Timber rally: Hundreds of trucks and workers hit Morwell

Two convoys of timber trucks rolled into Morwell, in a funeral procession marking the death of an industry. Rolling updates here.

Timber workers rallied in Rosedale and Warragul last Friday, driving 77 haulage trucks down the Princes Freeway to Morwell in a funeral procession marking the death of their industry.

Once the two processions reached Morwell they gathered around a black coffin marked “Our jobs. Our future”, to hear fellow workers demand the state government reverse its decision to phase out native forest logging by 2030 and end legal action by environment groups that had brought harvesting to a halt.

“There’s a lot of jobs at stake here, direct and indirect,” Orbost harvest contractor Brett Dennis said.

“We’ve come down here in a show of strength to ask (Premier) Daniel Andrews and the Victorian Government, ‘Why are you shutting down a sustainable, renewable manufacturing industry?’.”

Hear harvest contractor Brett Dennis’s full speech to the rally below.

Heyfield resident Sue Cassidy, who spent her working life in mills and whose son is a supervisor at the local ASH mill, demanded the Andrews government take action to “let us back in the bush.”

“If we don’t have action, my son won’t have a job, and my grandsons won’t have a future.”

Pro-timber protesters at a rally in Morwell

“I’m very frustrated, it has to be overturned otherwise I’ll have to look for something else.”

Morwell haulage contractor Brian Batchelor has joined the rally not just for himself but his two boys who also work in the industry out of Yarram.

“I want the Greens to pull their heads in and realise the reality of what’s happening.”

Skidder operator Narissa Williams joined the rally to defend an industry that she said made her “work hard, long hours in the bush as a harvester, but I love every day”.

“(Legal) injunctions have locked us out of coupes. I’m very frustrated, it has to be overturned otherwise I’ll have to look for something else,” she said.

Morwell haulage contractor Brian Batchelor said he joined the rally not just for himself, but his two boys who also work in the industry out of Yarram.

“I want the Greens to pull their heads in and realise the reality of what’s happening,” he said.

Many of those at the rally highlighted that their harvesting between 3000 and 6000 hectares of forest each year out of the three million hectares in Victoria.

“It’s such a small area that we log in comparison to the reserves and national parks,” said haulage contractor Ron Millikan.

The rally was called after VicForests ordered a halt to logging last week in the wake of Supreme Court ruling in a case brought against it by Environment East Gippsland and Kinglake Friends of the Forest

Pro-timber protesters at a rally in Morwell

Heyfield Primary School student Indiana Lockett, 10, who also attended the rally, dropped off a letter at Gippsland MP Harriet Shing’s office asking the Regional Development Minister to stop the closure of the native forest timber industry, which has come to a standstill across most of the state.

“Our parents work in the forests and they are very worried that they won’t have any more jobs,” Indiana says in her letter.

Heyfield Primary School student Indiana Lockett, is heading to Morwell to help save her dad's timber job

The rally was called after VicForests ordered a halt to logging last week in the wake of Supreme Court ruling in a case brought against it by Environment East Gippsland and Kinglake Friends of the Forest.

Justice Melinda Richards ruled VicForests pre-harvest surveys were inadequate and it must cut back the number of trees felled on coupes to protect two possum species – greater and yellow-bellied gliders.

VicForests must now resurvey hundreds of coupes, which could take months.

Up until last week contractors were able cut down 60 per cent of the trees in a coupe, leaving 40 per cent either standing in the harvest zone or in stream-side buffer and protection areas around trees where gliders had been spotted.

But Justice Richards has ordered VicForests and its contractors can cut only 40 per cent of the timber available in the harvestable area of the coupe, excluding buffer and protection zones.

Timber contractors contacted this evening said the court order would make most coupes unviable.

One VicForests ecologist said both greater and yellow-bellied gliders were so common nearly every coupe would be affected.

“Both (species) are incredibly widespread, with them finding 69,000 of them in the Strathbogies alone,” the ecologist said.

Victorian timber industry leaders have repeatedly stated Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio could have ended the legal lockup of native forests long ago by spending $100 gazetting Greater Glider possum protections into the Code of Practice for Timber Production.

Victorian Forest Products Association chief executive Deb Kerr has previously said the failure of the Minister to act, meant it had been left to the Supreme Court to decide what protections should be put in place.