Jack Bowen
I, along with many in the timber merchant sector, am still reeling from the recent shock announcement by the Andrews Victorian Government to prematurely end native forest production in Victoria within six months – by 1 January 2024.
The decision is reprehensible and irresponsible and is an absolute slap in the face to regional Victorian communities, businesses, and all Victorian consumers. Rather than ‘delivering certainty for timber workers’ as the Andrews Government proclaims, this totally politically driven decision instead delivers massive uncertainty to Victoria’s already stressed regional communities and the building product and construction industry supply chain.
This decision was made completely out of the blue, with no consultation at all, and will have a hugely negative impact on Victorian home construction material supply, and costs to builders and consumers – and obviously an even more massive negative impact on already struggling regional Victorian forest and sawmill workers, their communities, and the downstream companies they supply to.
These Victorian native forests provide the beautiful local sustainable and renewable hardwood products Victorians have used in their homes for over 180 years and that Bowens have been supplying for just on 130 years.
Originally all Victorian home framing construction was hardwood. In the last few decades, with the advent of seasoned softwood plantation framing, sawn hardwood is now utilised and valued for its exquisite appearance, high strength, hardness, and durability attributes, in a multitude of finished building products.
Consumers love hardwood furniture, feature flooring, staircases, cabinetry, joinery, mouldings, windows, doors, linings, durable building claddings and decking, screens, high strength structural members, as well as in fencing, and landscaping products. The current demand for Australian hardwood products has never been higher.
I was uncomfortable with the government’s previous decision in Nov 2019 as they proposed in their Victorian Forestry Plan, to transition from native forests to plantations by 2030, – 10 years really just didn’t seem to be enough time. But this highly political decision to shut things down within six months is a clear breach of promise.
In the view of Forestry Australia, the peak professional scientific body, the Victorian Government’s decision to end native forest harvesting is flawed and rather than being based on science, it is a decision motivated by ideology.
In a recent interview, President of Forestry Australia, Dr Michelle Freeman noted that this was a big step backwards for sustainability. “There are very few production systems on the globe that offer stronger sustainability credentials than well managed native forests. In fact, we know that well managed native forests can actually provide superior biodiversity, fire, and climate outcomes.
“In the view of Forestry Australia, the peak professional scientific body, the Victorian Government’s decision to end native forest harvesting is flawed and rather than being based on science, it is a decision motivated by ideology.”
Dr Freeman further noted that “timber-producing native forests are managed primarily for high quality sawn timber and wood panel products on much longer rotation cycles than plantations. The products sourced from native forests are not interchangeable with what is currently available from our plantation estate”. This refutes the often-quoted untruth by anti-forest activists and academics that ‘the community doesn’t need native forest production – there’s more than enough plantation timber to fill the gap.’ This is simply categorically untrue.
The question for the Andrews Government is “where will our future timber come from?” Clearly from 2024, native timbers will have to come from somewhere else. To replace Victoria’s externally durable Victorian hardwood species (whose harvest and regeneration is highly regulated and independently certified) this imported timber will have to come from tropical African, Asian, or pacific hardwood rainforests, many completely devoid of any environmental regulations or standards. The notion that imported tropical hardwood products are a better solution than locally grown and manufactured products is just perversely wrong.
Additionally, one has to ask the simple question ‘has the Andrews Government learnt nothing from COVID about the need for self-sufficiency and the support of local primary resource management, local industry, and local manufacture?’.
The Victorian public expects its State Government, whatever political persuasion, to manage its public forest resource for all its people, and for all its values: social economic and environmental – not just lock it up on a political whim to secure urban inner-city green voting support. No Victorian government has ever taken away from its people a public resource, which the people own, utilize widely, and continue to desire and purchase until this decision on native forest hardwood production.
The extent of Victorian native forest production is often dramatically misunderstood because of all the anti-forestry mistruths. It should be clearly noted that only a miniscule 0.04% is harvested each year from Victoria’s total native forest area (effectively four trees in every 10,000), and all harvested areas are regenerated and regrown by law.
Victoria has about eight million hectares of public land. More than 4.2 million hectares of Victoria’s total public land are dedicated conservation areas in the form of national parks and other conservation reserves, including Victoria’s most environmentally important forest area and endangered animals. It is a fact, that 94% of Victoria’s natural forest is not available at all for production operations. So, the assertion from the anti-forestry activist groups that harvesting causes all the forestry woes are simply total mistruths.
By far the biggest threat to Victoria’s forests is uncontrolled wildfire, not timber production. It is true that recent uncontrolled wildfires have impacted the forest estate, but this is no justification for total forest production closure. In fact, proper active and adaptive forest management practices, can and do, provide both sustainable and renewable timber products, and good forest ecological and biodiversity outcomes – they are not mutually exclusive, ‘The Victorian community can have its cake and eat it too’.
All Victorian builders and consumers should join with the building product supply chain companies and organisations, to express their condemnation of this political decision to take away in just six short months access to local, sustainable, renewable independently certified Victorian hardwood products.
As Victorian voters and consumers, we should insist on an independent Parliamentary Enquiry. This needs to clearly examine the true social, economic, and environmental impact of the Andrews Government’s reprehensible, non-consultative, reneging on its previous promise for a logical, fair and manageable transition for Victoria’s sustainable hardwood timber products industry out to 2030.
Jack (John) Bowen is managing director Bowen & Pomeroy Pty Limited, trading as Bowens Timber & Hardware, a supplier of timber and building products. Bowen is headquartered in Victoria, Australia, and was established in 1894.
