The Tasmanian Specialty Timber sector has been comprehensively damaged by the former Federal and State Governments failure to assess the impacts of the 2013 Tasmanian World Heritage Area extension on Tasmania.

A copy of correspondence between the World Heritage Committee and the Australian Government from March 2013 was recently received through the Federal Freedom of Information process. In this letter the former Federal Government admitted to the World heritage Committee that;

“There has been no economic or social analysis of the impacts of the World heritage nomination”

This is in complete contravention of the government’s responsibility under the Regional Forest Agreement that states at Clause 40;

“The Commonwealth agrees that it will give full consideration to the potential social and economic consequences of any World Heritage Nomination of places in Tasmania and that any such nomination will only occur after the fullest consultation and with the agreement of the State.” –

In the same letter, the former Federal Government claimed that the Tasmanian Legislative Council committee of inquiry into the TFA legislation had provided an adequate opportunity for public consultation on the World Heritage proposal.

This is despite the Government admitting in the same letter that it was their policy to delay publication of any details of the extension proposal until it had been submitted to the World Heritage Committee, nearly one month after the Legislative Council inquiry had completed its work.

Andrew Denman of the Special Timbers Alliance said “The 2013 TWWHA extension removed a substantial proportion of the non blackwood special timbers resource previously set aside for long term, sustainable, selective harvesting under the 2010 Special Timbers strategy. The TFA reserve process also removed the majority of previously identified special timber areas and replaced them with ENGO chosen areas that in many cases don’t even contain any trees. This result of these combined processes is that the industry facing certain collapse. With some species such as celery top pine, we have seen a 95% reduction on supply and a 60% increase in price since the TFA process started. This entirely predictable result highlights the failure of the former Federal and State Governments to heed requests from the industry to properly assess the impact of the World Heritage nomination or TFA reserves on the sector before declaring reserve bundaries.”

“Concerns of impact on resource, impact on Tasmanian cultural heritage and lack of consultation had been raised by the Special Timbers Sector with UNESCO prior to the 2013 decision but a reply to the Sector was never received. This recent FOI application to the Federal Environment Department has revealed that the previous Federal Government had responded on the sector’s behalf to UNESCO, dismissing the sector’s concerns without even consulting the Specialty Timber industry.”

The Tasmanian Special Timbers Alliance is calling on UNESCO to defer its decision on the 2014 TWWHA minor boundary adjustment so Australia can re-submit the proposal through the exhaustive 18 month “new nomination” process which will ensure that all stakeholders have an opportunity to be involved, not just a select few.
Andrew Denman of the Special Timbers Alliance