By Rachel Eddie and Annika Smethurst
If Robert Booth leaves Orbost in search of work, the hospital will be down an emergency nurse and the local schools will lose the enrolments of three children. It’s a decision at least 1000 families in East Gippsland are grappling with after the Victorian government fast-tracked the end of native logging.
“Have you thought about the people at the supermarket? Have you thought about the local tyre service? The local school, and the construction industry? It just spreads so far and wide. Tourism, hospitality, everybody’s going to be affected by it because no one’s going to be left here,” said Booth, a workshop manager and father of three.
Workshop manager Robert Booth hopes to stay in Orbost, but will have to consider his options when work dries up.Credit: Joe Armao
“This is the first time I’ve actually thought, ‘is it worth hanging around?’. I don’t know. The problem is, if the timber industry goes, is there going to be any other industry to go to?”
Native logging was due to end in 2030 but a Supreme Court injunction temporarily stopped the work in November. The Victorian government, in its state budget on Tuesday, brought forward the ban to January next year in a decision celebrated by environmentalists concerned about wildlife extinction.
Following the announcement, Nicola Rivers from Environmental Justice Australia said Victoria's forests were the lungs of regional communities, and the ban would improve the health of waterways, provide homes for threatened wildlife and support local tourism.
The Age spoke to a dozen workers, residents and employers, many of whom found out the industry was over on the radio or by word of mouth, and are concerned about whether they will find employment in their homes towns.
“I found out on Facebook,” said single mother of two Ang Savage, who works with beams and columns at Australian Sustainable Hardwood in Heyfield. “It’s like we don’t even exist.”
Ang Savage (left) found out on Facebook that her industry was closing.Credit: Joe Armao
An expanded support package valued at $875 million includes $8000 retraining vouchers. But the nearest TAFEs from logging communities Orbost and Swift Creek are about a one-hour drive away, and Savage said there would not be enough jobs in Heyfield or neighbouring towns anyway.
“If the jobs aren’t there, it doesn’t matter how much training we get offered or how much training we have.”
Michael O’Connor, national manufacturing secretary of the CFMEU, who resigned from the government’s “sham” forestry advisory body in disgust, had little faith in the government to transition workers into appropriate jobs after blindsiding the industry without consultation.
“Through ignorance or stupidity, they have increased the harm,” O’Connor said.
Richard Pelz’s family run haulage business takes sawdust and wood chips from sawmills.Credit: Joe Armao
“What was the rush? You had to make the announcement on budget day, did you? When your media strategy becomes more important than public policy, that’s a government that’s lost the plot.”
Richard Pelz – a hauler subcontracted to collect wood chips and sawdust from sawmills – has not received any government help since logging paused in November and does not know if his family-run business and 30 staff, including Booth, will be supported.
“That’s a bitter pill to swallow. I don’t want to swallow it, I want to get compensated like everybody else, and I don’t think it’s too much to ask,” Pelz, in his 60s, said.
“You’d think they’d have the balls to come up and see you.”
A native timber forest on the outskirts of Orbost which was partially logged three years ago after a bushfire.Credit: Joe Armao
Trucks make the journey out of Orbost with hauls from logging and return with freight for the supermarkets. Now, the journey would be empty one way and Pelz said the price of groceries could be forced up in the town as a result.
Median incomes in Orbost are almost half the state average, census data shows.
Most workers believed the government was chasing Greens votes in inner-Melbourne at the expense of what was once considered Labor’s traditional working-class base.
Garry Squires, a semi-retired forestry consultant in Orbost who once worked at the now Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA), said available work would be an hour’s commute each way and expected the small population of about 2200 would be diminished.
Garry Squires is a forestry consultant, devastated for what the end of native logging will mean for Orbost.Credit: Joe Armao
“The whole fabric of your town is eroded,” Squires said.
“The community’s never been happy about the fact we’re closing the industry down but at least we had that warning [for 2030]. The community’s been looking at other options in terms of employment for the town but many of those things were going to take a while.”
Forest fire management has relied on the industry to manage roads, create containment lines and lop dangerous or fallen trees. Squires and East Gippsland Shire Mayor Mark Reeves said there was not enough detail on how that would be taken over when the industry vacates.
Local National Party MP Darren Chester, who represents many of the affected towns, accused Victorian Labor MPs of being “gutless” and letting down blue-collar workers who were once the party’s base.
“If this timber ban goes ahead, it will devastate the social and economic life of small towns in my community. The flow on impacts are hard to predict but as working age people leave the district, things like footy and netball clubs will cease to exist and schools become unviable,” the Gippsland MP told The Age.
“No one wants a bloody handout from Dan Andrews, they want to have the decency of a job to provide for the financial security of their families in the towns they love.”
Treasurer Tim Pallas on Wednesday confirmed bushfire management would need the industry’s machinery, particularly from harvesting and haulage. A government spokesman said workers would be helped into jobs in land management and critical forest bushfire responses while others would be offered retraining in industries like renewable energy and construction.
Wood chips in one of Richard Pelz’s trucks.Credit: Joe Armao
Forest Fire Management Victoria was contacted.
Ewan Waller, the state’s former chief fire officer who also worked in forestry, said he believed a more targeted approach to native logging 20 or 30 years ago could have stopped the need for a ban.
“Through mismanagement, we end up where we are. A cheap political decision which suits inner Melbourne and leaves remote parts of Victoria hung out to dry.”
Bushfire risks from climate change was a bigger and more complex threat and abruptly banning native logging would not automatically make state forests safe, he said.
Industry workers also questioned whether imported timber, which Victoria would increasingly rely on, would have worse labour and environmental standards.
Vince Hurley, chief executive of Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, said the government could have staged the ban to allow businesses to exit with dignity. The business had started diversifying, but that was working towards 2030.
“We would like to protect jobs, obviously, and we want to have a business going forward. I think we can manage a business going forward, but I don’t know what that looks like,” Hurley said.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do, I don’t know the answer yet.”
Piles of wood left to naturally dry for months at Australian Sustainable Hardwood, with general manager Dave Gover.Credit: Joe Armao
He said support from the government so far was “chicken feed” and most of what they had been offered was rhetoric.
A government spokesman said its priority was forestry workers, their families and communities.
“We do not take the decision around an early transition out of native timber harvesting lightly, but the uncertainty from ongoing litigation and severe bushfires cannot continue,” he said.
“We will also back our supply chain businesses to ensure they have access to specialist financial support, business planning and diversification services.”
Workers at supply chain businesses will be offered training, employment and mental health support from ForestWorks.
Privately, not all Labor MPs agree with the decision, particularly in Canberra. Three federal Labor MPs, speaking to this masthead on the condition on anonymity, said they disagreed with the decision to bring forward the ban, and were furious with the way the news had been delivered to communities.
“This is not the way you do things,” one federal Labor MP said.
There are vouchers of up to $25,000 for highly impacted businesses to access financial support and diversification planning, with an option to extend transition grants to $120,000 where needed.
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