Native logging to end 2030: 2500 Victorian timber workers face bleak future

The Victorian timber industry is in shock, after Premier Daniel Andrews announced native forest harvesting would end in 2030.

Grim future: 2500 Victorian timber workers face a grim future, with the 2030 phase-out of native forest harvesting. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

TIMBER workers have been left stunned by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ decision to phase out native forest harvesting by 2030.

“I don’t know what to say, what’s going on?” a worker said.

One Central Highlands mill operator said the industry was in shock after only hearing of the Government’s decision last night, when media started broadcasting an announcement was imminent.

“I was on the phone to other mills last night and this morning trying to find out what was going on,” he said.

Harvest and haulage contractors, plus hundreds of mill workers, face a bleak future, with the flow-on effects set to sweep through Warbuton, Noojee, Drouin, Violet Town, Powelltown Corryong, Orbost, Benalla and timber-reliant communities across the Latrobe Valley.

The mill operator said many of his workers would struggle to find jobs in other fields.

“If our mill can’t stay open, then a lot of them will move on to unemployment benefits for the rest of lives,” he said.

Questions have arisen over the future of the Australian Sustainable Hardwoods mill at Heyfield, which the Andrews Government purchased using a rumoured $60 million of Victorian taxpayers’ money.

But at this stage the Government has released little detail on how it intends to help 2500 timber workers find new jobs.

In announcing the wind-down, Mr Andrews simply stated $120 million had been allocated to a transition package that would be developed in consultation with industry over the coming year, releasing a one-page Victorian Forestry Plan to the industry.

Under the phase-out, VicForests would continue to meet all its existing contractual agreements until 2024, after which agreements would be renegotiated in the lead-up to a full phase-out by 2030.

Agriculture Minister Jaclyn Symes said the industry had 4½ years to prepare, before the wind-down began towards 2030.

“The whole workforce will be supported in the transition to plantations or other industries,” Ms Symes said. “I will sit down with some of these workers.”

The Government plans to use some of the $120 million to establish 50,000ha of plantations to offset the loss of native logs.

But again, industry players say it will be 30 years before those bluegum plantations will be ready to harvest and warn the quality won’t match native timber logs.

Ms Symes said the Government was ahead of the game, having already planted 250,000 blue gums to help with the transition.

But when asked, Ms Symes admitted that number of trees equated to just 550ha.

Victorian Association of Forest Industries chief executive Tim Johnston said the Government’s own plantation estate has barely been established, let alone developed to a point where it could realistically supply timber to industry.

Ms Symes said the Government had no choice but to phase out native timber harvesting because it “isn’t sustainable”.

But VAFI dismissed the claim.

“The Victorian native timber industry is highly regulated and environmentally responsible with only 3000ha per year harvested and replanted, in an overall forest estate of nearly eight million hectares,” Mr Jonnston said.

“What many fail to understand is that the forests are regenerated to allow the natural

cycle of forestry to continue.

“With the demand for timber only growing, closing our local native timber industry will see hardwood imported from some countries that don’t share Australia’s high level of environmental regulation, completely negating wood’s carbon benefits.

“As timber is recyclable, stores carbon, and is key to addressing climate change, how can this

government claim to be acting on environmental grounds when it fails to support the use of local timber, the ultimate renewable?

In the meantime the government has announced it will immediately lock the industry out of 96,000ha to protect the vulnerable Greater Glider, a move welcomed by the Australian Conservation Foundation.

“The transition from logging native forests to plantations can’t come soon enough — 10 years is just too slow for the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum, which is on the brink of extinction,” ACF nature campaigner Jess Abrahams said.

“The transition, and any payouts, must be fully locked in and bedded down to prevent a future Government trying to bring a zombie native forest logging industry back to life.”

MORE: NATIVE LOGGING TO END IN VICTORIA IN 2030

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The 96,000ha loss comes on top of VicForests’ decision earlier this year to phase out logging in 90,000ha of old growth forest, prompting mill operators to ask how VicForests was going to meet its future contractual obligations, up to 2024.

“It’d require a mathematical genius to do it,” one timber industry executive said.

Current legislation also requires the Government to continue supplying native timber woodchips to Australian Paper’s Maryvale Mill — one of the Latrobe Valley’s biggest employers — until 2030.

However the Government expects AP to move away from native timber to plantation supplies over the next 30 years to maintain its 1000-strong workforce.