!
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Yes, sit down! The Leader of the House can only wish that he had been elected as a member for the South West.
Hon Stephen Dawson interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Yes. We will get your passport stamped so that you can come in. We are still looking forward to having a parliamentary friends of WA wine group but we hope to get a more local member, because I do not know how many good wines they make in the north west. That is okay.
Several members interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Comparatively; not really.
I will move on. I just congratulate those three members of the South West who gave their valedictory speeches today. All three are very different people and very interesting characters, each in their own way. They are three women in politics for whom I have enormous respect. They are all deserving of our respect here tonight and for whatever they do in the future.
Having got that out of the way—that saves me making a member's statement a bit later on—I return to the infamy of the government in the bill before the house tonight, which is the Conservation and Land Management Amendment Bill. I feel like I should recap my last two contributions, which were about 10 to 15 minutes each, but this will be the short version. The government's ideology around this has destroyed the timber industry and has done enormous damage to the timber towns throughout the South West. It did not need to happen this way. There are number of ways that it could have done it differently. The legislation is unnecessary because the government is already doing what it said it wanted to do. This legislation is about stopping future governments from undoing this government's damage, and we understand that because the government has form in damaging communities and then making sure that nobody can repair the damage going forward. That is a genuine shame.
Before we broke for the various bits beforehand, we were talking about a couple of specific issues. Most importantly, as the minister said in his second reading speech and as is included in the explanatory memorandum, the main thing this bill will do is to make sure that timber production on a sustained yield basis is removed from the reasons that we might have a state forest or, in fact, a timber production area. As insane as that sounds, that is exactly what this bill will do. This bill will make sure that every future government is tied down to the agenda of this government, no matter the damage it does to industry. I will not go through the history of the regional forest agreement again, but what we do need to look at is what is sustainable in terms of the forests of Western Australia. I am talking particularly about the jarrah forests or the mixed jarrah–marri forests, which make up the vast bulk of the harvestable forests, the state forests and the timber industry in this state. We need to make sure that we have a sustainable industry. The government could have put in place a sustainable industry. In fact, that is what the legislation currently says. The legislation states that state forest or a timber reserve, as we cynically looked at before the break, can be reserved for "timber production on a sustained yield basis".
It has not been used on a sustained yield basis; that is absolutely true. I have had battles with the conservative side as much as with the green side of politics over what a sustainable yield should look like, but let us go back to what a sustainable yield should be. The simple solution is this. If we want a sustainable yield, we have to take the maximum area and harvest it minimally, as I said before the break. What does that mean? That means that farmers should stop locking up extra areas and harvest less the areas that they have, because they have to get to a point at which they have a reasonable harvest interval to be able to provide sustainability. As I have said previously, in my view, that is somewhere around 120 years for a mixed jarrah–marri coupe, and that is what it should look like. What has happened in the interim? Naturally, the forest movement—the Greens in particular, the Conservation Council of Western Australia and this thing called the WA Forest Alliance—has had a very good, clever strategy that the more we lock up, the more unsustainable the harvest will be on the remaining piece of timber area. If a farmer has half a million hectares of forest available and wants to harvest that every 120 years, that gives them the amount they should be harvesting every year—one 120th of the area that is available. But the green movement, the conservation movement and the Forest Alliance are very clever. They do not talk about sustainability because that is not their agenda. Every tree that is cut down is anathema to this group of people. It does not matter that a farmer can cut down a tree and it will regrow; it does not matter that farmers should actually manage that regrowth. Very cleverly, this group of people wants to reduce the amount of area that is available for harvest. What will that do? As I have acknowledged in this speech, if the initial regional forest agreement overharvested the jarrah forest, then it needed to leave the area the same but reduce the harvest to a level that was sustainable, but it did not do that.
Every time someone cuts down an area that is sustainable, as the green movement and the Forest Alliance knows, they further reduce that sustainable cut. That is why it is not in their interest. If their interest was to have a sustainable timber industry whereby the forest regenerated to a point at which it was net neutral, they would have a completely different agenda, but that is not their agenda. Their agenda is not to have a sustainable forest industry. They want to come in and make sure there is no forest industry, and the best way to do that is to lock up further coupes so that we cannot actually make it sustainable. Every coupe that a farmer takes out means that either the rest of the area is even more overharvested, or they have to cut and cut the amount that actually is sustainable. Their agenda is not to have a sustainable industry, and that is the weird thing. The Western Australian Greens, the Western Australian Forest Alliance and all those people's agenda is not to have a sustainable industry. Their agenda is to kill the industry. I think that is ridiculous, but that is what is going on, and in moving this bill and taking it forward, the Labor Party is actually supporting that position. When members of the government support this bill, as they inevitably will, they will be throwing out the idea of a sustainable forest industry—one in which the amount of timber that someone takes would be replaced—and instead inserting death to the industry because they are ideologically opposed to it, because they are being led by the nose by the Greens, the Forest Alliance and that movement.
I can remember a day, Acting President, when the Labor Party held the seat of Warren–Blackwood. It was Labor Party heartland until the Labor Party abandoned the timber industry. Paul Omodei came in and won the seat of Warren–Blackwood for the Liberal Party for the first time. He was the shire president. Guess what he won it on? It was the Labor Party handing over power to the Greens in relation to the timber industry. The Labor Party actually held on pretty well at the last state election. That was not just because of Labor Party policies; it actually had a good candidate in the seat of Warren–Blackwood in Jane Kelsbie. She was a very good candidate. I think she did very well. The Labor Party cruelled her election chances with this particular policy, but there you go. It threw out one of its own, effectively. Well done. It is amazing that she got within a couple of per cent, and she did. Congratulations. I actually think she did a very good job. That seat should have been so far away from realisable, but that was the result of the general election campaign. The Liberal Party has had a difficult time over the last three elections.
The Labor Party could have taken a sensible, pragmatic and environmentally sound approach to this debate, and it did not, presumably because it is worried about the power of the Greens. It is going to be interesting over the next four years. We will see how four Greens can make a difference to Labor Party policy versus during the last four years when there was only one.
A member interjected.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: Yes, it is after 7:00 pm—now, now.
That is what is going on at the moment. Obviously the government could have taken a pragmatic and environmentally sound approach to this issue, but it has decided not to. Why is the approach it has taken not environmentally sound? Let us have a discussion about that. There are a few issues we need to talk about. The first is these things called ecological thinnings. There is no timber harvest anymore except for two things. One is when the land needs to be cleared for the mining of bauxite to support the aluminium industry. Do you know what? Minister, I actually support that. I think that is a reasonable outcome because it supports thousands of jobs. But that is the only significant structural timber that will be harvested, and most of it is going to go to be used for other purposes. The second one is the vague and ridiculous suggestion that ecological thinnings have a significant value somehow in the timber industry in Western Australia.
What are ecological thinnings? Let us have a discussion about that. It might be a one-sided discussion because I am on my feet, but members are welcome to interject. What are ecological thinnings? For the history of forest harvesting, ecological thinnings were the trees and branches that were not large enough to be structural timber that were taken during the harvest process. Do not take my word for it; let us go back to questions without notice. It is the government's position. That is the government's definition of ecological thinnings; that is where it came from. There were no ecological thinnings outside the harvest process until the government's decision to decimate the timber industry. What do ecological thinnings look like now? They do not look like much. There are a couple of experimental trials going on. Interestingly, one trial of ecological thinnings is outside Collie.
Those of us who are getting on a bit and are a bit long in the tooth—I know a few people have said I am probably too old and too long in the tooth, but anyway—would know there was an old process whereby the Forest Products Commission and the Department of Environment as it was, and before that it was the Department of Conservation and Land Management, actually managed the forests. There was a process for managing forests that involved taking out small trees to allow other trees to become significant trees and hopefully, ultimately, habitat trees. The nature of the forests in Western Australia has changed. When European settlement occurred, the jarrah and marri forests were quite open because big trees dominated. When a big tree fell, a number of smaller trees, a mixture of jarrah and marri, would come up, and the most successful trees would dominate and take over. They were big trees. Do members know how we know that they were big trees? The first settlers described how they could ride a horse at a full gallop through a jarrah forest because the trees were that far apart. They were big trees and they were separated by a reasonable distance, as you would expect.
The old CALM—Conservation and Land Management—used to try and replicate that. It would thin out the bulk of small trees so that we might actually get a large habitat tree to grow up. The modern version of this, and it was called—sorry, just for those who do not know—the silviculture technique and it was widely used. If members want to see a good example of this going badly, go and have a look at the forests that are regenerating from the Yarloop fires because that is timber country through there. Where there are no individual large habitat trees, there are 10 suckers coming out of an old stump.
It is not natural. It is not how it is supposed to be. As we humans interfere with the environment—you know what, we are actually supposed to put it back as it was. For a long time the Department of Conservation and Land Management tried to do exactly that. It tried to put the forest back as it was. But we have thrown all that out now. The new paradigm put forward by the Labor government—pressured by the Greens from the left and whoever else comes in on that side—is that we are not allowed to touch any of it. It is doing a few experiments about ecological thinning. Ecological thinning across the entire forest is impossible, because you know what? The Department of Conservation and Land Management and the new Minister for the Environment—here is my one question for the Minister for the Environment: do you reckon you might change the name back to something sensible? I have tried the previous Minister for Environment a few times on this—DBCA, “De-be-ca”. Let us change it to something sensible, would you please? It is a dumb name, all right. It is a dumb name.
That department used to be active in the process. It used to manage forests. That all out of the window now.
Hon Stephen Dawson: When you get elected, you can change it.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas: I am still working on it, minister; I genuinely am. But let us put something sensible in there.
There needs to be a proper management of the forest. It is interesting that we have the trial experiment up in Collie. I do not know whether any member has been up to see it. I have, which is a little bit interesting. The green movement is a bit outraged because they have actually got some reasonable-sized trees that have come down. Some of those trees potentially should have been used for structural timber, but of course, almost nobody in structural timber can get a contract to pick up those trees. There is an issue in which we have a resource that we are cutting down because it is good for the forest, and people cannot get proper use of it. Most of the trees that come out of ecological thinning are what we would expect them to be: they are 10 to 15 centimetre boles. A bole is the diameter of the tree for those who are not au fait with timber parlance. Trees with 10 to 15 centimetre boles have no use as structural timber. We have to find a use for that, but, of course, the government kind of does not want to advertise that they might have that product. More importantly, there is not enough of that product to make it anything like an economically viable product to use.
Where are we going down this path? The government has a program of allowing forests to become unnatural in their regrowth. They will eventually become natural. Here is the funny thing: I remember the debates. Hon Dr Sally Talbot will probably remember the philosophies of Beth Schultz in the South West, whom I have never agreed with. That is not a reflection on your age or mine, Hon Dr Sally Talbot, but you probably remember Beth Shultz, who said, effectively, if we wait long enough, all the forests will almost become rainforests because all of the humus will fall down. That will never burn and they will become rainforests. I say to the government, I am a bit concerned going forward that we might end up with people with a similar position in the Parliament of Western Australia and, just maybe, the government might be better off dealing with the sensible voices of the opposition, such as they are, than some of the voices that it might get from the left movement and the green movement, who is pushing it across.
It is absolute nonsense to suggest that that is the case. The South West forests are temperate forests. They are drying, and as I have said before in this place, as the Liberal, in my view conservative, vestigial right wing of the Liberal Party—there are a couple of others in there—that believes in climate change, I actually think we need to take account of that. That means that there is an impact on harvest. It also means that when we do the calculation of a 120-year harvest interval, we need to consider a slower growth rate. That is particularly critical in what we call the eastern or the north-eastern jarrah forest, which is kind of Collie, running north and east. That jarrah forest has had the greatest impact of lower rainfall. Jarrah probably holds better than karri, for example, in relation to drier areas, but that eastern jarrah forest is actually under significant threat. We have to work that into the calculations. If the harvest interval is 120 years, let us work that in. It means that north-eastern jarrah forest will not be harvested a lot. That is a sensible scientific view to take into the debate. Harvest the maximum area minimally and find a level that is ecologically sustainable. That is the complete antithesis of what the Labor Party has done in its work on this in the last three years. That has had a huge impact on the communities in the South West. Yes, I know that almost $200 million are available for transition for the South West. It is not quite the $660 million made available for the coal transition in Collie, but then the coal transition in Collie is not going all that well. We have to remember that $300 million of that transition package is simply for the decommissioning of coal-fired power stations from which the people of Collie will not get an enormous benefit. In neither of those circumstances will the packages that are actually put in place completely mitigate the damage that the government's policy has done.
In relation to Collie, I accept that coal-fired power will leave the grid. In effect, the only difference between my position and the official Labor position is an argument about timeframe. I think it will last a bit longer than the government thinks it will last, but the end result will be exactly the same. There is no alternative to that, which is a difficult outcome for the people of Collie.
In relation to the timber industry though, there is an alternative outcome—a sustainable, long-term timber industry based on ecological sustainability and science that would deliver a small niche construction and artistic industry. Those members who go out tonight and walk through the central courtyard should have a look at the lovely jarrah outdoor furniture out there, much of which came from a factory in Busselton that no longer exists, thanks to the management of the forest industry. Have a look around the chamber. The timber in here is beautiful. There is a lot of jarrah in it. Have a look through this great historic building; a lot of jarrah sits in here. I am not going to stand here and defend the harvest of timber across Western Australia over the last 150 years. It is absolutely the case that over-harvest occurred. I have admitted it publicly, and I have had battles within the Liberal Party because I have said so. Have a look where the forests still exist. Where is the impact of this legislation? The impact is in the South West. Do members know why it is in the South West? It is because that is where the forests still are. Do members know why the forests are still in the South West? It is because early settlers realised the value of a timber industry and all of these towns—Manjimup, Donnybrook, Bridgetown and Nannup. Those forests exist because there was a timber industry and people valued the forests. Out in the Wheatbelt, they basically had either two big tractors or two big bulldozers on which they put a chain that probably weighed half a tonne 50 metres apart, drove down, pulled down every tree in the place, put it in a long row and burnt it.
There is no forestry out there anymore. Most Wheatbelt shires have 3% to 4% of residual native vegetation. The Shire of Nannup has 87% residual native vegetation. I think the Shire of Manjimup has about 84%. Many of my shires in the South West—our shires, Hon Dr Sally Talbot—are predominantly still native forest. The Shire of Donnybrook–Balingup, one of my home shires, is, I think, about 50% and Bridgetown is 60-something per cent. Where a forest exists is because the industry was recognised and the value of the forest was recognised. That history deserves some respect. That history deserves to be encouraged.
The great shame of the bill before the house today is that history is about to be thrown out the window, not necessarily specifically because the Labor Party has decided to end the native timber industry, effectively, apart from the bit that we both agree it is reasonable to keep, but because the government did not have to. It is doing this entirely on an ideological basis to attract votes, presumably in the city where the Labor Party has done particularly well at the last state and federal elections—well, let us be honest, probably the last three state elections and the last two federal ones. I get that, but let us finish on this particular argument that the closure of an industry is justified because more people in the state might vote for it than would vote against it because most of those people will never be directly impacted by it. It is very easy to close down somebody else's industry. It is very easy to damage somebody else. I understand that. There is this thing called social licence: you have to have a social licence for the things that you do. Do you really? Do you need a social licence for everything? Does 50% of the population plus 1% have to give us permission to do the things that we might have done quite reasonably for the last 50 years or 150 years? Is it social licence that will close down the live sheep export trade, for example? Is it social licence that will end the timber industry? If that is the case, why do regions exist? Should we all just move into the city and then we could all take part in the social licence and tell the smaller population centres exactly what they are supposed to do? I find it anathema. I find it absolutely horrific that an industry that has existed imperfectly for some time would be shut down because of social licence instead of being fixed. I think that is the great shame.
By the way, that is my shame and the Liberal and National Parties' shame as much as it is the government's shame, because none of us has made this an ecologically sustainable industry. None of us has delivered that. The debate on what was an ecologically sustainable industry in 1999 going into 2000 was not about 300,000 cubic metres of jarrah sawlog; it was probably about 180,000 cubic metres. To be honest, I cannot remember the exact numbers I threw around at the time, but it was probably about that. When the Forest Management Plan 2024–2033 was released, I fully expected to see a cut back from the current 140,000 cubic metres of jarrah sawlog, as it then was, to something that would be genuinely sustainable. I thought that the Labor Party might actually use the science and make the industry become genuinely sustainable. I thought that might equate to 80,000 or 90,000 cubic metres of jarrah sawlog. I have been around the industry for a long time. We used to have mills everywhere. Every country town in the South West of WA had a mill. I am sure that the honourable member came back just to hear the last five minutes of my speech! Then there were four big mills, then three. At 80,000 or 90,000 cubic metres of jarrah sawlog, there is room for just one large mill and a couple of small mills and micro mills.
It needed to be an industry of ecologically sound size. It was always going to shrink; it was always going to get smaller. It would have got better, and there would have been a place still for a jarrah harvest that provided the lovely tables and stuff that you get, the chairs, the furniture out there. My place has a nice jarrah table made out of the somebody's hay shed from Balingup many, many years ago, so nicely recycled. I have jarrah chairs and most people cannot lift them up because they are that heavy, but they are beautiful stuff. All of those are now probably antiques because the industry cannot survive the changes made by the Labor government in this process.
Now we come to the end of my contribution. I grieve for the timber industry that will no longer exist. I grieve for the people in those country towns of Manjimup, Nannup, Bridgetown and the towns surrounding them that have been so decimated by the decisions of this government. I accept that the government has put some money into the transition to try and make it better, but it is not working, and it cannot work as the government supposes it can.
But, most importantly, I am somewhat ashamed of the legislation before the house tonight because it does nothing beyond what the government is already doing apart from tying the hands of a future government. It is unnecessary, apart from placating the Greens and throwing out the government's green credentials. It does not help the community down there in the slightest. It might buy the Labor Party some votes, and that is all this is really about: buying some votes for the Labor Party and keeping the Greens a bit further astray. This will pass Parliament and I will be just that little bit more ashamed as it does. So I will oppose this bill; the opposition will oppose this bill. We will stand for the timber communities, but not open slather for the timber communities. We will stand for the possibility of an ecologically sound, environmentally friendly timber process that actually looks after the forest. I tell you what, the first big fire that comes through because the forests are unmanaged, the first big wildfire that goes through because you have a million suckers that should not be there because the government has killed off the timber industry and it no longer has anybody engaged in fire management properly, the first massive bushfire that goes through under those circumstances will be the fault of this government because it no longer wants to manage the forests. It would rather sell them out for politically green ideological gain, and that is not a good outcome for the state of Western Australia.
Hon Ayor Makur Chuot (North Metropolitan Region) (8:33 pm): Tonight I would like to begin my remarks by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet, the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation. I pay my respect to their elders past, present and emerging. It is important to recognise the country's significance, especially in the light of this amendment to the Conservation and Land Management Act 1984. Many honourable members might have seen the overview of the Conservation and Land Management Amendment Bill 2025. It is to amend the CALM act to support the government's native forest policy, which seeks to protect the Western Australian South West forests and end large-scale commercial native timber harvesting. The bill will also replace male gender references with gender-neutral language and will allow the Conservation and Parks Commission to hold remote meetings.
As Western Australians, we are very lucky to live in the most beautiful place on this planet. Here, our children are also blessed to grow up bordered by the crystal waters and diamond sands to the west, framed by vast stretches of sky and the outback sunrises that we see every day to the east. From the ageless gorges of the Kimberley, through the golden breadbaskets of the Gascoyne, to the wind-worn cliffs of the Great Australian Bite, our state is rich in natural beauty and biodiversity, which of course must be envied by the rest of the world.
We know that our duty, both generationally and as representatives of the community across this state, is to work tirelessly to defend the environment that we are in—not just for our sake and that of our children, and for all those who will someday make this land a beautiful home, but also for every type of plant, animal and natural area that we share in this special and beautiful country. This is why the Conservation and Land Management Bill and these amendments are so crucially important. Codifying and clarifying provisions around the sustained yield timber production will retain the expansive protections against logging, while affording the flexibility for clearing timber for the benefit of forest conservation at certain mining operations. These provision, as we have seen in this amendment bill, come as part of the Cook Labor government's broader push to preserve the forests in the south-west of our state for their cultural, economic and environmental longevity. It will help to underpin our broader Forest Management Plan 2024–2033, which has been developed through the broadest consultation with experts in the industry, traditional owners and local communities.
Here today, I must stress the importance of ongoing engagement with and guidance from this country's traditional owners. Our government has always made this central to the management and protection of the natural environment in this state as a whole and in these protected forests. Clauses 5 to 8 will amend the language and administrative provisions pertaining to the Conservation and Parks Commission. There will perhaps be those in the chamber who view this as a mere technicality, but our government recognises that these changes are very necessary and important for some of our community members, if not for the commission to exist, but for it to be framed and to function to the standards that this Parliament must uphold.
Gender-neutral language in an act is not only more literally accurate in application to the multitude of cases upon which this legislative amendment will touch, but also sends a powerful message of solidarity to those within our public sector who have traditionally been invisible within the laws which govern it. By better outlining the functions and processes of this commission, we are upholding the primacy of this Parliament to ultimately set the standards of public administration in Western Australia, which in turn reflects the seriousness with which our government treats these environmental regulations and respects the will of an electorate that demands nothing less. To do this, a lot of people in our community, my colleagues, ministers and I are proud to note that these reforms are just the most recent in the long tradition of Labor governments legislating to defend our environment, native wildlife and climate.
The radical protections under the Hawke government protected the Daintree rainforest in Queensland, upheld international law by enshrining the World Heritage status of Tasmanian forests and safeguarded Kakadu National Park from mining expansion. Nearly 20 years ago, our very own WA Labor government, under Geoff Gallop, courageously banned logging in the state's old-growth forests. This decision effectively ended new projects that threatened to diminish the natural beauty and diversity of our native landscapes. This mission was continued by former Premier Mark McGowan, whose 2021 election win gave our government a renewed democratic mandate to finally end old-growth logging in all cases, not just in cases in which it had not yet commenced. This would have seen an additional 400,000 hectares of karri, jarrah and wandoo forest brought into nature reserves, national parks and conservation parks, bringing the total scope of native forest protected to almost two million hectares.
We should all be honoured to play a role here in this chamber as part of this historic journey of environmental justice and to reflect on the many community members, activists, academics, scientists, parliamentarians and public servants who have been the backbone of this cause over many decades in our community. We stand on their shoulders now and we must pay tribute to them for all the hard work, sweat and tears that have made these reforms not only possible and popular, but also inevitable.
I would like to take this opportunity to commend Minister Reece Whitby for his tireless work on the protection of our environment and to acknowledge previous Ministers Amber-Jade Sanderson and Stephen Dawson for the time they spent in the environment portfolio. I honour previous Premier Mark McGowan and current Premier Roger Cook for their support of strong, new environmental protections in this and the last two Parliaments, with the reflection that the work is not over. In everything that we do, we cannot complete the work in one day. We must all be seized with the ambition to continue these reforms and to continue to safeguard our lands and waters, which we are so lucky to call our home.
That is my small contribution, and I will take my seat.
The President: I think you might just want to continue.
Hon Ayor Makur Chuot: I still have time. Thank you, President. You find me basically acknowledging the work of those who have put in the work to make this bill a possibility. I want to emphasise more the fact that clauses 5 to 8 will make a great impact. It is important to make sure that the bills that we introduce in Parliament reflect the current environment that we are in and what is needed in our community.
Debate adjourned, pursuant to standing orders.
The President: I see that you have concluded your remarks at a very opportune time. Noting the time, we move to members' statements.
