700 jobs at risk, says timber industry

Philip Hopkin, The Age (article), 31/1/00

At Least 700 jobs will be lost in western Victoria and Gippsland and businesses will close, if the State Government adopts the regional forest agreements (RFAs) proposed for these areas, according to the timber industry. The executive director of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries, Mr Graeme Gooding, said the two RFA consultation papers, released two weeks ago, ignored " regional Victorian voters who elected the Labor Government led by Mr Steve Bracks on the basis of its electoral promise to create more jobs in the bush.

"By our reckoning, country Victoria now tands to lose some 700 jobs in these regions where every job is critical," he said. More than 300 jobs would be lost in western Victoria and more than 350 in Gippsland. These were probably conservative estimates. "The real impact of this pending disaster, however, is not acknowled in either report because only direct job losses in sawmills have been taken into account.

"Both reports fail to mention the impact on employment in logging, transport and the many other sectors that depend, directly and indirectly, on timber manufacturing for their business operations. "In the tranport sector, for example, we employ drivers, wharfies, road builders, assemblers, sales people, clerks, fuel depot personnel, mechanics, tyre manufacturers and fitters and finance company people. Then there is the hardware and retail sector as well."

Mr Gooding said the two proposed RFAs would also badly affect farmers who graze their stock on public land, beekeepers, miners and prospectors, and locals who collect firewood from public land. In West Victoria, the consultation paper proposes adding 168,000 hectares to existing reserves, an, increase of 40 per cent, bringing total reserves to 591,400 hectares. There would be big cutbacks in the forest reserves available to industry in: areas such as the Wombat State Forest, the Otways and the Cobaw State Forest.

In Gippsland, forest reserves would be expanded by 265,000 hectares, and resources available to industry cut back by 9 per cent. Mr Gooding said that if implemented, the West RFA would deliver a crushing blow to small family-owned timber-producing companies that had operated in towns such as Woodend, Daylesford, Ballarat, Beaufort, Colac and Portland for;several generations.

Similarly, the proposal to cut resource availability by 5 per cent in Central Gippsland and 20 per cent in Tambo would cast a shadow over the industry's future, including attempts to reopen the Swifts Creek mill. Mr Gooding said that the timber industry strategy, developed by the Labor Government of the day, foreshadowed big increases in Gippsland's sustained yield from 2002 onwards. This anticipated increase was a trade-off for the dramatic reductions imposed in East Gippsland in the late 1980s and early 1990s," Mr Gooding said.

The proposed 51 per cent increase in reserves was not only excessive but unjustified. "By failing to take into account the large reserves of the same forest types in adjacent regions, the RFA proposal effectively turns a growth option into a deficit," he said. "Key production forest types across eastern Victoria have already been reserved at several tinies the nominated target levels without these latest additions, and Victoria's targets are well above accepted international benchmarks."

Mr Gooding said local sawmills had invested heavily in expensive new equipment and employee training to make the transition to valueadded timber manufacturing. The public has until 25 February to make submissions on the proposals. The RFAs are scheduled to be completed on 31 March.