Murray Watt
The Federal Opposition’s Shadow Forestry Minister Senator Jonno Duniam believes his Government counterpart Senator Murray Watt may have breached his statutory requirements as Forestry Minister. Source: Timberbiz
That’s the big question to have emerged from the forestry session at the Senate Estimates hearings in Canberra.
Under questioning from Senator Duniam and Bridget McKenzie, Minister Watt admitted that he has never convened a meeting of the Forest Industry Advisory Council (FIAC).
Senator Duniam said that appeared to be a breach of the requirements of Section 11 (6) of the Regional Forest Agreements Act 2002, as there was no meeting in his first calendar year as Minister in 2022.
He said that this part of the Act clearly states, in relation to FIAC – or the Forest Wood Products Council, as it was formerly known – that “the Minister must ensure that the Council meets at least twice in every calendar year”.
Senator Duniam said that Senator Watt had also revealed that apparently, he has been trying to dissolve FIAC without ever advising many or all of the council’s members about this move.
He was also unable to easily explain why the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s clear policy position of 17 May 2022 that “a Government I lead will not shut down the native forest industry in Tasmania” didn’t equally seem to apply to other parts of Australia.
“Additionally, yet another Labor election promise to the forestry sector (this time on the convening of a sector-wide roundtable) now seems to have been broken,” he said.
“Nine months into his job, the Minister was still unable to definitively clarify today when the commitment to ‘hold a roundtable with the forestry sector, unions, States and Territories to develop a Timber Fibre Strategy’ might ever be realised.”
