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.

Saw-miller sore over prices

Bob Humphries, owner of the big Cann River sawmill, is sore over new prices for logs and wants the government to reduce royalty prices to below cost price . He says demand for native forest timber is falling and they can’t get as much for sawn timber any more. After decades of receiving welfare in …

Continue reading

Gippsland Paper Mill expansion

The largest paper mill in Australia is based in Gippsland and is planning to expand – with the government’s full blessing and financial assistance. It will need an additional 200,000 m3 of eucalypt pulpwood. But where will it come from? PaperlinX, maker of Reflex copy paper, was formally known as APM, Amcor and is now …

Continue reading

A spanner in the woodchip works

What we see going on with Tasmanian woodchips could well set the scene for the rest of us battling to save our forests. When a 10% drop in orders for Tasmanian woodchips was announced, green groups were blamed. The reduction and subsequent job losses are squarely the result of green groups telling lies to overseas …

Continue reading

Double standard on ‘waste’ wood

Less than one week after the government says it can’t and won’t prosecute anyone over the Yalmy looting, a DSE media release came out saying they will get tough with firewood getters who don’t pay their $7 permit (royalty per tonne). The maximum penalty is one year in jail or $5,000 fine with equipment seized …

Continue reading

One logging worker = a $65,714 ‘dole’

In 2005, the old Black Forest Timber mill at Woodend and the CRC for Wood Innovations were given $1.1 m from the then Premier Steve Bracks to set up a ‘pilot program for rapid shaping of wooden components for furniture’. Is there really such a huge demand for coffee tables with legs shaped out of …

Continue reading

Logging roads funded under environment budget!

Did a page get mixed up in the 2005 Victorian Budget papers? Under the ‘environmental initiatives’, we see a page titled “Roads in State Forests”. This looked good – will they be sealing these roads to prevent 40 tonnes of silt washing off every kilometer of road into our streams each year? Now that WOULD …

Continue reading

Shhh – the secret East Gippsland Old Growth Project goes public.

Us lot of simple folk shouldn’t know this but … The logging industry is worried they might lose their access to old growth forests. To avoid this “loss” they helped establish a secret plan to carry out dodgy technical trials- with a predetermined outcome. It’s called the East Gippsland Project and is an attempt to …

Continue reading

To get away with taking wood – do it by the hundreds of tonnes

Less than one week after the government says it can’t and won’t prosecute anyone over the Yalmy looting, a DSE media release came out saying they will get tough with firewood getters who don’t pay their $7 permit (royalty per tonne). The maximum penalty is one year in jail or $5,000 fine with equipment seized …

Continue reading

Fair pricing hits the logging industry

When the new VicForests office took over the native forest logging ‘shop’, they came in with a nice new broom. Mill owners will have to compete for logs by bidding for them when their license runs out over the next few years. Meanwhile their current license for logs has had a 17-25% price increase. This …

Continue reading

Gunns pulpmill fast-tracked

The Tasmanian Government will declare Gunn’s planned $1.2 billion pulpmill (one step along the production line from woodchips) as a Project of State Significance. This will allow it to be fast tracked and bypass many environmental and other planning regulations. It recently released proposed amendments to planning laws to ensure a smooth approvals process for …

Continue reading