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. …
In 2006, the then premier, Steve Bracks, made a promise to protect all significant stands of old growth currently available for logging. This, with several other areas called icon forests amounted to about 41,000 ha. However, he also promised there would be no impact on the logging industry – an impossible undertaking. A few days …
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 …
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 …
(not to be confused with the ‘whoops’ factor) If only I had the negotiating skills of VicForests when I was growing up, I would never have had to eat my vegetables. I could have argued that Mum said, “You should eat your vegetables”, rather than “You must eat your vegetables”. This is the reasoning used …
The latest bundle of propaganda to come from VicForests, in mid August, announced the new Sustainable Forest Management System Project for Forest Certification. Don’t all those big words sound impressive? Sadly, its just another expensive publicity fraud. Haven’t the Government propagandists and spin-doctors realised yet that the word Sustainable is way past its use by …
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 …
