A Launceston sawmiller will receive $1 million to stay in the timber sector rather than leave, in a record agreement struck under the Tasmanian Government’s rejigged Regional Sawmiller Structural Adjustment Grants Program. Source: Yahoo
Barbers Sawmill on Dowling Street was to pocket $2,032,875 under the exit scheme set up by the previous federal Labor government.
The State Government has since restructured the program with the Commonwealth’s consent.
Sawmillers now have the option of keeping half their exit payout while remaining in operation.
Barbers Sawmill managing director Graham Barber said he would use the $1 million to upgrade equipment and had secured a contract to receive sawlogs from Forestry Tasmania.
“That’ll involve upgrading our equipment, buildings, vehicles and allow us to buy equipment to sawmill smaller logs,” he said.
Resources Minister Paul Harriss hoped up to eight other sawmillers would follow Mr Barber’s lead by opting to stay in operation.
“The other sawmillers who signed up to exit are considering that right now,” he said.
“There’s a proper process which is being worked through to ensure that the money will be put back into the operation of the sawmill.
“We have four already that have made it very clear that they are going to stay in, and we are very hopeful that another four or five will make the decision to actually stay in and add to the productive capacity.”
About a dozen Tasmanian sawmillers shut down in 2013 after accepting exit payments.
Labor leader Bryan Green said the restructuring of the sawmill exit scheme was unfair to those businesses.
“They’d be thinking, ‘I should have deferred my decision with a view to now suggesting I’m going to stay with additional volume and a million dollars in my back pocket’,” he said. “I don’t think it passes the fairness test.”
Mr Green also feared there would not be enough native sawlogs to support the return of some regional sawmillers who had been set to leave.
“I’d just ask people to remember this: Mr Harriss has not changed the volume at all. The volume in the legislation remains exactly the same,” he said.
Last year, the Tasmanian Government repealed the so-called forest peace deal laws enacted by the previous Labor-Green government.
That repeal led to the reclassification of 400,000 hectares of land that was slated to be protected as “future potential production forest land” but did not reopen it to large scale logging until at least 2020.
