Victoria’s native harvesting ban has failed, with Victorians simply buying their timber from countries with weaker environmental standards since the state shut its forests six years early. That is according to Warren Pickering, One Nation’s Victorian leader, who told the Herald Sun yesterday that native forestry would return under a Tasmanian-style model if the party wins in November.
“Environmentally sensitive old-growth forest and native habitats will be strictly protected, and the model will be self-sustaining by funding management operations through harvest revenue,” Pickering said. One Nation would open the forests under “detailed forest practice plans based on sustainable selective harvesting models successfully used interstate and overseas,” he said.
It comes as the party also pledged to favour local wood in state government purchasing and to put country-of-origin labels on timber products. Pickering made the same two pledges as One Nation’s lead Senate candidate for Victoria last year, when he named a bigger plantation estate the party’s “main priority.”
“One Nation needs to explain how the litigation, timber shortages and bushfire risks that forced the transition have suddenly vanished,” Victorian Agriculture Minister Michaela Settle said on Tuesday. At the same time, Minister Settle said Labor is “backing forestry workers into new jobs, growing local plantation timber and keeping forestry skills and experience in our forests.”
“Ongoing litigation processes and increasingly severe bushfires” left the state unable to access harvestable timber, the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office found in its audit of the $1.5 billion transition. The office counted 565 workers made redundant by the decision, with 87 per cent of them in new jobs or retired by the middle of last year.
Full-time work fell from 81.1 per cent of the roles those workers held before the closure to 60.2 per cent of the roles they moved into. Three-quarters of the new roles are in other industries, with the office concluding that “most workers left the native timber supply chain.”
Origin labels and a “local wood first” commitment are long overdue for mills fighting a “flood of cheap imports,” according to Andrew White, CEO of the Victorian Forest Products Association. Australia imported $6.8 billion of wood products in 2024-25 whilst exporting $2.9 billion, according to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences.
“We also desperately need a new government-backed Timber Strategy that sets out a vision and action plan for the entire industry,” White said. The association, whose members include plantation growers and timber processors, made that strategy one of its three election priorities, alongside a minister for plantations and wood fibre.
As it stands, One Nation is set to announce its full timber policy this week, less than two months before Victorians vote. White said the association was “keen to work with One Nation on a new strategy for the industry.”
Please note: Wood Central will not take a political stance on the 2026 Victorian state election and invites all parties contesting it to provide a contribution to the masthead.
