Labor forces VicForests to delay timber release plan until after election

The Premier and his ministers are squeezing VicForests, loggers and mills out of forests, threatening hundreds of jobs before the election.

The Andrews Government is cutting timber supplies and workers jobs as it tries to win Green votes in Melbourne.

VicForests’ political masters have forced it to defer releasing more coupes for harvest until after the November state election, while further cutting timber supplies.

Industry sources say the Premier’s office ordered VicForests to defer the new timber release plan until December, just as Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning bureaucrats cut supplies, affecting hundreds of workers.

Workers, such as the Powelltown sawmill staff, have been left increasingly exposed due to the Andrews Government’s actions. Picture: Zoe Phillips

DELWP released tranche two of its threatened species report last Thursday, which outlines how loggers will be restricted to harvesting 160,000ha out of the three million hectares of state forest not already locked up in National Parks and reserves.

The report effectively locks up most Victorian ash supplies, drastically curbing the viability of saw mills.

Then on Friday the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions issued a call for mills to lodge expression of interest in an “opt-out scheme”, under which they would agree to stop purchasing logs from VicForests and surrender their licenses from June 30 next year, in return for an undisclosed payment.

“The Andrews government’s actions are totally undermining any industry confidence that it would be able to guarantee to supply timber until 2030, as promised,” Victorian Forest Products Association chief executive Deb Kerr said.

“On the face of it, appears to be forcing mills to leave the industry that they love – all right before the November election.”

Earlier in the week Agriculture Minister Gayle Tierney also announced the government had struck a $120 million deal with Hancock Victorian Plantations to plant 16 million pine trees across 14,000ha, which she said would underpin 2000 new and existing jobs in regional Victoria.

“This is all about guaranteeing the jobs in the timber sector that Victorian workers and communities rely on – as we expand Gippsland’s softwood supply, we’re delivering new opportunities for our timber industry,” Ms Tierney said.

Workers protesting the closure of the Heyfield Mill by marching and parking their trucks at Parliament House, Melbourne in 2017. Picture: AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy

But plantation industry experts say it will be at least 12 to 15 years before the pine plantations can be thinned for pulp logs and 25 years before they yield sawlogs.

The HVP deal was originally proposed as a means of transitioning workers out of native forests and into 50,000ha of plantations.

Forest Communities Australia national membership manager Felicia Stevenson said “the promise that this transition to plantations will save jobs is as empty as Victorian sawmill timber yards are right now under the timber shortage”.