Melina Bath with timber workers in Gippsland
The following is taken from Nationals’ MP for Eastern Victoria Melina Bath’s Second Reading speech during debate on the Sustainable Forests (Timber) Repeal Bill 2024 which abolished VicForests and removed the legal framework that previously made commercial logging possible in Victoria’s state forests.
This is a sad day, a dark day in Victoria’s history. This is a disaster of a bill, and the Nationals and the Liberals will seek to amend and oppose this abomination. This government, the former Premier and the current Premier, have abandoned regional Victoria. They have wilfully neglected to listen to the science. They have listened to the chirpy ideologues and inner-city elites who want to see a sustainable and world-class industry closed.
On the day the then Premier Daniel Andrews was choosing the beautiful, high-quality hardwood manufactured in Heyfield from world-class ash timber for our $42 million expansion of this Parliament – he was choosing that because it is the best in the world – he signed the death knell for this industry. It is an abomination, and they should all be ashamed of themselves. Killing off Victoria’s sustainable native industry is economically, environmentally, socially and morally wrong.
I would like to pay homage to and thank the industry, the industry workers, the towns and the various people and entities associated.
Over my time in this place, I have met some wonderful people in regional Victoria, not only in regional Victoria but in metropolitan Melbourne, who are part of the supply chain for our native timber industry.
I would like to thank the haulage and harvest operators, the contractors and the sole traders, who are doing it so tough at the moment because the government is not honouring a commitment to fully pay them out as required and is putting blocks in the road.
I would like to thank so much the machinery workers and those employed by the VicForests contractors. I also want to thank and pay homage to the civil contractors who are not associated with VicForests. So many of those do an amazing job, and some have moved between department contracts and VicForests contracts over the past 20 years as well. I want to pay homage to them.
When the fires are burning and for various reasons have not been able to be put out, they drive towards those fires, putting their own life in peril to protect our regional communities and towns.
I want to particularly thank the mill owners – and there have been many in the time, their workers and their administrations. I thank them for their ingenuity, for their integrity and for their grit and hard work on the floor – for value-adding this beautiful hardwood timber product which adorns our homes, our offices, our cultural centres, our GovHubs, our schools, our libraries and indeed the $42 million offices that we inhabit when we are here. To all of those, I thank them so much for their ingenuity and craftsmanship.
I want to thank, in particular, the engineers as well. I thank the registered training organisations. I have spoken with so many training officers who upskill and educate haulage and harvest operators, who provide that safety. And I thank the TAFE teachers. I know many of them have been so frustrated with third-party litigation.
I also thank the seed collectors and boy, haven’t they done it tough at the end of this, because the government has not been recognising them for their services. I want to thank the VicForests staff, the biodiversity experts, the forest scientists, the surveyors, the assessors, the forest managers and the regenerators. I also thank Monique Dawson for giving a damn.
When the courts have said to VicForests ‘How high?’, they have attempted in many and various ways to perform those tasks: lidar data, forest surveys, middle-of-the-night and heat sensor surveys, and it goes on. On occasion VicForests has been in an uncomfortable position. They are not universally loved by the contractors, but they have been pulled and pushed and abandoned by this government.
Twenty years ago, Steve Bracks in actual fact introduced VicForests, and like timber workers in our community, I think that VicForests has been collateral damage for the elites and the egos that inhabit this place.
As I said earlier, it has been a passion of mine for all of my time in here to espouse and share the importance of this industry and the science behind it. In one of my first days in this place, when Federation Room was operational, there was a buzz in that place, and the minister then was Jaala Pulford. There was a buzz of forestry people.
The room was full, and the future looked bright. Well, weren’t we conned indeed. We know that there have been improvements over the time for harvest practices. We know that in the past it was always evolving to better serve biodiversity and better serve outcomes, conservation and protection of zones. We have got special protection zones and we have got buffer zones.
There have been five ministers in my time of the ag department of this government. It seems like a hot potato that nobody wants. All of the National Party would relish it, and I am sure many of the Liberals would relish being the minister for ag.
There are various things. Let us look at this: 94% of the public land estate is not available for timber harvesting – 94% of roughly eight million hectares is excluded from harvest. In the last few years around 3000 trees per hectare were harvested every year and regrown. These are the facts: four in 10,000 trees are harvested and regrown. The national state of the forests 2018 report stated that there was a 95% success rate for VicForests for Victorian forest regeneration. There was a 95% success rate for that regeneration.
We also know that there is no such thing as deforestation. What I do also know is that the wilderness groups – these Wilderness Society groups – peddle this misinformation about it. Indeed, when we asked, in the decline of ecosystems inquiry, how many programs the Wilderness Society has to regenerate, create habitat, plant trees, guess what, there were no programs. So, whilst they are all about shutting down industry and shutting down community and not being environmentally understanding, they do not plant trees themselves.
The Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) is not a good neighbour, and we know that many of those fires have established in parkland and the like and moved through – and the people in Sarsfield definitely know that.
I also want to pay homage to the late Kevin Tolhurst, who was passionate about bushfire mitigation and public access but also about active management of our forests. Dr Michelle Freeman from Forestry Australia is an eminent scientist, and we need to listen to her words and not the chirpy few scientists gone into ideology. Rob de Fegely, Professor Rod Keenan, Vic Jurskis, David Packham, Carlie Porteous, Steph Kerr, Tim Lester – the list goes on. I want to quote something from Rod Carter. Dja Dja Wurrung man Rod Carter talks about forest gardening:
“I believe in forest gardening. We need to actively manage the bush, and this government is hell-bent on sterilising it and turning it into a bushfire habitat.”
Thank you very much to all of those people – and more that I have not mentioned.
This government has enabled court litigation. Time and time again in this place the Nationals and the Liberals have spoken about closing the loopholes in the timber code of practice. There was a precautionary principle in the timber code, and indeed the former Premier stood in the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee and said, ‘We’ve had advice. We’ve had legal advice to say that we can’t shut down this loophole’ – this timber code of practice loophole.’ Well, he refused to then document and share where that advice had come from. He refused to show that because, I believe, it does not actually exist, and he was making that up.
We also see that the government is pandering to those environment groups, such as MyEnvironment. MyEnvironment lost a case against VicForests. They lost that case, and MyEnvironment had costs awarded against them – $1.2 million. They should have paid it. The government did not force them to pay it. It is now out to $2 million in interest costs, and the government has turned a blind eye. This is not being responsible, and this is not being fair. On one hand you have VicForests suffering these lawsuits to shut it down, and then you go around saying that indeed it is not profitable. Well, it is not profitable because you are hamstringing it all the way.
Let me speak about bushfires. I waded my way through, as did members in the Liberal party, the decline in ecosystems inquiry, and the greatest threats to those vulnerable species are bushfires, pests and weeds. Let me say it again: bushfires, pests and weeds.
Again, we need to have a sustainable principle around forest management. If you are going to cut out the people who understand that bush and who over time very gently take coupes and replant them, then you are going to have an impact. But not only that, you are taking away the capacity of this industry. Yes, some of them are going into DEECA, but clearly not all of them, and clearly those workers who live and work in the towns in our regions are not going to be there. Many of them – and I can give you quotes and examples – are going interstate and far away.
