The Mectec Sawmill in the small East Gippsland town of Newmerella is expected to close today because of reduced access to native timber, and the blame is being directed at Victoria’s Premier Dan Andrews. Source: Timberbiz
The Nationals leader Peter Walsh described the nine workers at the mill as “the latest casualties, the human face, of Daniel Andrews’ war on Victoria’s timber harvesting industry”.
Mr Walsh said that in a town of barely 300, nine jobs, nine families, nine incomes lost, is a bitter blow and ends 80 years of local business for Mectec Sawmill.
Victorian Forest Products Association chief executive Deborah Kerr has warned of a “catastrophic” shortage of timber – about half the state’s 17 timber mills are without logs or with less than two weeks’ supply.
And the CFMEU manufacturing division national secretary Michael O’Connor has said the government has a “moral obligation” to support the timber workers, who had been stood down because of hardwood shortages caused by legal challenges and government policy failures with a JobKeeper-style support plan.
He said hundreds of sawmill workers across Victoria faced reduced hours and had been asked to take leave; hundreds more were facing imminent stand-downs in a dozen mills around the state.
Mill owner John Mekken was even more blunt.
“I had a meeting with the guys and told them that when we cut the last log, which could be this week or early next week, we’ll be finished,” owner John Mekken told the Financial Review.
Mr Walsh said Victorians were now beginning to see firsthand the impact of Labor’s 2030 stealth ban on native timber, with those Newmerella workers thrown on the scrapheap due to a timber shortage.
“Labor has started dismantling our timber industry as part of its politically-motivated vendetta against hard-working Victorians in regional and rural areas,” Mr Walsh says.
“Today we have seen our worst fears being confirmed, with the first casualty being a sawmill in a smaller community.
“Communities such as Newmerella rely on Victoria’s $7.3 billion native timber industry to put food on the table and keep the lights on.
“But again, we see Labor abandoning regional Victorians to pander to the Greens and their inner-city voters.”
Mr Walsh says Labor has been gaslighting Victorians, with its claims of supporting the sustainable timber industry while “secretly signing its death warrant in this star chamber” which our state government has become.
“Daniel Andrews signed off on the industry’s closure in 2018, based on sham focus groups, social media analytics, and a radical green ideological agenda,” he said.
“A Liberal and Nationals government will see the 2030 ban immediately reversed to secure a future for Victorian jobs and the small communities scattered across regional Victoria which rely heavily, and historically, on the industry for their survival.
“The timber industry workers, the towns the sector supports and the downstream beneficiaries of this sustainable industry need to remember this November that Labor will turn off their livelihoods and make the cost of living even harder.”
