Country Today - October 13th

One Nation has made an election promise to resume native timber logging in Victoria.

Former Premier Daniel Andrews banned native timber logging in 2024.

The state coalition has also said it will allow commercial logging of natives, but it's yet to announce the details of the policy.

South Australia banned it in 1985, then Western Australia at the same time as Victoria.

One Nation candidate for the seat of Narrakan in West Gippsland, Ben Lucas, is quoted as saying the party would incentivise the use of Australian timber in construction through a local wood first policy in government procurement and would ensure timber was extracted using a selective harvesting model.

So is it viable to return to large-scale commercial native timber logging? Victorian Forest Products Association Chief Executive Andrew White is dubious there would be enough investment in a return to native logging and says what's really needed is a properly thought through long-term plan for the industry.

Well, healthy forest management is critical to protect our regional communities from bushfires.

So we certainly support greater investment in management of our public forests.

VFPA's position and the industry's position heading into this election is that we believe that forest management is critical and that we want to ensure that hardwood that comes from creating fuel breaks, storm damage wood and from healthy forest maintenance and management, which is vital, that that is utilised to its highest and best use.

So where those activities are being undertaken by experts to manage public forests, to remove trees, to create fire breaks, we believe that those products should be made available to their highest and best use and where quality permits that should be to hardwood mills that are remaining.

It sounds like you're reluctant to give a big thumbs up to a full return to logging of native trees.

Well, there's no proposal on the table whatsoever to return to native forest harvesting as it existed previously.

The current proposal is more about how do we, from a first principles point of view, manage our forest effectively, whether that's fire management, whether that's forest health.

The industry, certainly a large number of hardwood mills closed down about two years ago or over the last couple of years and that's had a significant economic impact on those communities.

And so the industry is at a much, much smaller scale at the moment.

And so any sort of proposals to look at how that hardwood could be made available from those works that I mentioned from that fire management and that forest health maintenance needs to be managed very carefully.

But there's no proposals on the table as far as we can tell to restart, for lack of a better word, native forest harvesting as it previously existed.

Yes, I imagine it would need a big infrastructure spend for the processing and sawmills and the like.

Well, a lot of those mills no longer exist.

So there's a number of mills that are remaining and certainly the demand for hardwood products, whether that's decking or cladding, whether that's floorboards, those products that Victorians use in their homes is still very much there.

So the demand for hardwood is hasn't changed.

What we've seen is obviously some policy change over the last few years, which has had significant impacts.

And now we need to look at what's possible going forward.

Our number one call in this election is for a new timber strategy.

We'd like to see all political parties commit to a long-term timber strategy.