National Party's Forest Policy
NATIVE FORESTS
· By any measure timber is one of Victoria’s most important industries. It is of particular importance to country Victoria where all of the harvesting and the greater proportion of processing takes place.
· Despite timber being a renewable resource and despite Victorian conservation reserves being increased by the RFA’s to more than 75% of the total forest area, the timber industry continues to receive unfair criticism from small extremist groups. In particular the Vic Nats strongly condemn the actions of forest protestors who by their actions have illegally hindered forest operations and put at risk the safety and the livelihoods of forest workers. The Vic Nats also condemn the Victorian Government for its failure to put in place legislation to effectively deal with forest protestors.
· While supporting moves to increase timber plantations, the Vic Nats accept that because of the long lead time required for plantations to produce sawlog material, there will continue to be an indefinite reliance on hardwood timber from native forests.
· Victoria’s hardwood timber industry is at crisis point. Despite the industry warning Government of the urgency in resolving resource availability and licence renewals, the prevarication of the Bracks Government has resulted in an unprecedented level of uncertainty, anxiety and despair among industry participants.
· In early 2002, the Bracks Government announced a reduction in resource availability of 31% across the State and as much as 80% in the Midlands area. The impact this will have on licensees, on harvesters and haulers, on investment in the industry and on timber communities is catastrophic. Yet the Bracks Government has shown callous disregard to these people by its failure to make any decisions.
Already Victoria has lost a $10 million investment planned by Neville Smith Timber Industries because of resource uncertainty and many other mills across Victoria are considering their future.
· 15 year timber licences have only been renewed for a maximum of 2 years and the Government has announced any future licence will likely be of 10 years instead of 15 years for 70% of the on-going supply with the remainder on short term tenure. This will not give the industry the security it needs to make long term investment in better value adding infrastructure.
· The harvest and haulage sector has been given no guarantees that they will have a job in the future or whether they will qualify for business exit assistance.
The Vic Nats say:-
· It is time the Victorian Government matched its rhetorical verbal support for the timber industry with effective actions.
· Resource Security Legislation that establishes a business environment and gives the industry the confidence to invest in the further value adding of our natural hardwoods is an absolute priority for the Government.
· The Government must exhaust every possible avenue to honour its commitments to licensees to provide the timber resource indicated in the RFA’s and individual timber licences.
· As a last resort, where resource contracts cannot be met, the Government must move quickly to offer fair and reasonable voluntary business exit packages to licensees.
· The Government must also provide fair and reasonable voluntary exit packages to those employed in the harvest and haulage sector in recognition of the reduced employment opportunities arising from reductions in resource availability.
· Management of forest harvesting by DNRE must be improved to enable foresters to work co-operatively with contractors in determining resource levels in particular areas and compliance with regulations.
· The Government must work more closely with industry to ensure native timber is graded and utilised in a manner that enables each log to be value added to its maximum level. Technology is now available to economically produce wood products from a much lower grade and shorter length log than is currently being processed.
· The Vic Nats support in principle the establishment of VicForests as a fully commercial entity, but has some concern that the Government as the environmental regulator and beholden to the extreme green groups, may inhibit the effective operation of VicForests. We believe the headquarters of VicForests should be appropriately located in regional Victoria.
BOX IRONBARK
· We were the ONLY party to oppose the Government’s Box-Ironbark legislation.
· We are totally opposed to further areas of public land being locked-up with blanket prohibitions on recreational and commercial activity.
· We strongly believe that management plans, developed with widespread public input, should determine appropriate purposes and use of public land.
· We believe use in itself is an excellent management tool and as such should be encouraged in a manner that is compatible with the sustainable use of the natural resources occurring on public land.
· We do not have confidence in this Government’s ability to manage public land nor commit the resources to do it effectively.
· We believe the Parliament should be presented with both a land tenure proposal and accompanying management plans in its consideration of any new park proposal.
· We support an inquiry into the current parks and reserves- prior to any new areas being declared – to ascertain whether the current system is meeting the community’s environmental, economic and social expectations.
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