Recently, I visited the Burnie wharf with sawmillers and timber merchants (pic above). They were shocked at the sight of logs that could have kept a generation of small family owned sawmill in business but were now splitting up in the sun and wind, going to waste.
Last week’s visit was a direct result of my questioning of Forestry Tasmania in the Government Business Enterprise Scrutiny Committees late last year. I challenged Forestry Tasmania to give me access to the wharf so that we could prove that they were needlessly wasting what could be valuable logs.
The sawmillers and timber merchants that I had with me had been trying for years to get access to logs like those stacked up here. Instead they have had to watch it be exported to countries with cheap labour and come back to Australia in readymade products, denying Tasmanians the jobs that they should have.
I am immensely pleased that an outcome of the visit is that Forestry Tasmania has now agreed to make some of the still salvageable logs currently on the wharf available for local sawmillers, builders and craftspeople in Tasmania. Moreover, Resources Minister Bryan Green has said that he will ensure sawmillers had every opportunity on an ongoing basis to inspect and purchase logs otherwise destined for export.
My visit to the wharf confirmed what the Tasmanian Greens have long been saying: that Forestry Tasmania is both laying waste to our environment and at the same time wasting the value that could be derived from our forests.
As a Greens MP, this is an argument that I have been making since my first day in Parliament. In my inaugural speech to parliament in 2002, I recalled to the attention of the House that Smoko Creek was one of the woodchip industry’s first victims in Tasmania. I asked the Members of the House present to visualise the destruction of forestry woodchipping by thinking of their favourite park, garden or place of outstanding natural beauty and then to think of that sanctuary blasted and burnt as if a nuclear holocaust had occurred.
As a sawmiller, I was particularly offended as this landscape-wide destruction was justified on the false excuse of logging for sawmills. It was the destruction of Mother Cummings Peak in the Huntsman in 1998 that was the last straw for me and led me on the journey to enter the State Parliament in 2002. The ruthless trashing of this special place brought home to me just how urgent it was for every caring Tasmanian to stand up and be counted. No-one, whether they’re a sawmiller, fisher or farmer, could help but be offended by the destruction of the environment that they rely on.
The Tasmanian Greens have always advocated for a high value timber industry that has more jobs and less logs (see our Forestry Transition Strategy). We need to be innovative with how we use our timber, use the latest technologies and know what our competitive advantages are rather than competing in the race to the bottom.
For example, as you can see in the photo here, last year I commissioned some furniture to be made from nitens: a tree that according to Forestry Tasmania is only good for pulp. However, as you can see, we were able to make a fairly reasonable desk out of it.
The Burnie wharf export log scandal continues to focus media and public attention to what is an outrageous waste of public money and pointless destruction of native forests by Forestry Tasmania, supported by both Liberal and Labor. The truth is finally out that Forestry Tasmania has been grossly underselling Tasmania’s forestry resources.
Finally, I am particularly pleased that Forestry Tasmania has agreed to provide three log truck loads of mixed species eucalypt, myrtle and blackwood for a sawing trial. The trial will be carried out between Forest Tasmania, myself and a private saw miller and I am confident it will show that these logs are more than suitable for a whole range of high value sawn timber products. I am hoping to document the process and will provide you with regular updates.
The Burnie wharf log export scandal has also highlighted the hypocrisy of those that claim no reserves should be created because of a log shortage for furniture makers and boat builders. The Greens would like to see none of our high value logs exported for below cost price to be simply chipped or pulped. The resource should be either left standing to grow out for the future or fully sawn and manufactured into high value products in Tasmania.
Some of the more special timbers take generations to grow into a log that is suitable for sawmilling and this time-scale allows us the opportunity to think of our society in terms of ensuring an environment that can provide for the future, not just a resource to be used in the here and now.
