Broken battle front: Victoria set to lose forest fire contractors

Victoria is set to lose the 284 harvest and haulage contractors who used their heavy machinery to fight the 2019-20 Black Summer fires.

Victoria faces going into next catastrophic fire season without the machinery and skills of 27 harvest and haulage contracting crews, who played a critical role in fighting the 2009 Black Saturday and 2019-20 Black Summer fires.

The Andrews Government’s failure to end the legal lockup of Victoria’s native forests has left 25 of the 27 crews without work and forced contractors to let highly skilled workers go.

Forest Fire Management Victoria chief Chris Hardman recently briefed timber industry groups on the pivotal role contractors played in helping fight forest fires.

He reported 34 contractors and their 284 workers used 190 pieces of machinery, from bulldozers to excavators, to fight the black summer fires, build emergency fuel breaks and clear roads of fallen timber and dangerous standing trees.

East Gippsland MWM Logging contractor Andy Westaway recently reported he had cut his crew from 13 to three.

Fellow Orbost contractor Rob Brunt said he was still paying his workers “to hang on”.

But Mr Brunt said without access to native forests he and other contractors, plus millions of dollars of machinery would be lost.

Rob Brunt with his timber harvesting gear at Orbost. Picture Yuri Kouzmin

“Don’t ask me who’s going to do it (fire work), because there won’t be anyone left,” he said.

Even the only two crews that remain working report they are fighting a losing battle against environment groups and reluctant government bureaucrats to salvage windblown timber from the Wombat Forest, which poses a major fire risk to neighbouring communities.

Two years ago Victoria’s Inspector general for Emergency Management first called on bureaucrats within what was then called the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning to “develop a strategy for the transition and retention of forestry contractors by June 2021” to help fight fires.

At the time DELWP responded by stating it had developed a Forest Contractor Strategy, with oversight and input from a Project Control Board.

But the strategy was not supplied to the IGEM, who concluded he was “unable to provide an evidence-based assessment of progress at this time”.

Neither the Australian Forest Contractors Association nor the CFMEU have seen a copy of a strategy.

The Weekly Times asked the government what action she was taking to fast track the strategy and its adoption.

A government spokesman simply stated we are “continuing to work with the industry to provide certainty for forest contractors and ensure that they continue their key role in bushfire risk management”.

In the meantime VicForests is has mounted an appeal against a Supreme Court order that led to the lockup of Victoria’s native forests last November, which is due to be heard on March 23.