Book 8 - Parliament of Victoria

PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS
Wednesday, 1 June 2011 COUNCIL 1647
council. The attempt, by writing them a letter, was to
bind those councillors to a particular position. I hope
the Minister for Agriculture and Food Security was not
attempting to do that, but we need to see the letter in
order to know that.
However, we do have another letter which was
provided to the annual conference of the Municipal
Association of Victoria. As it happened, Yarra Ranges
Council was sponsoring a motion at the Municipal
Association of Victoria (MAV) conference — —
Mr Drum interjected.
Mr BARBER — Mr Drum will just need to change
a few policies. The same motion was moved before the
MAV conference where further councils were urged to
adopt this policy of paper purchasing to influence
environmental outcomes. It was not only the Minister
for Agriculture and Food Security but also the Deputy
Premier, Peter Ryan, who got so excited by this
consideration at another democratic forum of local
councils that he pulled out all stops. MAV delegates
arrived to find that a show bag had been distributed
from Australian Paper and a specially drafted letter
from Peter Ryan and Peter Walsh, addressed to the
head of Australian Paper, which was basically a
testimonial — a reference — from the two ministers
saying that Australian Paper was a good guy. It refers to
the Deputy Premier’s statement that:
It is my intention to raise this matter at a meeting of Rural
Councils Victoria which I, as Deputy Premier, am attending
this evening.
That was the evening prior to the MAV conference.
There is something about this matter that has got The
Nationals completely rattled. Either the paper boycott is
working or the finances of VicForests are now
becoming so parlous that it realises the loss of this
client with its small commitment to native forest
logging relative to its much larger commitment to
plantation feedstock is enough to knock over
VicForests over. Remember this government promised
it would fix up VicForests. I am not too clear how it is
going to do that. VicForests is the sort of company that
loses money on every sale and then thinks it can
somehow make that up on volume.
The government is either going to squeeze the
contractors a bit harder, which I do not think it wants to
do; it is going to raise the log prices, which it has said it
does not want to do; or it will try to sell more, but it
cannot sell much more, because the dog will not eat it
anymore. Plantation is better on every level. Everybody
wants to get into it. Nobody wants to buy photocopying
paper that has caused the destruction of water
catchments and wildlife habitat, not to mention the
world’s richest carbon banks in those wet forests
behind Healesville.
It is something of a mystery, and I would like to pursue
this issue a bit further. In the last four years Parliament
has seen an enormous fund of time devoted to the issue
of improper influence over local government by
members of Parliament who are members of the Labor
Party. This government seems to have put its big fat
foot in it, but we need to see the letter before we can
take this discussion any further.
Mr O’DONOHUE (Eastern Victoria) — The
government does not oppose the motion moved by
Mr Barber that says:
That this house requires the Leader of the Government to
table in the Council by 12 noon on Tuesday, 14 June 2011,
any letter or letters sent from the Minister for Agriculture and
Food Security to the Yarra Ranges Shire Council, in relation
to the relocation of VicForests office to the municipality.
We do not oppose that motion, but let me say that I
heard some very long bows being drawn before,
particularly in this place. To make the comparison
between the Brimbank council fiasco and the
revelations about internal Labor Party workings and
machinations and correspondence between the minister
and the Yarra Ranges Shire Council is indeed a very
long bow.
Mr Barber interjected.
Mr O’DONOHUE — To pick up the interjection
from Mr Barber, I do not think he is saying that
Cr Samantha Dunn is an advocate for The Nationals
who is somehow revealing the internal workings of that
party. Indeed, as the chamber would know, Mr Scheffer
narrowly defeated Cr Dunn, who ran as a candidate for
the Greens, for the fifth spot in Eastern Victoria Region,
so I think his comparison is flawed. I do not think it is
unreasonable — —
Mr Barber interjected.
Mr O’DONOHUE — Again to pick up
Mr Barber’s interjection, as I understand it from the
council’s minutes it was Cr Dunn who moved the
motion that is the subject of the correspondence.
The Yarra Ranges is an area that needs more local jobs
so that people from Lilydale, Yarra Glen, Healesville,
Warburton and other towns in the municipality do not
have to travel to Melbourne or to Knox, Bayswater or
other areas for employment. Local jobs are good for the
environment; they are good for local people. Having a
local job means people can spend more time at home. It