Victoria’s native forestry ban exemplifies the lost perspective of ‘progressive’ politics

The climate benefit of timber production has been acknowledged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) since 2007, when its Fourth Assessment Report(2007) noted:

In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual yield of timber, fibre, or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit.

Presumably, the Victorian Government’s claim that carbon emissions will be reduced by closing one of the state’s most climate-friendly industries, is based solely on the ongoing growth of trees in the wood production zones in the absence of timber harvesting. However, this inexcusably ignores the consequences of producing less hardwood and the associated carbon emissions that would flow from the response to such a wood shortage. As the IPCC also noted in 2007:  

… stopping all forest harvesting would increase forest carbon stocks,but would reduce the amount of timber and fibre available tomeet societal needs. Other energy-intensive materials, suchas concrete, aluminium, steel, and plastics, would be requiredto replace wood products, resulting in higher GHG emissions.

The Victorian Government has set the nation’s most ambitious carbon emission reduction targets. Given such determination to act on climate change, it doesn’t make any sense to close an industry that produces renewable products which store carbon when it will lead to greater use of alternative emissions-intensive materials and more timber being imported from overseas, mostly from the Asia-Pacific region where there are far greater environmental challenges. Similarly, given that increased bushfire frequency is said to be associated with climate change, it is non-sensical to effectively vacate forests thereby losing the forestry workforce that are frontline fire-fighters, and closing much of the road and track network which typically occurs when there is no longer an economic imperative to maintain it.   

By so spectacularly shooting itself in the foot, concerns have been raised as to who is advising the government on forestry matters. Certainly, Minister D’Ambrosio’s media release is rich in the rhetoric usually associated with environmental activism, and some reports suggest she has an open-door access arrangement with the Wilderness Society.

Indeed, it has been obvious for some time that the Victorian Government is unwilling to listen to those with expertise in forestry and timber, given its biased conduct of several initiatives – the Forest Industry Taskforce and the RFA Modernisation Program – seemingly designed to implement the agenda of environmental groups and an associated cohort of ANU conservation scientists who have targeted their research to discredit Victoria’s native hardwood industry. Despite this research often exhibiting poor understanding of basic forestry concepts and feigned ignorance of important background context, environmental bureaucrats and political advisors have shown themselves to be incapable of seeing through its often flawed assumptions and findings. Perhaps a case of accepting things that you want hear.

The most prominent of these ANU conservation scientists – ecologist David Lindenmayer – has effectively acted as the intellectual figurehead and spokesman for the environmental campaign against Victoria’s timber industry. He has featured prominently on the ABC, often making ill-informed claims about matters beyond his area of scientific expertise – such as transitioning the industry to plantations, claiming knowledge of industry employment, or singing the virtues of eco-tourism. In the days following the Government’s announced industry closure he appeared on ABC Radio implying yet again that just 300 people are employed in Victoria’s native hardwood industry.

His link to the Victorian Government was laid bare in a 2015 article on The Conversation in which he claimed to have been given a written undertaking prior to the 2014 state election, that if it won office, the Andrews Labor Government would declare a huge national park, thereby closing the majority of the state’s native hardwood industry. This is especially interesting because the CFMEU national secretary, Michael O’Connor, responded to last week’s announced timber industry closure by saying: “This debacle … flies in the face of the understanding that our union has had with the Andrews Government since prior to its election in 2014”.

The Victorian Government’s announced closure of the native hardwood industry also included a commitment to fund a transition to plantations in just 10-years, which it claimed would “… ensure a long-term and sustainable future for Victoria’s forestry industry – and for the Victorian workers who rely on it”. Transitioning a sawmilling industry to plantations in such a timeframe is simply an impossibility given the 40 years needed to grow quality wood, but the vagueness of the announcement leaves open the option that these new plantations would be intended only as short-rotation pulpwood to supply Australian Paper – which is a different industry. In response to this, the CFMEU’s Mr O’Connor, noted that promising such an impossible ‘transition’ would make blue collar workers across Australia justifiably “even more sceptical of Labor when they promise a ‘just transition’, as this fiasco speaks louder than their promises”.

Unfortunately, this fiasco seems to be indicative of the current state of so-called ‘progressive politics’ in relation to a range of fashionable causes where policy is effectively being outsourced to minority groups so focussed on their particular agenda as to be incapable of appreciating a broader perspective. In this case, the Victorian Government’s reliance on groups and individuals ideologically determined to end the harvesting of native forests, has blinded it to counter-productive consequences such as increasing carbon emissions and exacerbating the bushfire threat under a drying climate.

Worse than this though, is the manner in which the Victorian Government has facilitated this decision by engineering a timber resource crisis that has pre-emptively weakened the industry, and then grossly misinforming the public as to why action needed to be taken, including citing an impossible transition strategy to give an appearance of softening the blow. This demonstrates a complete lack of appreciation that acquiescing to ideological demands can have hugely unfair and damaging consequences for workers, many of whom in this instance will likely become a social welfare burden given that they reside in areas where there is little or no alternative employment.

Environment Minister D’Ambrosio, proudly said that: “By 2030, Victoria will be home to an area of native forest protected from logging that is larger than the entire land mass of Tasmania”. Of course, her government has actually protected nothing as should be evident from the catastrophic bushfires currently afflicting NSW and QLD. On the contrary, closing the timber industry will increase the threat faced by Victoria’s forested environments. But it is also pertinent to ask whether, in a world where there is increasing urgency to reduce forest loss and degradation in developing countries driven by factors including Western demand for wood, should Victorians be proud of producing nothing from our 7 million hectares area of native forest?