The Hodgman Liberal Government is building Tasmania’s future by working to ensure productive industries such as forestry are sustainable.
The Forestry (Unlocking Production Forests) Bill 2017 that I have tabled today will provide more wood so that we can end the public subsidies while saving 700 jobs.
Advice from Forestry Tasmania (FT) that obtaining Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification will impact on the quantity of high quality sawlogs it can harvest underlines the need for this legislation.
Up to 15,000 cubic metres per year of sawlog may no longer be available due to additional management constraints and regulatory requirements imposed under FSC certification, FT modelling has revealed.
While we firmly support FT’s bid for FSC certification, the important point here is that it will add to its inability to commercially harvest the legislated sawlog quota, which means hundreds of jobs are under threat.
As we have said for some time, there are three options.
First, we could make available only the wood that is commercial sustainable, but based on FT’s advice, this would lead to the loss of up to 700 jobs. This is the Greens’ position.
Second, we could continue to underwrite the non-commercial harvesting with public funds – around $25 million a year of funds that should be going to our hospitals and our schools. This is Labor’s way.
Or, third, there is the Liberal Government’s plan to unlock our productive forests, making more wood available to save those 700 jobs while ending public subsidies.
Our legislation will continue our efforts to rebuild the forest industry after the disastrous Labor-Green forest deal, which was resoundingly rejected by Tasmanians at the 2014 election.