Wednesday, 6 April 2022

Wombat State Forest

Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (17:39): (1873) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change. Wombat State Forest is a tinderbox. Storms last year knocked hundreds of thousands of trees to the ground in Wombat State Forest. Experts describe the resulting ground litter as a ticking firebomb. Fuel loads are sitting at 10 to 20 times higher than average. The entire area is at risk. Associate professor of fire ecology and management at Melbourne University Kevin Tolhurst warns that every effort should be put into reducing the fuel load lying on the forest floor by timber harvesting.

Geoff Proctor is a former owner of Black Forest Timber Mill. He explains that this timber needs to be harvested immediately because it is beginning to crack. Unfortunately his mill was shut down because of government hardwood policies made during the Bracks era. This Labor government has expanded those policies into a complete ban, and all of Victoria’s hardwood mills are set to be shut down in the near future. Black Forest Timber Mill is now a complex for a microbrewery, artisan studio, art gallery, providore centre and eco accommodation hub. It is also home to a solar hub where they hold camps to teach students about solar and wind power.

Local Indigenous group Dja Dja Wurrung chief executive Rodney Carter described the fuel load levels as ‘absolutely terrifying’. Dja Dja Wurrung have recently been granted the rights to timber in the Wombat State Forest and have approached VicForests to harvest the fallen trees, describing the practice as traditional forest gardening. Carter says he is not doing it for profit, it is just good forest management. But the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning have threatened Dja Dja Wurrung with legal action if they begin the harvest. The harvest is already 18 months overdue, and the government is going to continue to stall until the wood is no longer valuable—and it is then going to have to clear the fuel load anyway. Instead the environment minister has announced that even more areas will be included as part of the forest, including downgrading huge areas of the state forest to national park that will be locked up and shut down. Meanwhile activist groups have managed to shut down Victorian timber mills because of frivolous lawsuits, stalling the supply of timber harvesting, and there is not enough wood for the mills to process.

So here is the summary: the government crippled the Victorian hardwood industry. They then pretended to hand Wombat State Forest to the traditional owners but are really forcing them to manage the land only as the government tells them. Now they are preventing a tinderbox of naturally felled trees being turned into useful timber, leaving them to deteriorate into fuel loads for the next fire. And their plan for the future is to destroy the state’s entire hardwood-processing capacity, despite the fact that it is a sustainable and profitable industry that can help reduce fire danger. The action I seek from the minister is to facilitate the removal and harvest of fallen trees in Wombat State Forest before it is too late.