The New Zealand forest and timber processing industries are watching the passage of illegal logging legislation in Australia, because it has the potential to disrupt the country’s export trade in forest products across the Tasman. Source: Radio New Zealand
New Zealand Wood Processors Association chief executive Jon Tanner says his country strongly supports international measures to ban illegal logging. But he says what’s concerning the timber industry is the lack of any definition so far in the Australian bill, about what illegal timber actually means.
“So the definition could be narrow, it could be incredibly broad, so the industry is extremely nervous, both exporters in New Zealand and importers in Australia, that we won’t be able to define and describe our products as legal because we don’t know what we’re trying to describe”.
Mr Tanner says it may go beyond timber products, as well.
He says at the moment it could mean the rule extends to all wood fibre products, which might include packaging – for example the sort of packaging that encloses a 25-kilogram bag of milk solids or a tray of kiwifruit or apples going across the Tasman.
“In the sense that that packaging may contain recycled fibre, which could have come from anywhere in the world, it will be very difficult to put your hand on your heart as an exporter and say that those products are packaged in legal packaging”.
