Timber workers hit with new laws and fines from Victorian Government

Victorian Government officers now have the power to seize timber harvest and haulage contractors diaries and slap them with fines of more than $20k.

Logged out: Timber workers are an endangered species in Victoria as the government introduces new laws that have been branded “unnecessary and excessive”.

The Victorian Government has passed new laws allowing its officers to seize timber harvest and haulage contractors documents and slap them with penalties of $21,808 for an individual and $109,044 for corporations if they breach a code that is still under review.

The laws grant Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning the right to halt harvesting and the Office of the Conservation Regulator the power to demand contractors hand over diaries and documents, to check for breaches of the Code of Practice for Timber Harvesting.

The Forests Legislation Amendment (Compliance and Enforcement) Bill was rammed through parliament in the past 24 hours, despite strong opposition from the powerful CFMEU, timber comnmunities and Liberal-Nationals.

Liberal MP Gordon Rich-Phillips said the new laws not only doubled penalties but introduced strict liability provisions that allowed DELWP to prosecute timber workers for breaches, without proving intent.

“Strict liability means that you as a contractor have to prove you didn’t do it and there’s no need on the part of the prosecutor to prove intent,” Mr Rich-Phillips said.

He said the provision clearly breached the Australian Law Reform Commission guidelines, but the Government ignored the concern.

Forest and Wood Communities Australia managing director Justin Law said the new laws would “encourage anti-logging activists, who will find new ways to put pressure on lawful timber operations”.

“Work could be stopped in a coupe following the most minor breach of the code, such as a contractor unintentionally felling a tree into a buffer zone.”

One of the few Upper House crossbenchers to vote against the new laws, Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party MP Tania Maxwell said the new laws were “unnecessary and excessive”.

“The new minimum penalty for individual timber workers will increase $21,000, while protesters who enter worksites will be fined a little over $3600,” she said.

Timber workers are already suffering the effects of years of legal challenges, activists shutting down coupes and the Victorian Government’s decision to phase out native forest logging by 2030.

Ms Maxwell said she was perplexed the Government had passed a Bill dealing with the timber logging industry before release of a new Code of Practice for Timber Harvesting, due before the end of the year.

When Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio introduced the Bill to the Lower House in November 2019, she said it would improve the regulation of timber harvesting by prohibiting “any person from undertaking timber harvesting operations in state forest, unless they are undertaken in accordance with a relevant licence, permit, allocation order or other authorisation”, which is what Victorians expected.

According to Timber Towns Victoria, there are more than 2500 people directly employed in the native timber industry along with thousands of indirect jobs, in totally adding $300 million to regional economies.