Thursday, 16 November 2023

Native forest logging

Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (17:23): (457) My adjournment tonight is directed to the Minister for Agriculture. In May we saw the Victorian Labor government face facts and declare commercial native forest logging will end in January next year, just a few months away, and this victory could not be possible without the multipronged, multidecade campaigns from grassroots organisations working to protect our precious native forests, sometimes at huge personal cost. But in the months that followed that announcement we have heard several updates suggesting there might be several loopholes in this plan and some concerning elements that the government needs to clarify. Native forest logging in Victoria’s west could survive well into next year or beyond through so-called community forest arrangements, and Labor have still made no announcement about what will happen to VicForests, an organisation that has been found to conduct illegal activity and which is still surviving by supplying timber from so-called salvage logging and bushfire prevention works for commercial purposes, creating more destruction of habitat. With less than two months remaining before the end of large-scale commercial logging, tonight I ask the minister to provide clarity over what happens next for our so-called community forests after mid next year and what will happen to VicForests and their functions post January.

As we heard in the June budget estimates, the community forest operations have not been included in the decision to end native forest logging in January. These are areas mostly in the west of Victoria that are subject to forest produce licences, meaning they are outside the 1.8 million hectares of public land currently subject to timber harvesting allocation orders which Labor’s announcement covers. Most of the licences for the forests, particularly in the west, end in mid-2024, but Labor is still yet to confirm whether or not they will be extended, and the community needs to have this clarified.

In September the Labor government rebadged VicForests as a reorganising body, which enabled staff to be moved around and absorbed into different government departments, but we still have no news about whether VicForests will continue next year. This is a concern because time after time we have seen the company illegally log our precious forests. Often VicForests pops up to log forests under the guise of bushfire prevention or salvage logging, and then timber is sold for commercial profit. It is a loss-making body that has been shown again and again to have contempt for the law and for threatened species and their habitat, illegally logging habitat and also illegally spying on ordinary citizens that stand up to them. They cannot be reformed. VicForests must be shut down for good and replaced with a new government organisation, one that is focused on restoring Victoria’s native forests for their biodiversity, clean air and water, carbon stores and First Nations cultural heritage values. The work that VicForests performs in terms of seed collection, seed banking and plantation works is important work that is needed to regenerate the forests that they have trashed. That needs to be retained and transitioned to a new body with a new culture of genuine forest management and restoration.