Justin Law managing director FWCA
The inevitable job losses and the withering of regional communities is showing its first signs as log supply dwindles thanks to a Victorian Government which is using activism as its most potent tool.
The Mectec sawmill at Newmerella in East Gippsland was forced to lay off its casual work force and has put permanents on what little annual leave they have left after Covid stripped most of their entitlements.
Critical log supply, which would see them continue to employ its workforce, is currently tied up in the courts as remarkably well-funded fringe groups do Victorian Labor’s dirty work.
These unqualified, self-interested anti-forestry activists have somehow been given standing in the Victorian Supreme Court to mount actions purely designed to cripple supply.
They are given this standing because the Victorian Government refuses to close the loophole in the Sustainable Forests (Timber) Act 2004 which allows such groups to become vigilante regulators.
The result is production coupes are tied up in injunctions, while a judge sorts through the facts from the fiction, and supply to Victorian hardwood mills is squeezed to a trickle.
Meanwhile, the Government’s own environmental attack dog, the Office of the Conservation Regulator (OCR), is doing its best to obstruct the salvage of windthrown timber in the Wombat State Forest.
This timber would go a long way to alleviating the timber supply shortage situation caused by the court actions, and yet the OCR has thrown its weight at one of the contractors going about performing this environmental service.
Remember that this clean-up is at the request of the Dja Dja Wurrung people who identified a need to heal country by removing the windblown trees to allow new ones to grow.
But the OCR is figuratively throwing contractors performing the task up against the cop car and frisking them for some kind of evidence they can use to obstruct the operation. It even went so far as to get a Magistrate involved.
Perhaps the OCR is feeling left out because its NSW counterpart, the Environmental Protection Authority, has waged war on Forestry Corporation, smashing the state forest agency with massive fines over four trees cut down a metre into an area designated a protection zone for koalas.
Where was the OCR when activists cut down trees in special protection zones in the Central Highlands back in February? Despite being alerted to the situation and police attending the scene, the OCR mumbled its way to complete inaction and the activists got away with it.
To the casual observer, this unholy mess looks like a concerted effort to bring about an early demise of an industry which is recognised everywhere else in the world as our best chance to mitigate climate change.
Is it conspiracy or just plain old incompetence? Perhaps a bit of both – politics is all about making backroom deals, and with an election coming up, they’d be dealing faster than a Crown Casino croupier on a Friday night.
Meanwhile, the promise of a 2030 transition for the thousands of regional families who rely on native timber harvesting and production looks as empty as the promise to make up the shortfall in the vitally needed timber with plantations.
Mills are rapidly running out of wood well before the promised transition packages are made available to them. That means they could lose everything without compensation.
It’s causing fear and confusion in our regional timber towns. Not just for the thousands directly employed to harvest and mill timber, but their families, the shops who rely on their custom, the sporting teams which will fold and the schools which will close as our once proud timber towns dwindle away.
All for what? A narrow-minded ideology? An eco-political agenda supported by activist academics and journalists. The millions of dollars generated by greedy corporate activists using anti-forestry outrage.
Given how completely anti-forestry campaigners have managed to influence the public narrative, and that governments are by the people for the people, it could be tempting to let Labor off the hook.
But in Victoria, you would hope they look at the whole picture before making decisions which affect so many people. They would know full well that everywhere else in the world forestry is celebrated and recognised as our best chance to effectively manage our environment and reduce emissions.
So, Labor did not make its decision out of concern for the environment, it’s a decision designed to satisfy a subset of people who can influence their inner-city power base.
The people in our regional communities deserve better.
Justin Law is Forest & Wood Communities Australia Managing Director.
