Rosalie Woodruff MP, Tasmanian Greens Leader
Reporting from the ABC has confirmed what has long been suspected – logs from Tasmania’s public native forests are being exported to Victorian sawmillers. That’s despite millions of Victorian taxpayer dollars being paid out to end the native forestry industry.
For years, the Greens have been asking questions about Forestry Tasmania’s native sawlogs being on-sold and processed interstate. But the company has denied this, including at last November’s GBE scrutiny.
Following the ABC reports, Forestry Tasmania have reversed their trenchant denial and written to the GBE Committee Chair to correct the record. Yes, they finally admit, logs from Forestry Tasmania’s public native forest harvesting are being shipped to Victoria for processing.
This is terrible and outrageous. Tasmanians’ public native forests are being used to prop up a Victorian industry the public was promised would end. The best way to stop this happening in the future is simple: end native forest logging in Tasmania.
Our public forests should be left standing, not sold off to the highest bidder. In a biodiversity and climate crisis, these native habitats and carbon stores are most valuable left in the ground.
Nick McKim, Senator for Tasmania and Australian Greens Forests Spokesperson:
Labor and the Liberals are colluding to plunder Tasmania’s native forests, ship logs across Bass Strait and saw them in Victorian mills, with public subsidies propping up every step of the way.
Native forest logging only survives because governments keep it on life support with public subsidies. The industry destroys nature and emits massive amounts of carbon while leeching off taxpayers. It should be wound up immediately.
It is absurd for the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme to be subsidising the movement of Tasmanian logs into Victorian mills, and this loophole must be closed. The federal government needs to stop passing the buck to the states and use its powers to end native forest logging across Australia.
Our native forests are too important to keep sacrificing for an industry that is environmentally destructive and financially dependent on public money.
