Thursday, 2 November 2023

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (14:15): (535) My constituency question is for the Minister for Agriculture and concerns Labor’s senseless ban on native timber harvesting. VicForests’ own website describes community forestry as:

… low intensity harvesting operations that provide local businesses … with access to local forest resources to support regional communities.

Operations are ‘generally small scale’:

Most … are single tree selection or thinning operations that remove a minor portion of standing trees and have strict rules about the size of trees that may be taken.

It adds:

Some community forestry operations focus on areas … affected by severe storm damage …

of the fallen trees. Minister, most forest produce supplied is firewood collected by local operators who supply it to their communities. Elderly, infirm and disabled residents cannot collect their own firewood, so how will my constituents who rely on firewood for heating and cooking cope when all community commercial firewood licences end on 31 December this year?