Will WA’s new Forestry Minister Jackie Jarvis take action?

WA’s Forestry Minister Jackie Jarvis has been left a mess to clean up.

Unfortunately she has at most a few short months to sort it out before the remaining industry collapses from Labor’s assault.

In late January, Ms Jarvis met the Sustainable Forest Industries Roundtable to help guide small businesses wanting to continue to use sustainable and locally-sourced native timber in the wake of the McGowan Government’s plan to ban native logging from 2024.

The Sustainable Forest Industries Roundtable represents a range of timber users including furniture manufacturers, firewood and wood heater manufacturers, landscape supplies, heritage buildings and traditional sawn timber users.

Despite Ms Jarvis’ two-and-a-half years of experience as a commissioner on the Forest Products Commission, many questions are left unanswered for timber businesses struggling to understand the State Government’s plan.

In the 18 months since it announced the logging ban, WA Labor has failed to prepare a pathway to the future for the remaining industry players.

Ms Jarvis, as Minister for both Small Business and Forestry, has been unable to answer this basic question: What timber will be supplied and when will contracts be settled?

Instead, she wants to know how much timber they wanted.

One would have thought that the Forest Products Commission would have furnished the Forestry Minister with the necessary data on the future timber supply and demand.

Without a properly planned and communicated strategy for timber resource supply, no small business can develop a plan for the future.

And without a business plan, no bank will lend money to WA small businesses.

If this continues, everything will stop.

The Sustainable Forest Industries Roundtable gave the Minister a range of ideas to stabilise the sector.

She now has less than 11 months to act before the music stops.

Why is this important?

Didn’t Premier McGowan pronounce the end of native forest logging in 2023?

Well actually, no.

The ‘end of native forest logging’ could actually result in 600,000 to 800,000 tonnes of native timber being produced by a combination of forest clearing for bauxite mining and ‘eco-thinning’ as indicated in, but not committed by, the draft forest plan.

This represents a great opportunity for Ms Jarvis to rebuild a new timber industry based on regrowth. 20 years after the end of old growth logging, this latest sharp turn to the left could provide a genuine win-win.

Once again, the problem is the lack of any detail from the Labor Government.

Businesses wanting to map out their future have no information.

Neither the draft forest plan nor the Minister can provide detail on the size or quality of logs to be available.

Logs could be so small that they are entirely unsuitable for furniture, flooring or even firewood.

If the Minister is agile enough to skirt the immobility of public sector inertia to create an environment with appropriate planning and security for new investment, then a new smaller industry could emerge fully using this resource.

If not, this wood could all go to waste or just be exported to support overseas businesses such as those making woodchips or burning small material to produce bioenergy, abandoning the opportunities for local value adding and processing.

The clock has been ticking since the Premier’s details-free announcement and as a result of the lack of direction, experienced people and businesses are leaving the industry in droves.

This a clear result of the scorched earth policy under the previous minister where there was no strategy for using the wood that will continue to be harvested.

If the people-drain continues, a future sustainable timber industry in WA will lack experienced operators.

It is already proving difficult for the State Government to meet current timber supply contracts due to a lack of truck drivers and harvesting machine operators.

One sawmiller received no wood in January and some firewood retailers are again tearing their hair out due to poor supply.

Now is the time for injecting some hope into the remaining industry players.

Wood is a sustainable, natural product and the Minister should stand up for its use as she was happy to do so when she was employed as a forestry commissioner.

So far the Government has used the forest plan as a fig leaf to hide its own lack of industry planning.

However, as has happened with the ‘logging ban’, forest plans are shaped by policy decisions.

If the Government had the foresight to announce a commitment to a level of wood production and usable log specifications from mine sites and ecological thinning, these critical parameters would be rubber-stamped into a new forest plan.

The SFIR suggested a number of actions that could be taken by the Minister. Actions that should be supported include:

• Reserving all native timber for local processing and use ahead of woodchip exports and industrial processors;
• Publish and stick to a timeline for the wood sale process, and start it now;
• Define the levels of future production to give harvesting contractors confidence they will have future work. This should include committed minimum areas for eco-thinning;
• Provide wood to industry now from eco-thinning to industry for trials, as well as publish the results (costs, products, log specifications, harvest productivity); and
• Provide a resource guarantee for sawmilling so that wood is supplied for heritage buildings such as the Fremantle Arts Centre.

First and foremost, the Minister needs to insist that a roadmap for the industry is developed through consultation and then published.

An industry adjustment strategy should be included, funded and securely in place to enable the wood produced from the forest plan to be used by WA small businesses.

The new Minister needs to show real leadership to show that sustainable use of natural resources has meaning and isn’t just another empty statement.

Three weeks on and the SFIR has received no response from the Minister.

Gavin Butcher is a professional forester and former director at the Forest Products Commission of WA