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East Gippsland is bracing itself to lose up to 200 timber jobs due to anticipated reductions in logging rates and a downturn in the global woodchip market. The state member for Gippsland East, independent Craig Ingram, said the region, where one in four people is already unemployed or underemployed, was in crisis.
Already 50 men had lost their .jobs and more losses were expected. "There is some real pain about to be delivered to the industry in the forest," Mr Ingram said. Later this month, the State Government will release the results of an independent review that is expected to confirm industry and conservationist warnings that logging over the past decade has been unsustainable.
A spokesman for the Environment and Conservation Minister, Sherryl Garbutt, said there were meetings with the industry and unions to discuss ways to maximise the timber available and to improve logging sustainability. Mr Ingram blamed poor management by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment. He said the number of jobs lost would depend on the State and Federal Governments, and he called for exit packages and retraining for workers.
The federal Forestry and Conservation Minister, Wilson Tuckey, has refused to release money for exit packages, saying the industry must invest in value adding and learn to make more with less.
Brett Dennis, a timber feller from Orbost who is due to lose his job this week, told federal candidates at a public meeting last Friday that the department was warned that quality logs were scarcer than it had calculated, but the workers had been ignored. Mr Dennis told The Age yesterday: "I think (the department) just saw us as a bunch of whingeing rednecks, and we are not. We are just ordinary, hardworking blokes trying to feed our wives and kids and pay off the house."
He said the department insisted on logging syndicates hiring more crews and investing in specialised equipment. But with a global downturn in the woodchip market, people had expensive machinery they could not sell.
The Democrats candidate for Gippsland, Jo McCubbin, said no one in government would admit the regional forest agreements had failed. Labor candidate, Bill Bolitho, partly blamed the former Kennett government for contracting-out departmental operations.
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