The Minns Government risks pushing the Mid North Coast’s timber towns into poverty rather than into a new economy, the union representing the region’s sawmill workers has warned, as redundancies mount and the $995,300 transition blueprint is not due until mid-2027. That is according to Alison Rudman, NSW branch secretary of the Timber, Furnishings, and Textiles Union, who says workers and their representatives were shut out of an announcement the government drew up without sitting down with the unions.
“This isn’t a transition plan, it’s a transition into poverty,” Rudman said, with the region’s mills shedding jobs since the Great Koala National Park’s boundaries were drawn.
It comes as Regional NSW Minister Tara Moriarty and North Coast Minister Janelle Saffin unveiled the grant on Thursday to fund a Five-Year Transition Action Plan that will not be finished until mid-2027. The money goes to the Mid North Coast Joint Organisation, the body representing the Bellingen, Clarence Valley, Coffs Harbour, Kempsey, Port Macquarie-Hastings, and Nambucca councils, to map pathways into nature-based tourism, small business, First Nations enterprise, and retraining.
A Regional Transition Officer will spend up to four years building the blueprint, funded from the government’s $6 million regional package. That money operates alongside the state’s $140 million investment in creating the park and a $5 million downstream support program.
Redundancies began the moment the boundaries were unveiled on Father’s Day last September, Rudman says, and the cuts have continued into this month, with Pentarch winding down its green mill at Herons Creek and 25 jobs with it. Until the government settles future wood supply for the region’s remaining timber employers, she argues, those displaced have little prospect of finding new work in the industry.
Rudman rejected the promise that tourism can replace timber work as jobs-washing, with permanent, well-paid positions traded for insecure, seasonal, and casual work. Koalas have always lived in these forests, she argues, and a new park name will not suddenly fill hotels or pay mortgages, while the government’s own research shows timber workers earn twice what tourism workers make in Northern NSW.
“Our local councils are closest to our communities,” Saffin said, backing local expertise so regional industries and small businesses know their voices are heard. Moriarty, whose portfolio takes in the mills outside the moratorium zone, said “Forestry in NSW has a future”, adding that the park’s impacts on the timber industry must be properly understood.
Saffin’s own office steps have borne the anger before, with more than 100 workers laying their boots outside her Lismore office last October, each pair standing for 10 or more families hit by the moratorium. MNCJO chair Steve Allan said the new funding lets the region “lead the conversation” about what the future holds for its communities, businesses, and workers.
The pledges stack against clocks the region does not control, with the harvesting moratorium’s twelve-month term expiring on 8 September and the Clean Energy Regulator yet to rule on the carbon project Environment Minister Penny Sharpe lodged on Wednesday. A Senate vote follows on 18 August on NSW Nationals Senator Ross Cadell’s disallowance motion, which could strike down the Improved Native Forest Management method behind the entire park.
Support already on the table pays displaced workers four weeks per year of service capped at $150,000, the package the government beefed up in November. Across the moratorium zone, the government’s own count puts 300 jobs at six mills affected, with a further 32 positions expected to go at Forestry Corporation of NSW’s Coffs Harbour office.
Rudman cites the government’s own research, which puts a timber wage at twice the tourism pay offered in its place, with the plan meant to bridge the two not due until mid-2027, nearly two years after the first redundancies began.
Please note: Wood Central has not taken an editorial stance on Australia’s native forest debate. It will, however, publish content that it deems to be in the public interest, and it will fact-check before publishing.
