Thursday, 4 August 2022

Timber salvaging

Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (20:58): (2042) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Environment and Climate Action. I have talked about Wombat State Forest before. Following storms in 2021 more than 500 000 tonnes of timber were knocked down and began to dry and rot in Wombat forest. The timber creates an enormous fire risk and it needs to be cleared. Thankfully the naturally felled timber is useful. We can harvest it and use it as a resource, but this must be done quickly because the condition of the wood will deteriorate the longer it sits on the forest floor. After extensive and costly delays, the salvage of timber in Wombat forest has finally commenced. At this point, the value of the salvaged timber is already reaching the point where it is scarcely worth the cost of clearing it. We are getting to it just in time. If we wait any longer, we will be forced to clear the forest at expense and will lose out on the compensation of putting the timber towards productive uses.

So of course the conservation regulator is doing its best to stall the operation. They have demanded hundreds of pages of documentation from the small, family-run business that is doing the clearing work. The regulator lodged this request, withdrew it three days later and then relodged it a month later. This company has about three harvesting staff and about five truck drivers, and the regulator is demanding copies of all licences and routes, personal information, time sheets, permits, their authority to undertake timber harvesting operations and all the business contracts and records linked with the salvage operation in Wombat forest. By the time they are done complying with this request, they will have used all the timber they can salvage for paper to print the records on.

What is worse is that the regulator says this is standard practice. They claim they do this for every single business and every single operation. The cost to Victorians is enormous, although the fact that the regulator apparently did not know how to issue a valid notice the first time around calls this into question. The business operator says they are unable to comply with the request because half the documents demanded are held by different bodies. He is subcontracting from VicForests, and VicForests is working for the Dja Dja Wurrung, who hold the licence. I call on the minister to tear up this excessive red tape that is delaying this time-sensitive matter. Just let the salvage operation go ahead, and then do the same for other affected timber operations going forward.