Sowing the seeds for our future

Hopes are high for the revitalisation of the stagnating softwood plantation industry, explains Ross Hampton

HAVE you ever driven through Australian forestry regions like Oberon or Tumut in NSW, Mount Gambier in southeast South Australia, through the Sunshine Coast hinterland in Queensland, or of course many parts of Tasmania, and noticed vast swathes of nearidentical pine trees growing in meticulously straight rows, and wondered who planted them, and why?

Probably not, but this is why you should care, why we need to ask why the planting of new plantations in Australia has stopped, and why the Federal Government’s recent announcement to turbocharge the forestry industry and oversee the planting of one billion new trees over the next decade is a big deal.

State and federal governments in the 1960s and 1970s planned to ensure future generations of Australians would have locally grown timber to build the houses needed to accommodate the anticipated population boom.

And it’s in high demand, both in Australia and around the world, with pine being the “softwood” of choice for housing construction domestically and abroad, which is important when you’re experiencing a construction boom, as Australia has for the best part of the past decade.

This is all great news for Australia’s mature and innovative softwood growing and milling industries. The bad news is there are not enough trees in the ground to meet demand. Despite Australia’s ideal conditions for pine and other plantation species, in terms of land, climate and industry capacity, we are importing more and more timber for products that would otherwise be manufactured in Australia.

The common pine tree, or pinus radiata, is Australia’s most common plantation tree. Australia has just over one million hectares of pine plantations, most of which are concentrated in about a dozen hubs close to processing facilities such as timber sawmills. This didn’t happen by accident.

In February 1966, amid the realisation that Australia’s rate of softwood plantings was insufficient to provide future building requirements, the Commonwealth government took control of the dilemma by committing to rapidly expand Australia’s plantation estate by providing financial assistance to each state over a five-year period starting July 1, 1966, to enable them to accelerate their rate of softwood plantings. Thus, the Softwood Forestry Agreements Act 1967 was born, which authorised the Commonwealth to provide low interest loans to state governments to expand their plantation estates.

It worked. During the 11 years these agreements were in operation, the NSW government alone planted 76,000 hectares of softwood plantings, about 76 million trees.

This created the recipe for a thriving softwood timber industry to develop. Today, Australia produces worldleading timber at some of the most technically advanced sawmills in the world. But with stagnated plantation expansion for almost a decade at a time when demand for our timber domestically and abroad is at a record high, our industry has been crying out for a supply fix. So, what’s next?

This plea may have finally been answered with the Federal Government last month launching a national vision for our forest industries, Growing a Better Australia — A billion trees for jobs and growth.

The most profound element of this blueprint, the first from a federal government in more than 20 years, was a commitment to plant one billion production trees, with a focus on the right trees in the right places at the right scale. This commitment mirrors a similar pledge from New Zealand’s government.

This plan and the commitment to plant one billion trees is very good news for the 70,000 Australians who work in forest industries, the tens of thousands more who support them in areas like frame and truss manufacturing, and great news too for our children who will be building homes when the trees reach harvest and replant age in the decades down the track. The

commitment underpins the value chain.

Australia’s forest industries plant more than 70 million plantation trees each year, but that is just replacing the trees that are being harvested already. Forest industries have been clamouring for many years for new national policy which will trigger the return of investment to launch new planting initiatives, especially involving farmers who might choose to allocate less productive pasture land to trees.

Farm forestry can have enormous farming benefits, like creating shelter for stock, improving land quality and diversification of investment and income.

Forest industries have also been supporting the Federal Government’s desire to ensure the plantings are in the right places, such as areas close to downstream manufacturing, to ensure those jobs remain for decades and areas which are strong forestry regions with communities already geared up to add more trees.

There is also an opportunity through the Federal Government’s emissions reduction fund with the plan committing to a review of restrictions which have impeded the ability of some forestry operations to participate. The language from new Environment Minister Melissa Price and her interest in further utilising the emissions reduction fund, through providing more funding is also very helpful.

Australia’s forest industries have a proud history and investment by governments in policies to help them thrive have been essential in the past. The tone of the Federal Government’s new plan is right, but the work to implement it is yet to come.

We need to make this work, there is a lot riding on it.

The commitment to plant one billion trees is very good news for the 70,000 Australians who work in forest industries ... and great news too for our children who will be building homes