Since the proclamation of the Forest Act in 1918, WA government forest agencies have proudly published statistics about public forestry and the timber industry such as how much forest was cut, how much wood was produced, how many trees were planted and the status of the plantations. All this has ended under Jackie Jarvis, Minister for Forestry in the Cook Government, where controlling the media cycle is more important than providing meaningful information and being accountable.
There was a time when government agencies responded to media enquiries, published documents to explain policy and, in the case of forestry, the science underpinning its decisions. Today, the Forest Products Commission is virtually silent, making just the occasional friendly announcement about a populist community activity such as sponsoring a bike riding event, supporting some firefighting crews or some other universally supported activity. All matters of forestry substance are handled by the Minister’s office.
The foundation of our democracy requires the Minister to be accountable to the parliament. This means answering questions asked by other Members of Parliament. Yet too often the answer is the same political sound bite starting with “The Cook government’s historic decision to end native forest logging under the next forest management plan will move from practices that are based on commercial timber production to ecological thinning based on forest health outcomes…” without responding to the substance of the question.
Equally important are the routine statistics which describe the rate of timber removal, the quality of the logs, the type of markets being supplied, the area of forest harvested, the area and species of plantations established, etc. Since 2022 the Forest Products Commission has indicated that it no longer wishes to inform the public about the status of the industry. The Minister has stated “Following the decision to end commercial native forest logging under the forest management plan 2024–33, production statistics will no longer be produced by the FPC”’, implying that the statistics were only required for compliance purposes.
This is far from the truth. Ecological thinning and mine clearing have the potential to produce 600,000 to 800,000 tonnes of wood each year from native forests and the FPC will continue to produce more than a million tonnes per year of softwood. The question is why the FPC wants to hide these numbers?
Could it be that, despite the claim of ending commercial logging, the quantities produced will continue to be substantial and attract criticism from the Greens?
By comparison, other primary industries are well serviced by their government agencies. The quantities of minerals, fish and agricultural products are made available in great detail and are readily available on their websites. Understanding the scale, status and value of activity of an industry assists in understanding the importance of that industry and the challenges it faces.
More importantly, the public has a right to know what is being achieved for the dollars being spent. The Cook government has decided to invest more than $500 million into forestry over the current decade.
Yet, three years into the pine expansion program, no one knows what has been achieved.
The original decision to pump $350 million into expanding plantations was welcomed by industry, but there is a lack of any definition of the detailed purpose of the project, except that it was expected to achieve 35,000 hectares of new forests for timber and carbon. There is a serious lack of transparency regarding this project. The FPC published neither a business case nor performance indicators when it started the project and there has been no reporting of achievements. In parliament recently the Minister conceded that 85% of the expenditure to date had been on purchasing land. If this continues then the likely achievement will be no more than 26,000 hectares or a shortfall of around 25%.
The government is also pouring $40 million per year into the FPC’s implementation of the ecological thinning program. Again, there is no measured outcome or reporting as to the costs and achievements of this State “investment”. The latest FPC Annual Report indicates in the first months of the program $11.4 million was expended but only $490,000 was earned through log sales, amounting to a paltry4% cost recovery, with no sense as to what return should be reasonably expected.
As a public sector agency there should be some measure of how the FPC is working towards its mission of supporting the timber industry. And let’s not forget, this is actually the Commission’s raison d’etre! As a supposedly high-flying commercial business focusing on management of money, it has removed all accountability for its management of forestry assets.
The new look Annual Report is more like a Sunday supplement than a serious presentation of a government agency. The level of information has plummeted, now only detailing financial KPIs of efficiency and effectiveness. These have been carefully chosen to avoid highlighting the fact that the FPC, once again, has operated at a loss: $8.7 million in 2023-24, despite this a 4% operating margin and a 1% return on assets have been reported.
The productive condition of the forests and plantations are of vital interest to the broader industry. As an example, one critical issue in WA arises due to the scarcity of timber resource and the plantations’ vulnerability to drought. It is therefore important that the thinning of plantations is on time. Previously, the KPIs indicated only 74% of the plantations were thinned in a timely manner, leaving the rest to be depressed in growth and vulnerable to drought. This reflects poorly on the quality of FPC’s management. Now that this KPI has been removed there is no exposure as to how well the plantations are being managed for this and other parameters.
Instead, the FPC now reports on meaningless financial performance data and corporate parameters like staff diversity and turnover. Their meagre information is about anything instead of the struggling timber industry it is meant to be supporting.
