Reports of a dying catchment 'greatly exaggerated'

A further 124,000 ha of reserved East Gippsland forest will become old growth over the next 50 years. From this it is evident that the old growth debate is essentially about ideology rather than environmental outcomes.

Environmental activists in their single-minded pursuit of a no-logging agenda have ignored or downplayed the implications of closing the local hardwood-timber industry. One critical impact is in developing countries, as higher Australian demand for hardwood imports contributes to production of tropical rainforest timbers, some illegally logged.

A report to the Federal Government by Poyry Consulting recently noted that Australia imports about $5 billion of forest and wooden furniture products a year, and that while we could be self-sufficient, our hardwood timber industry now has neither the resource access nor the processing capacity to meet this goal.

Since 2001, imports of tropical sawn hardwood have risen by more than half (our suppliers are mainly Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea) as end-product prices for Australian native hardwood products, such as Brush Box flooring, have more than doubled over the same period.

Across all product types, the equivalent round-log volume of tropical imports from suspect origins now equals the combined Tasmanian and Victorian harvest of native forest sawlogs. The upward trend of tropical-timber imports will no doubt continue if the area of Australian native forest available for harvesting is further eroded.

Australia's native forest timber industry has suffered for years from dishonest and deceptive anti-logging campaigns attributing it with supposed impacts way out of proportion to its actual nature.

The philosophical and policy arrogance of a small minority seeking to dictate to the rest of the community the conditions of access to their forests is somewhat breathtaking - combined with an insatiable demand for taxpayer funds to shut a sustainable industry.

Perhaps environmental groups should quantify the economic, social and environmental benefits of their policies so there could be a more informed discussion.