Tuesday, 23 May 2023

Native forest logging

Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (14:15): Today’s announcement to close down Victoria’s native timber industry on 1 January is appalling, and for Labor to paint it as a positive for the industry is quite embarrassing. To announce a full closure in six months with a paltry $200 million in compensation will strike fear into the hearts of the workers and those communities. This will not go anywhere near meeting the payouts required to individuals, let alone the communities that are forced to rebuild. It is a decision that is simply so wrong on so many levels. The government and the Greens, who are in unity on this, have never been able to explain where our hardwood timber is going to come from. Market demand is increasing, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognises timber is the only carbon-storing building material in existence. It has said:

In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit.

If market demand is increasing, the IPCC is telling us to build with wood and we do not have the plantations, where is our hardwood going to come from? One suggestion is that it will come from countries with far less oversight – so it is a bad day to be an orangutan, I can tell you. This decision also decimates our frontline firefighting response. Our timber workers were at the forefront in 2019–20. It is wrong on many levels.