Thursday, 23 March 2023

Timber industry

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (16:16): (144) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Agriculture, and the action that I seek is that the minister reverses the decision to close the native timber industry by 2030. The native timber industry has some of Australia’s most dedicated and hard workers. More often than not they work long hours and irregular hours, sacrificing time with their family and friends and a good night’s sleep.

We recently heard from Adam. Adam has been in the native timber logging industry for around 15 years. He and his wife have two children. Because of the Labor government’s war on the native timber industry, he has lost his job. Adam feels that the families involved in native timber harvesting have been unfairly portrayed as evil and haters of the environment. This is despite the industry being highly regulated and sustainable. A government representative told him to just sell his equipment, but how do you sell specialised equipment that is designed for an industry that is now banned? The equipment can cost over $1 million, and it can take years and years to pay off. This is his quote:

The government told me that there were … mechanisms in place to ensure the transition out of the industry was positive for workers … In reality, most workers have received nothing. The offer of stand down payments failed to reach those who didn’t work on contracts. Those workers have been left in the dark and neglected for months.

Their families have been neglected. They have fundamentally been told they don’t matter. He also said the following:

It’s clear that Wangaratta-bred Daniel Andrews is more worried about pleasing the inner-city elite in Toorak and Hawthorn than protecting the hard-working Australians in the native timber industry who for generations have sustainably logged native timber.

He said:

The fact that he’s banning a sustainable industry so that Victorians have to import unethically sourced foreign timber from forests that are being wiped with animals being massacred, tells you everything you need to know.

He left me with this final note:

I hope Daniel Andrews is happy with himself, because my family’s lost everything.