Two recent Victorian government audit reports into forestry operations, obtained through Freedom of Information by the Wilderness Society, provide a catalogue of abuse and deception. FENELLA BARRY, of TWS, describes what they reveal.
Wholesale woodchipping, breaches of environmental codes of practice, industrial intimidation, documented acts of fraud, tax evasion, mismanagement of state funds and resources: it may sound like Vanuatu or somewhere else in the Pacific, but this scenario comes directly from regions just a stone's throw from Melbourne.
Victorian government audit reports and related documents reveal that:
- Licensees have been extorting fraudulent grades from logging contractors and log-graders by using industrial and other forms of manipulative force .1
- As a result of this, at least 49% of logs are being graded incorrectly, mostly downgraded. The grading system determines how much tax or royalties the licensees pay; the higher the grade the more royalties to be paid to government ).1
- The state government monitors only 1% of trees felled during native forest logging operations in Victoria.1,2
- The Victorian Codes of Forest Practices for Timber Production are being breached by logging contractors a whopping 30% of the time.3
- The government of Victoria has been losing an estimated minimum of $800,000 a year through fraudulent and incorrect grading alone.1
- The state government of Victoria is subsidising the native forest timber industry by an estimated $50-85 million a year through its logging-related expenditure. Out of expenditures of $75-108 million, it is recouping only $22 million per year in royalties.4
- There has been massive regeneration failure in some clear-fell areas (up to 80% in some places). Despite browsing by native animals coming sixth on a list of seven possible causes, an indiscriminate poisoning of native animals has been mooted and may even be happening now.5
Successive state governments of Victoria have known about most of the above since 1991. A similar audit to the HSGMR1 was commissioned then.8 Its findings were nearly the same as those of the current report, and yet the Kennett government has done nothing to alter the situation. It has made none of the information of these documents and reports known to the public of Victoria.
Buck-passing
What of the federal government? Further documents requested through Freedom of Information from the Department of Environment, Sport and Territories (DEST) show that:
- The federal government has no knowledge of the source of woodchips nor any direct knowledge of practices observed in obtaining them. Woodchipping is the bulk of native forest logging operations in Victoria as well as elsewhere in Australia).6
- The federal government depends on state governments to monitor woodchipping operations and relies on their subsequent advice to ensure industry compliance with federal export woodchip licence requirements.6
However, the state government has no formal obligation to and does not monitor woodchipping operations or procedures in Victoria. The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources monitors only 1% of logs. The government is unaware of what happens to 99% of our native forests after they are clear-felled. It therefore cannot and does not advise the federal government on such matters.7
This means there is no formal monitoring of the bulk of forestry operations in Victoria, and for that matter in most of Australia.
After uncovering this astonishing buck-passing routine between the state and federal governments, the Wilderness Society called on the federal government to establish an independent monitoring agency for native forestry operations in Australia. It also called on the timber workers' union (CFMEU) to support it.
The suggestion has been taken seriously by DEST, with economic assessments being made and proposals being called for by the department. While this proposal would protect its members from the threats and abuses documented in the reports, the CFMEU is still considering its position.
Victorian native forests not currently protected are in more danger now than they ever were. With more and more people taking up the call for forest protection, the industry knows that a "golden age" of rampant, destructive and unmonitored profit-taking is coming to an end.
There is evidence to suggest the logging companies are accelerating their operations and becoming more haphazard and wayward as they do so. These reports show plainly that they have been allowed to police and to regulate themselves; to set their own rates of taxation; and to go without punishment for even the most flagrant transgressions of government codes and regulations.
'Self-regulation'
The audits cited show just how insincere the native forest timber industry has been in its much vaunted "self-regulation". Some would say just how successful in standing over and fooling successive state and federal governments.
In an indication of the brazen nature of the industry, contractors studied in the 1993-94 Sawlog Report1 were given at least 24 hours' notice of the arrival of monitoring officers. Despite this and despite the on-site presence of government officials, graders and contractors still managed to grade 49% of the logs incorrectly — mostly in ways that enabled them to pay less royalties!
The motivation for downgrading logs goes well beyond the estimated $800,000 per year in unpaid taxes. By underestimating the worth and number of timbers available for value-added types of production, the native forest timber industry makes open to itself far greater tracts of forest to woodchip. In one of its more tragically successful pretences, the industry seems to be able to write off 90% of any given forest it encounters as "inferior quality logs", ie., as woodchips.
The Wilderness Society has been astonished at the failure of the Victorian government to protect the financial interests of the Victorian public and to protect their irreplaceable resources and precious wildlife.
Despite efforts by industry to hide behind a mountain of detail, and despite the efforts of complicitous government departments to bury the facts — in this case by releasing their own reports only when forced to do so by painstakingly researched FoI requests — more and more people are finding out what they're up to.
Decisions over the next few weeks by the federal government and by unions such as the CFMEU will tell us a lot more about the future of our forests over the next few years.
A cabinet showdown is expected at the end of this year as the export woodchip licences are up for renewal. Environment Minister Senator John Faulkner is set to put restrictions on woodchip licences. This would be an historic event. The pressure is on Paul Keating to ensure that cabinet backs his environment minister. Only in this way will he prevent Australia from continuing to follow the path of its Pacific neighbours, a path he so rightly criticised at the South Pacific Forum earlier this year.
Notes
1. Hardwood Sawlog Grading Monitoring Report. 30/3/94. Ernie Cole and Richard Bourke., Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Victoria.
2. Internal letter. 9/7/93. David Williams, Acting Manager Forest Commerce, DCNR, Victoria
3. Audit of Code of Forest Practices for Timber Production, 1993-94 Report. DCNR, Victoria.
4. Letter (Age) 25/5/94., Senior Lecturer Law, Politics and Economics, La Trobe University.
5. Swamp Wallaby Browsing Control in Orbost Region. 1991. DCNR, Victoria.
6. Senate Estimates Committee, Hansard, DPIE 23/6/94.
7. Letter, 17/8/94. John Stival, FoI Manager, DCNR, Victoria.
8. Hardwood Sawlog Grading and Monitoring Report 1991-92 cont. Auditor General's Department.