The logging industry has been on massive welfare payments for years, despite it claiming it is profitable. Our taxes pay to have our forests destroyed.
The industry is a dead loss in many ways.
The logging industry has been on massive welfare payments for years, despite it claiming it is profitable. Our taxes pay to have our forests destroyed.
The industry is a dead loss in many ways.
Another small community group, Healesville Environment Watch commissioned an economic assessment of VicForests economic performance, since its beginnings in 2004-5. VicForests has racked up a loss of $22 million since it was formed – that means it costs us $1.50 for every cubic metre of wood it has logged. VicForests self-righteously argues a net profit …
Another creatively written Annual Report for VicForests (2012-13) was presented to parliament in mid-October and it verges more towards fantasy than a serious commercial look at their performance. Steve Meacher from Healesville Environment Watch has done an analysis of the report and also compared it with their stated Corporate Plan in 2011, with the actual …
VicForests has racked up a loss of $22 million since it was formed – that means it costs us $1.50 for every cubic metre of wood it has logged. VicForests righteously claims a net profit of $11.6 million over eight years. But it has also received gifts of $24.75 million – a net cost to …
The same weeks as Kevin Rudd was returned as PM, Victoria’s Napthine government passed two anti-environment bills through parliament. The amendment to the logging Act (SFTA) gives a free-for-all to the logging mafia; everything it wants for as long as it wants with bugger-all scrutiny. All underwritten by us taxpayers for hundreds of millions if …
For several decades, the alternative commercial and economic uses and management of Australia’s native forests have generated considerable debate. In the past five years, this debate has sharpened as the native forest sector has contracted in response to increased competition in international and domestic wood product markets. New carbon markets are also emerging that could …
The owner of the Eden woodchip mill has announced it will not be renewing its contract to purchase timber from state forests in East Gippsland, when the current agreement expires at the end of 2014. South East Fibre Exports general manager Peter Mitchell says international market pressures are the major reason behind the decision, and …
The Australia Institute has released a brilliant new infographic on what ends up as waste and woodchips from a Tassie forest. It’d be similar here. Shame it only counts trees, and not the entire make-up of a forest though. Trees can be 50% of a forest’s biomass – so the sums on what’s wasted and …
Great news! The Eden chipmill has scrapped their plans to turn forests into pellets to fire up electricity furnaces (to run the world’s TVs and air conditioners). The Eden export woodchip mill plan to convert our forests into fuel to burn for electricity has failed. Likewise its wind farm project and the pellet plant to …
The recently released report from the Auditor General on the State’s finances again raises questions about why VicForests was not required to pay a dividend again this year. The report shows how the State Government demanded most Government businesses like Melbourne Water and other water authorities were all squeezed for additional dividend payments to help …
If VicForests was a private company it’d be financially (as well as morally) bankrupt. VicForests’ 2012-13 Annual Report is out. A small ‘profit’ was made this year – as a result of not having to pay big legal bills they said, but still no dividend paid to the public (government) for their use of, or …
