Bass Greens Kim Booth is risking his reputation thousands of dollars of his own money in his crusade against Forestry Tasmania. Source: The Examiner
Booth will put his money where his mouth is and spend about $30,000 in his efforts to prove Forestry Tasmania has been wrongly undervaluing logs and denying good quality specialty timber to sawmillers.
The former sawmiller said he was ”pleasantly surprised” when the state-owned business last month agreed to give him three truck loads of ”reject logs” destined for the overseas woodchip market to conduct a sawing trial.
”Either I’m going to look like a goose or the minister’s going to look like a goose,” Booth said.
He is confident he can show the logs are more suitable for a range of high value sawn timber products.
Forestry Tasmania has provided the mixed species eucalypt, myrtle and blackwood free for the sawing trial, but Mr Booth is meeting the cost of the sawing, transport and drying out of his own pocket.
He hopes to recoup the cost by selling the finished product and says any profits will be donated to charity.
Booth will have a better idea of the quality of the logs once processed by Bakes Sawmill at Gowrie Park next month, but it could be more than a year before the wood is able to be turned into furniture.
The logs have been sitting on Burnie wharf over summer awaiting export to China.
Other sawmillers have also been granted access to inspect and buy the logs off Forestry Tasmania.
The Greens have advocated for a ”high value timber industry that has more jobs and less logs”.
If successful, Booth said his trial would be further evidence that it is possible to reap more revenue from Tasmania’s forestry industry with a lower volume of wood.
”Forestry Tasmania has always had this totally lazy business model,” he said.
