This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Victoria’s national parks and water catchments should be opened up for sustainable logging, according to a group of six Victorian sawmillers.

The sawmillers – who call themselves the G6 – say the Victorian timber industry is in crisis. They want access to either more timber or exit packages.

“At the moment, everyone is in denial but we’re in wind-down mode. We’re about to fall over a ‘resource cliff’ in two years time,” says Brian Donchi, resource manager for Fenning Timbers in Bairnsdale and member of G6. “There won’t be enough wood for all the mills.”

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The G6 group is made up of Fenning Timbers (Bairnsdale),Ryan & McNulty (Benalla), Dindi Sawmill (Murrindindi), AG Brown Sawmill (Drouin West), Kelly’s Timber (Westburn), and Powelltown Sawmills.

The Victorian cabinet meets in Melbourne on Monday to discuss the future of the timber industry and the extension of controversial regional forest agreements (RFAs).

Two RFAs in the key timber-producing areas of east Gippsland and the central highlands expire on Tuesday.

According to sources, last week the Victorian cabinet remained split on what to do over federal proposals to extend the RFAs. The commonwealth’s preferred option is for 20-year extensions.

But Guardian Australia understands that the Victorian environment minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, is arguing for a full scientific investigation of native forests – including climate, carbon and water values – before any long-term extension.

This is similar to the position adopted by the NSW Labor party last week, after Guardian Australia revealed on Wednesday commonwealth concerns about the “now quite old” science that underpins the existing RFAs and whether they “remain valid for proposed extensions”.

It is understood that one option on the table at today’s state cabinet meeting is to extend the east Gippsland and central highlands RFAs for two years, to March 2020.

This would give the government breathing space to sort out a long-term plan for the timber industry and align all five Victorian RFAs, which were to set expire at different times between February 2017 and March 2020.



It is believed D’Ambrosio wrote to Senator Anne Ruston, the assistant federal agriculture minister responsible for forests earlier this month, seeking federal funds for scientific and other studies before the Victorian RFAs are permanently rolled over.

Guardian Australia put a series of questions to the Victorian special minister of state, Gavin Jennings, the agriculture minister, Jaala Pulford, and D’Ambrosio.

In response a Victorian government spokesman said: “The government continues to work towards a long-term solution which balances the environmental values of our world-class forests, parks and reserves as well as jobs.”



Ruston did not respond to a request for comment.

Sawmiller Brian Donchi said one option to secure long-term timber supply was to spread logging more evenly across the entire forest landscape.

“Thinning forests could help save the animals and save the trees. It would be a more selective logging, including in national parks and water catchments. It could help protect animals, the water catchments and forests in general.”

The state’s logging agency, VicForests, has been forced to dramatically reduce wood allocations to industry in recent years, due to increased protection for the Leadbeater’s possum and other environmental exclusions. More critically, a significant amount of mature regrowth from the 1939 bushfires – more than 35,000 hectares – is rapidly running out, precipitating a timber shortage.

Last year VicForests’ 2016-17 Resource Outlook forecast that the timber supply from the ash forests in eastern Victoria would decrease to 130,000 cubic meters from 2020/21. This was a dramatic drop from the forecast only three years earlier that 220,000 cubic meters of ash would be available over the “medium term”.

But according to the G6 group, millers and contractors are concerned that VicForests is not writing contracts for wood supply beyond 2021.

Last Friday, another major Victorian timber miller – Auswest Timbers, which is not a member of the G6 – backed the warnings of the group. Auswest said the future of two timber plants in east Gippsland was under threat because of “deteriorating log supply quality”.

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Its parent company, Brickworks, operates plants at Orbost and Bairnsdale. A news report on ABC Gippsland said the first half-year financials for the mill and processing centre cast doubt on the future of those operations.

Donchi said uncertainty for sawmillers was also spilling across to harvest and haulage contractors.

“VicForests has told those teams that their contracts will not be renewed. There’s 60 B-double trucks running around the state to the sawmills, to the pulp mill at Maryvale and the chip export facility at Midway. They don’t know what their future is.”

Donchi said “a range of options” needed to be on the table – including exit packages for millers and contractors who wanted to leave the industry.

He called on the government to reconsider forest biodiversity policy “across the entire forest landscape”.

“At the moment, the timber industry operates in just 6% of publicly owned forest in Victoria. Conservationists want to steer away from clear-felling. Well then, why don’t we reduce the exclusion [conservation] zones in state forests, or cut trees selectively alongside roads in water catchments. If anything, it would help those catchments.”

Donchi said if this “transition” option was not on the table, then the industry wanted exit packages to be considered.

“There needs to be a transition or an exit. It needs to be acknowledged that there is a huge problem. The resource will not be offered beyond 2020, and the discussion needs to start now”.