Making Australia self-sufficient in timber

By geographical area, Australia is the sixth-largest country in the world. We have all the land we need to plant forests and be self-sufficient in timber, an essential material for housing and construction.

Yet Australia is not self-sufficient in timber. We have a $2 billion trade deficit in wood products (for example, Australia no longer produces standard office paper), importing raw timber from countries with lower stewardship credentials like Indonesia, Russia and Malaysia with all the biosecurity risks and expense that come with it. This doesn’t make sense, especially when timber prices in Australia have risen more than 200% since before the COVID-19 pandemic. This is having a significant impact on housing supply and construction, slowing it down and making it more expensive at a time when Australia can least afford it. Rising material costs are also a factor in the collapse of building and construction businesses.

Forestry industries contribute about $24 billion to the Australian economy, directly supporting 80,000 jobs and indirectly supporting another 100,000 jobs. Forestry industries are vital employers in many regional areas. These jobs were placed at considerable risk by legislation introduced by the Albanese Labor government in 2024, which would have prevented investors in forestry from realising full returns due to the long period of time required for new plantations to mature. One Nation moved an amendment to the legislation to fix this issue after forestry industries had unsuccessfully approached the major parties, and we convinced a majority of the Senate to back it.

One Nation strongly supports Australian forestry, and strongly supports expanding the plantation forestry estate to make our country self-sufficient in timber. One Nation also supports current levels of native forestry, which represents a small fraction of all forestry: only six out of every 10,000 native trees in Australia are harvested every year. Strict laws require that native forest is regenerated after harvesting, and that ‘old-growth’ forests and environmentally sensitive areas and habitats are left completely alone. One Nation supports this position – we can be self-sufficient in timber without harvesting in these areas and we support.

One Nation doesn’t subscribe to the ideology that human activity is responsible for climate change – humans are responsible for only a fraction of the world’s CO2 emissions, most of which come from natural sources. However in this world of carbon accounting and offsets, it’s also a fact that more plantation forests in Australia will absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – Australian forestry plantations currently store about 258 million tonnes of carbon. Trees are, in fact, the perfect renewable resource and we should be planting more of them.

One Nation will support Australian forestry jobs and promote timber self-sufficiency by:

• incentivising greater use of Australian timber in construction through a ‘local wood first’ policy in government procurement processes;
• exempting basic building materials – including timber – from the GST for a period of five years for homes up to a value of $1 million;
• supporting the industry’s call for a summit to develop policies incentivising adoption of modular and pre-fabricated timber housing;
• cracking down on illegal timber imports;
• supporting the introduction of country-of-origin labelling so that consumers can pro-actively choose Australian timber and wood products over foreign imports;
• supporting the development of a national fire response plan for Australia’s forests;
• supporting the delivery of forestry tertiary education for workforce sustainability and development;
• changing National Electricity Market (NEM) rules to favour cheaper coal and gas to reduce electricity costs for timber mills and other wood supply chain businesses by 20%;
• extending plantation establishment grants to assist the industry’s target of establishing an additional 18,000 hectares of forestry plantations per year; and
• opposing any moves to lock away more areas of native forest that is available for commercial harvesting.

Supporting the right to fish

There are more than four million recreational fishers in Australia. It’s one of country’s most popular pastimes. Recreational fishing also contributes about $11 billion to the economy each year, and supports about 100,000 jobs – most of them in regional areas.

The right of Australians to go fishing is being increasingly restricted. Poor management of recreational fisheries over the past decades has led to overfishing in some areas, and now many fishing authorities at both Federal and state level are locking recreational fishers out of large parts of the ocean, or severely restricting catch limits.

Ensuring stocks for future generations of recreational fishers always requires some regulation, but One Nation would like it kept to a minimum. It’s often the case that recreational catch limits and lockouts are based on flawed, biased or obsolete data about fish stocks. Environmental activists and animal rights extremists also work very hard to lobby governments to restrict – and ultimately ban – recreational fishing.

One Nation supports the right to fish. We’ll support the recreational fishing sector by:

• resourcing and implementing up-to-date monitoring and assessments of recreational fish stocks in both state and Commonwealth waters;
• establishing minimal limits – rather than unreasonable limits – to protect fish stocks for future generations while ensuring all fishers can still enjoy their favourite pastime; and
• halving the fuel excise for at least 12 months – with an option to review and extend – so that it’s cheaper to take boats out fishing and travel to regional coastal areas to go fishing.

Supporting the Australian seafood industry

The Australian commercial seafood and aquaculture sector is valued at about $3.5 billion per year and supports about 17,000 jobs. While job numbers in aquaculture have been steady over the past 15 years, there has been a significant decline in the commercial fishing sector with jobs falling from 16,000 in 2006-07 to 10,000 in 2021-22.

Australia has one of the largest national fisheries in the world – more than eight million square kilometres of ocean – and we also exploit international fisheries. However, Australia is also a net seafood importer. More than 60% of the seafood we consume each year is sourced from overseas. While our seafood exports are valued at about $1.3 billion, we import around $2.2 billion.

This is partly due to the fact that Australia has one of the most restricted national fisheries in the world, with strict total allowable catch (TAC) quotas, and also due to the fact that much imported seafood is cheaper. Environmental and animal rights activists are active in this space as well. They’ve been partially successful in locking away large areas of ocean from commercial fishing, for example buying licences and their quotas so they can’t be filled. They have even tried to have the entire Coral Sea declared a ’national park’ where commercial fishing would be prohibited.

One Nation will support the Australian seafood industry by:

• resourcing and implementing up-to-date monitoring and assessments of commercial fish stocks in both state and Commonwealth waters;
• prohibiting the purchase of commercial fishing licences and quotas by any entity other than commercial fishers;
• prohibiting the purchase of commercial fishing licences and quotas by foreign entities and prohibiting foreign-flagged vessels – especially ‘factory’ vessels – from the national fishery;
• opposing any moves to declare parts of the national fishery as national parks;
• exploring initiatives to increase the volume of Australian seafood available for purchase in Australia, and reducing imports;
• exploring incentives to promote more local on-shore processing and packaging of Australian seafood;
• reversing Labor’s changes to industrial relations law damaging small businesses; and
• halving the fuel excise for at least 12 months – with an option to review and extend – to reduce operating costs for commercial fishers.

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Frances Whiting, in Brisbane’s Sunday Mail, has critiqued One Nation’s cartoon featuring Robert Irwin, arguing it's a matter of 'consent' and that permission should have been obtained. However, Whiting’s stance is misplaced. Her interpretation stretches 'consent' beyond its appropriate context, which is not comparable to using a public figure’s image in satire.