Plot together

Traralgon forestry and business consultant John Cameron.

Photo: Contributed

Powering Your Future

At Flotation Energy, we want to hear what is most important to the local communities of Gippsland as we progress the planning of our Seadragon offshore wind project.

Drop-in to one of our sessions in Sale, Seaspray and Yarram to: • Talk with our team and ask questions about Seadragon. • Sign up to our email list to be kept in the loop. • Pick up project information and view maps. • Learn how offshore wind farms work. Your feedback helps to inform our project design and construction considerations, and the development of environmental, cultural heritage, social and economic impact assessments. Come and meet the Seadragon Project Team at: Sale Producers Market, Sale Showgrounds Saturday 15th October 2022 8am-1pm Regent Theatre, Commercial Road Yarram Tuesday 25th October 2022 Drop-in any time between 3pm-7pm Seaspray Town Hall (Seaspray Caravan Park) Wednesday 26th October 2022 Drop-in any time between 3pm-7pm Can’t make these sessions? Join the Seadragon conversation at www.seadragonoffshorewind.com www.gippslandtimes.com.au

Gippsland’s 2030 loss

COMMENT John Cameron

THE Andrew’s government’s Victorian Forestry Plan, launched in 2019, calls for the transition from native forest timber by 2030; from that date the log shortfall is supposed to be sourced from plantations. This exit in 2030 does not provide enough time to establish replacement plantations that typically take 30 years to mature. Since the announcement in 2019, little has been achieved apart from the odd ‘announcement’. The 2030 exit also unfortunately coincides with the proposed closure of Yallourn Power Station in 2028 (with the loss of 1,000 direct jobs) and eminent closure of other Latrobe Valley power stations, including Loy Yang A in 2035. (all up about 10,000 direct plus indirect jobs at risk). Over the last decade employment in the Latrobe LGA (Local Government Area) has declined by about 4500 jobs following the closure of Hazelwood and Morwell power stations, plus Morwell hardwood and softwood sawmills. The ‘Forestry Plan’ lacks rigorous strategic analysis of the adverse socioeconomic impacts on rural communities caused by exiting native forest log supply. The plan also ignores the triple impact of the native forest exit coinciding with closure of the coal fired power industry and diminishing scale economies in agriculture caused by the Forestry Plan’s call for the new plantations to be on farmland. The challenges include very limited availability of suitable land, high land cost, poor plantation log quality for products typically made from native forest logs, unsuitability of plantation saw logs for existing mills and the large scale required for returns on investment in new mill technology for plantation logs. Replacing native forest timber with new plantations on farmland threatens to push up farmland prices and crowd out farmers, and will lead to diminishing scale economies in agricultural production and food processing. Farmland in Gippsland is scarce and much of it prohibitively expensive for plantations. Most of Victoria’s 7.5 million hectares of native forest is in Gippsland, leaving only 1.2 million hectares of cleared farmland. Of the cleared land only a small fraction is suitable for plantations after taking into account land cost and other drivers of plantation economics. These include soil, rainfall, topography, wood quality, distance to mills and presence of world scale mills within economic haul. World-scale mills are not delivered by government spin (nor fairies), but by investors who invest in mill upgrades leveraged off the back of mill expansions supported by increasing log supply and supportive government policy. However, the Andrews government’s Forestry Plan will deliver decreasing log supply. Exiting native forest harvesting requires an investment of $1.0 to $1.5 billion dollars in land and plantation costs. This amount is needed to establish 50,000 hectares of plantation to replace the current 1.0 million cubic metres per year currently harvested from native forest in 2022. The required investment assumes sufficient favourable sites but ignores the cost of reconfigured or new mills to handle the different log quality. Under the Forestry Plan, the government is proposing an investment of only $280 million on land and plantation costs, to establish only 14,000 hectares of plantation, to produce about 280,000 cubic metres per year from 2053. The $280 million is based on a ‘dollar for dollar’ investment by the Victorian Government and Hancock Victorian Plantations ‘sometime’ over the next 30 years. The Victorian Forestry Plan fails to acknowledge the current decline in plantation supply and the considerable and possibly insurmountable challenges to establishing new plantations. Between 2008-09 and 2020-21, plantation area in the Central Gippsland National Plantation Inventory (NPI) Region declined by about 12,000 ha or 12 per cent, with most of the reduction in Eucalypt plantation. The ‘Forestry Plan’ is essentially just a plan to replace the shrinkage of the Gippsland plantation estate over the last 12 years, and replace it with pine rather than Eucalypt, which accounts for most of the decline in supply. Also the government has yet to outline a sustainable strategy for dealing with the supply shortfall over the years 2025 to 2053, until the new plantations mature in 30 years. Over the past 21 years, misallocation by policy and exacerbated by negligent wildfire loss, has resulted in the loss of $6.6 billion Gross Regional Product and 5560 jobs. The ‘Forestry Plan’ is likely to contribute to a further loss of $5.6 billion in Gross Regional Product over the next 20 years and the loss of another 3660 jobs. The ‘Forest Plan’ will lead to underdevelopment for disenfranchised rural communities and timber towns already severely affected by years of reducing native log supply. The exit by 2030 is poorly timed coinciding with the projected closure of Latrobe Valley power stations. We are witnessing a classic example of the ‘economics of underdevelopment’ being played out, albeit in this case at the direct hand of government, rather than the invisible hand of market forces. Rural communities and timber towns are being stripped of economic output and employment opportunities. This is causing adverse impacts on community services. This adverse impact is a result of the abandonment of the application of sustainable ‘multiple use’ to the remaining six per cent of forest currently available for timber production. This six per cent equates to only 0.004 per cent or 3000 ha of the forest logged each year, across spatially dispersed small coupes and delivers genetic recombination and the range of ecological age classes for sustainable forests. In Europe, 80 per cent of their native forests are available for sustainable wood production under ‘multiple use’. The government claims for the ‘Forestry Plan’ the abatement of 1.71 million tonnes of carbon dioxideequivalent each year. By contrast the native saw logs currently supplied and converted into sawn timber will archive (sequester) about 183 million tonnes per annum of carbon dioxide-equivalent each year. To deliver sustainable building materials and a strong forest industry in Gippsland, the Andrews governments Forestry Plan should complement rather than replace the 1.0 million cubic metres currently sustainably harvested from native forests. Native forest logs and their resultant building materials are more ecologically sustainable than plantation grown logs and far more ecologically sustainable than other building products.’  John Cameron (Dip Hort. Burnley, MBA Monash) is a Traralgon forestry and business consultant with more than 50 years experience in forestry in Australia and around the world.

Supply chain wrecked industry

Daniel Pedersen

STRATFORD’S Maurie Killeen knows forestry. He has worked in a family business falling mill logs in the forests of Gippsland, his home, and ‘on country’ in northern states with Indigenous people building durable settlements from their trees. Maurie laments a process by which fast turnaround and rapid economic gain made the supply chain king of the bush, rather than the trees and creatures that inhabit Victorian forests. His father, also Maurice, taught him selective logging from 1959 - when a tree was useful, if it was not, and when it was best left to grow. His father would select trees ready for harvest and Maurie would fall them. They were compelled to burn tree ‘heads’ and the clean up resulted in cool burns across the landscape. But the weather determined when they burned. They’d then take the logs back to their Valencia Creek saw mill. When the Killeens were stopped selectively felling trees they were forced to buy logs from VicForests. Then the milling business would have to take two months worth of logs but only had a month to pay for them, the quality of logs became unpredictable and there was a bias towards timber for pulp production, leaving precious few logs for millers. The amalgamation of forestry and land departments created confusion about land management. And the quick turnaround demanded by the supply chain transformed logging from a patient culling process to clear-falling swathes of forest the Killeens had no part of. Asked what he thought Victorian forestry should look like, the veteran logger said VicForests should return to selective logging and mosaic burning, then logging could go on in harmony with the bush. “You could say it’s a conspiracy, but there’s no point, what would be the end result? What would be the point of the conspiracy in the first place? It’s nonsensical.”