Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie
The Federal Parliament has been urged to unite to support legislation proposed by Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie that will provide certainty for Australia’s native hardwood timber industries and the thousands of people whose livelihoods depend on them. Source: Timberbiz
The Senate’s Environment and Communications Legislation Committee this week heard from forest industries representatives about the importance of Senator McKenzie’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Regional Forest Agreements) Bill 2020, which will clarify legal uncertainty created by a Federal Court ruling last year that threatens Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) around Australia.
“On behalf of the thousands of Australians who rely on our sustainable and renewable native timber industries, I call on the Federal Parliament to unite in supporting Senator McKenzie’s legislation. This legal uncertainty pressuring the industry is spurring anti-forestry groups who are threatening to use the precedent to shut the industry down,” AFPA Chief Executive Officer, Ross Hampton said.
“Senator McKenzie’s Bill will affirm and clarify the Commonwealth’s intent regarding the relationship between the Commonwealth’s Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act and the robust environmental frameworks established under the RFAs.”
The Senate committee heard disturbing examples of the illegal activity from extremist groups protesting native timber harvesting operations, including the dangerous practice called ‘black wallabying’ in which protestors conceal themselves in dark clothing and covertly enter active harvest sites, often leaping out, ambushing machines, and putting lives in danger.
“Illegal protest activities continue to create serious safety breaches in legal workplaces,” General Manager of AFCA, Stacey Gardiner said.
“These dangerous and illegal activities are occurring within heavy equipment operating areas and are often life threatening and risk serious injury. Alarmingly, as part of recent illegal activities an individual brought a toddler onto an active operational forestry site.”
Mr Hampton said Senator McKenzie’s Bill affirmed the intended operation of RFAs between the State and Commonwealth Governments, not just in Victoria but in Tasmania, NSW and Western Australia.
“Under the RFAs, the state environmental laws that the Commonwealth accredits are designed to provide equivalent environmental protections as the EPBC Act for threatened species, and the Commonwealth can review at any time whether they are being complied with,” Mr Hampton said.
Mr Hampton said all the statutory reviews of the RFAs have found that they meet or exceed all the environmental protection and biodiversity conservation requirements.
“This support of this Bill through the Parliament will allow the industry to continue doing it’s great work, providing thousands of jobs and helping the environment,” he said.
Michael O’Connor National Secretary, CFMEU Manufacturing, told the hearing that with many regional economies and communities already devastated by COVID-19, there remained widespread uncertainty and disorder in many timber communities because of a May 2020 decision in a Federal Court case (Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum Inc v Vic Forests (No 4) [2020]).
“The decision, in the absence of remedial Commonwealth Government action has had and will continue to have wide ranging negative ramifications on jobs and workers in the native hardwood forest industry in Australia,” he said.
“The real-life consequences of these developments include that tens thousands of jobs reliant on the hardwood timber industry across Australia are in jeopardy.
“The impacts are already being felt with thousands of workers facing being stood down imminently and scores of businesses, many of them small and medium sized operations facing ruin due to wood supply crunches resulting from injunctions and other associated events.”
Mr O’Connor said the amendments to the EPBC Act and RFA Act were necessary.
“If the bill passes the parliament, it will provide much-needed certainty for jobs in the native forestry industry which maintenance rely on the Regional Forestry Agreement framework,” he said.
“The bill simply confirms the intent of the Act, being that forestry operations in an RFA region are not subject to section 3 and that compliance matters are to be dealt with through the state regulatory framework and that non-conformances do not automatically invalidate the RFA.
“In our view this if effectively achieved by removing the ambiguity of what it means to be “undertaken in accordance with an RFA”.
