Wednesday, 21 June 2023

Department of Treasury and Finance

Budget papers 2023–24

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:34): This afternoon I would like to return my attention to budget paper 3, page 30, in relation to the government’s flawed disentanglement of the native timber industry, and indeed their budget paper looks at a transition. One of the things that is so evident when you talk to people in my electorate who are in the industry, or people in towns and communities in Eastern Victoria Region and particularly in Gippsland and far East Gippsland, is the loss that this will be for those communities. It is not just those working directly in haulage and harvest, it is absolutely the communities, the mechanics, the local IGAs, the hospitals, the schools and the bakeries that are going to be affected by this decision.

What we see from the Andrews government is that over the past eight years of mismanagement it has turned its own wing, its own body, VicForests – a once-profitable business – into a loss maker. Now, that is because of a whole raft of reasons. Some of them are at the government’s levers. Some of them could have been that the government chose to close loopholes in the timber code of practice. We saw during the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearings that the Premier actually said, ‘Oh, we have had information from lawyers, from the legal profession et cetera, that it is not going to work,’ yet the Premier also still refused to provide this information. What we often hear about – I hear it regularly from the Greens; it is frustrating and my blood boils – is that the majority of the sawlog or the harvested native timber ends up as pulp. This is just not the case. Victorian appearance-grade sawn timber accounts for about 60 per cent of hardwood sawmill timber output. For our largest mill, ASH in Heyfield, 100 per cent of its output is in appearance-grade and further manufactured timber products, and it absolutely exposes the natural beauty of those products.

I was in Collingwood only last week, where there is a 15-storey building. The first five storeys are concrete and the next 10 are cross-laminated, engineered timber. The floors are actually pine from western Victoria, but the structural beams and columns are from ASH timber, and they are magnificent. They feel beautiful. You walk up and you want to touch them. There has been huge evidence around the importance of having wood in our lives. This is a natural product. For Heyfield, 100 per cent of its output is high-quality sawlog. They are called Masslam timber beams. It is magnificent, and we are going to see the last of it.

I know that ASH timber, Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, are going to fight like the devil to keep their mill open and import from Tasmania, New South Wales or America if they have to to keep this going. They have been exemplars in pivoting and retooling and manufacturing. We often hear, as I say, from a variety of people – the Greens being some of them – that it goes to pulp, but so much of our wood is used for very high-intensity purposes. Other wood, if it is a lower grade, an F grade, is actually used for pallets. We are going to have a pallet shortage in Victoria – hardwood pallets which hold those structural, heavy pallet loads in terms of our freight and logistics – because of this closure.

I just want to put on record that VicForests, I believe, has been the meat in the sandwich in this. They have worked very hard to try and provide coupes for the contractors. I know the contractors have been completely frustrated at times, but their hands have been tied. We have seen litigation, and we have seen the government in previous budgets say that they are going to be model litigants and not go and challenge and try and recoup those funds from those third-party litigators who lost court cases. But they throw their hands up and walk away. Why? Because they are in bed together.