Industry fears forestry Bill would hurt markets

THE State Government’s plan to harvest timber from 365,000 hectares of contentious forest would have destroyed national and international markets for Tasmanian forest products, says industry head Terry Edwards.

The Legislative Council voted 7-5 against the Unlocking Production Forest Bill on Thursday, prompting Resources Minister Guy Barnett to announce that the State Government would seek a fresh mandate at the next election.

Forestry Industries Association of Tasmania chief executive Mr Edwards said the markets would have considered a restart to harvesting as a breach of faith.

‘‘Basically we wouldn’t have been able to use the wood from the Future Potential Production Forest land because our national and international customers have told us it would not be acceptable,” Mr Edwards said.

“In 2014, Premier Will Hodgman told Japanese customers that there was no way [the land] would be reopened before 2020 unless there had been a detailed scientific review. That review has not been started let alone completed.”

Mr Edwards said Japanese customers in particular were sensitive to bad publicity that would be generated by the forest wars restarting.

He said it was unnecessary to bring forward the harvest to supply small sawmillers be- cause timber should be available from private land rather than public land.

McKay Timber managing director Bernard McKay said he was not unhappy with what happened in the Legislative Council.

“The land is still reserved for forestry activities it was just a move to bring forward limited harvesting a couple of years,” he said.

“It has no bearing on us at all.”

Tasmanian Specialty Timbers Alliance spokesman Andrew Denman said the sector was anticipating access to the Future Potential Production Forest from October once a management plan was in place.

“It also relies on Forestry Tasmania being unable to supply specialty timbers,” he said.

“They have a history of saying they can supply but don’t.’’

Forestry Tasmania is required to supply 500 cubic metres of non-blackwood species, celery top pine, Huon pine, sassafras and myrtle. It is also required to provide 137,000 cubic metres of high quality sawlog a year.

The 2016 annual report revealed 127,057 cubic metres of high quality sawlogs were delivered in 2015-16, compared with 119,855 the year before.