Dr WOODRUFF - All right. Have you, Chair, reversed your decision, which only occurred under this Government, to not make forest practice plans publicly available? I understand that has happened now. Will you publish the previous forest practice plans that were hidden from the public before 1 September 2023, I think it was, when the decision was reversed?
Mr de FEGELY - I will ask Suzette to respond.
Ms WEEDING - There has certainly been no hiding of forest practices plans. They have been available upon request. We receive quite a volume of requests for forest practices plans. We work through those and made those available to the public. That information has been available on our website for quite a long time.
We have taken a step this year of reissuing those forest practices plans as a matter of course on our website. All forest practice plans certified after 1 September will routinely be uploaded onto our website and publicly available through that mechanism. For plans that people may want prior to that date, we will still ask them to request them and we will pull them out of the files and make them available through that mechanism.
Dr WOODRUFF - Thank you. Will they specifically include the name of the certifier and be published within 48 hours of the plan being certified?
Ms WEEDING - We haven't set a time frame in terms of the time frame for publishing. Certainly, if people want to seek them ahead of them being available on the website then, again, we would seek them to approach us and ask for that forest practices plan. We will need to prioritise that request.
Redactions will stand as they currently are, which is removing personal details from forest practices plans.
Dr WOODRUFF - But they would include the name of the certifier and no other contact details, obviously?
Ms WEEDING - In terms of the forest practices plans, they will remain the way they are at the moment, which is redacting personal information, including the name of the certifier.
Dr WOODRUFF - What's the reason for that?
Ms WEEDING - It's maintaining confidential personal information.
Dr WOODRUFF - But they're an independent certifier, aren't they?
Ms WEEDING - They are.
Dr WOODRUFF - I don't understand why that information wouldn't be publicly available.
Ms WEEDING - It's part of the process that we run in terms of maintaining confidentiality of private information and not releasing that information.
Dr WOODRUFF - How many requests from the community to be provided with forest practice plans did the company receive in 2021-22 and 2022-23? And what percentage of those were subsequently supplied to the people who requested them? I'm happy for you to take that on notice if you don't have it in front of you.
Ms WEEDING - That's fine. If you'd like a specific number, I'd have to take it on notice.
We receive hundreds of requests for forest practices plans, which is part of what's driven this process of reissuing plans on our website again. Previous to removing them, we found that forest practices plans weren't accessed a great deal on our website, which is why we moved away from the quite cumbersome process of putting them up there as a matter of course. Subsequently, we've received quite a volume of requests. It would be in the hundreds. We are working through them. We've released probably half. I would have to take the specific number on notice. It is something that we work our way through but it does take time to release them. We receive lots of requests and multiple requests.
Dr WOODRUFF - Thank you. Can I take that on notice?
Mr ELLIS - Yes.
Dr WOODRUFF - This morning, Jenny Webber wrote to a person and said:
The Forest Practice Plan for NAO2OB is unavailable through our website as the plan was certified before September 1 2023.
I can email you a copy of the Forest Practice Plan. It's a long process but I will try to get this to you tomorrow.
That doesn't sound like open and available information for the community.
Ms WEEDING - It's part of a process. As I said, we've got quite a few requests that come in for forest practices plans. We're certainly not going to necessarily prioritise one stakeholder over another in terms of those requests so we're working through them -
Dr WOODRUFF - Why not just put them on the website and make them available. Then they wouldn't have to -
Ms WEEDING - Again, it's a process to do that.
Dr WOODRUFF - But why; it's just a document. It's just a PDF.
Ms WEEDING - It's a process to put them on the website.
Dr WOODRUFF - It's not hard. We can do stuff like that in our office in five minutes. Every day we do that in five minutes. Why not just do that if you want to be transparent with the community?
Ms WEEDING - We are. For forest practices plans certified after 1 September, we have a routine process now to put them on our website.
Dr WOODRUFF - Will you put the ones that were there before 1 September up on the website because these are the ones that people also want information about.
Ms WEEDING - We will make them available upon request and work through a process.
