Wednesday, 6 April 2022

Timber industry

Petition

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:20): This morning I was proud to table e-petition 406, which calls for the amendment of the Victorian Forestry Plan. Taken together with the paper petition to the same effect, it includes 893 signatories and represents an extraordinary effort by the petition originator, James Kidman. I visited James and his father, Murray, who together run Otway Tonewoods and who source and prepare fabulous Otway woods. Much goes to Melbourne-based Maton Guitars, whose instruments are renowned at home and abroad and whose customers include many world-famous musicians. Limited quantities of their carefully selected high-grade local blackwood, satinwood and mountain ash go to other equally skilled low-volume Victorian crafters who fashion other truly extraordinary musical instruments. Seeing their operation and listening to the way they work, I was appalled at the threat that the Victorian Forestry Plan’s ban on native timber harvesting would stop their operations and instead force the environmentally unfriendly importation of inferior timber from distant parts of the world with much lower ecological standards. It would destroy the knowledge of generations and amount to cultural as well as economic vandalism.

I acknowledge that the pressure brought to bear by James and others through this petition has averted some of this danger, and I am delighted by the government climb-down, which has now confirmed that the forest produce licence system will remain for some extremely low-volume supply of specialty timbers. This only represents a fraction of the overall industry, however, and the petition I presented today identifies a much greater problem.

I have always been a strong advocate for the forest industry—for the livelihoods provided, for the regional economies supported, for the high-quality local timber resource produced and for their essential firefighting efforts. But I am grateful to James for explaining to me in significant detail the scientific evidence and the ecological and environmental arguments for sustainable forestry. These operations are as far from bare deforestation, denuded landscapes and the exploited earth as you can possibly imagine. When this government seek the votes of urban environmentalists, conjuring up images of Brazilian rainforest-style logging operations, they are dishonestly and emotively exploiting ignorance, not pursuing science-led policy to improve forest ecology. As the petition states:

Contemporary ecologically sustainable timber harvesting is being blamed for detrimental ecological legacies of wildfire, past land clearing, invasive species and historical harvesting.

The fact is that locking up forests and throwing away the key is the very opposite of environmentally friendly. The petition continues:

… contemporary timber harvesting is a valuable tool that creates mosaic disturbances—increasing species richness, biodiversity and ecosystem resilience.

The idea that disturbance is devastating is simply wrong. It ignores the science as well as maligning the motives of those involved in the Victorian native timber industry. Ecological thinning can be a positive benefit to ecosystems. It promotes greater diversity. Trees of different sizes and ages provide different habitats, for example. We know about the importance of hollow-bearing trees, and it has been demonstrated that thinned plantings, where a smaller number of trees grow more rapidly due to reduced competition for light and nutrients, more quickly produce these essential old-growth characteristics. And we also know that larger trees are less susceptible to drought. So in a world with higher temperatures and more frequent drought, areas with diverse tree stocks, including larger trees, will survive; those with overstocked, denser, uniform plantations will not, with catastrophic consequences for the rest of the ecosystems which rely on them.

This is a small fraction of the science behind this basic truth, but I would also like to add a couple of interesting cultural considerations. The government’s own Biodiversity 2037 strategy notes that one way of increasing biodiversity is to get people involved in nature. That is actually quite a profound truth for a government report, and it is totally contradicted by locking up the forests. This government also claims to recognise the importance of Indigenous knowledge and cultural fire practices, yet given the decades of fuel supply built up in national parks— (Time expired)