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.
MOST of the trees logged in Victoria’s native forests last year ended up as pulp, much of it exported to Japan to become photocopying paper. More than 85% of the 1.59 million cubic metres of the state’s native forest logged last financial year, the equivalent of 4745 MCGs, was turned into woodchips, sawdust and waste. …
The headline in the Sunday Age in early December 2007 was ‘How to turn $99 million worth of trees into a $17,000 loss’. VicForests was exposed as incompetent economic managers of our public forests. Even with a state government gift of tens of millions of dollars to get it set up, it’s still not profitable …
David Pollard, VicForests CEO, was the Commissioner of State Revenue, from 1997 until 2002. Any wonder that he was very defensive when questioned on radio in early December about the loss he’d made for Victorian’s. The information coming out of the logging coupes was that contractors are being directed to smash up good quality salvaged …
The native-forest-logging boat is sinking. It’s old and leaky but the Government keeps burning out bilge pumps trying to keep it afloat. Yet another costly pump is about to be installed. An Industry Transition Taskforce (ITT) Mark 4, will be established to try to help logging workers deal with the ‘challenges’ they face. The Minister …
For years, NSW conservationists have been fighting to find out the price Forests NSW gets for the logs that are woodchipped and shipped to Japan. After a long battle to obtain these figures under Freedom of Information, Gerry Watt, a Tilba conservationist, scored a victory in early September. Stephen Montgomery of The NSW Administrative Decisions …
The native-forest-logging boat is sinking. It’s old and leaky but the Labor Government keeps burning out bilge pumps trying to keep it afloat. Yet another costly pump is about to be installed. An Industry Transition Taskforce (ITT) Mark 4, will be established to try to help logging workers deal with the ‘challenges’ they face. The …
After three years as the new semi-corporate arm of the government logging agency, VicForests was going down the economic gurgler. For the first two years after its creation, VicForests was given an easy run with DSE picking up the tab for many costs, but year three was to see it ‘off the dole’ and making …
Federal ALP leader Kevin Rudd took a further step to the right on July 23 when he announced full support for logging old-growth forests in Tasmania. Rudd also announced his support for Gunns Ltd’s $2 billion pulp mill project proposed for the Tamar Valley, north of Launceston, in the federal electorate of Bass. Responding to …
Timber yards just don’t bother stocking hardwood timber any more. Why? It is because no one wants to buy hardwood timber. There are no uses for native forest hardwoods which pine and other plantation products cannot replace, and at a lower price. Many sawmills that cut native forest logs are teetering on the brink of …
On the 15th May, the Austimbers mill, just east of Orbost, sacked about 15 workers. Not so long ago it had the largest sawlog licence in East Gippsland but now its saws and machines lie silent, its gates are closed and the receivers flick through the books to salvage some cash to pay the workers. …
