Nine months after the WA government shut off native forestry, timber mills are still waiting for a letter of offer from the state government to access logs from a controversial bauxite mine site—a lifeline now crucial to keeping regional and rural communities alive.
It comes as the resource-starved mills, offered jarrah and marri logs by the Forest Products Commission of Western Australia, have yet to be offered any supply guarantee. The maximum resource provided is just one-third of the minimum supply previously provided by the state-government-controlled forestry body.
In January, Wood Central revealed that timber towns in the state’s southwest suffered an “exodus” in financial and human capital as communities prepared for a future without native hardwoods. At the same time, it was reported that the Roger Cook government was ill-equipped to manage the transition and was desperately looking to make up for the shortfall due to poor public policy.
Speaking to the Australian, Adele Farina, the current CEO of the FIFWA (the peak body for timber in the west) and a 20-year Labor member of the WA Legislative Council, said the current situation was untenable.
With those significantly reduced volumes, most of the mills have had to, and will have to, reduce their workforce. There is still a huge amount of uncertainty for businesses. In addition to that, a number of businesses didn’t get a letter of offer but weren’t told that they had missed out either. They’re trying to get certainty from the government … and so far, they’re just hitting a wall of silence.
Adele Farina, CEO of the Forest Industry Federation of Western Australia and a former Labor Party member.
As reported in the Australian, hundreds of jobs were lost when the Cook government finally enacted the McGowan government forest ban, including at least six timber mills. And of those who remained, the millers hoped to operate in reduced form—by milling trees clearcut for mining and sourcing timber from farms, private forests, and ecological thinning.
They include Jay Branson, who has worked at the Dwellingup Sawmill south of Perth since leaving school and bought the mill in 2004. He said he had been forced to overhaul his supply model while transitioning long-term into plantation timber. He has been taking logs from roadside clearing, windfalls, and fence-line clearing on farms.
“No recovery is too big or too small,” Mr Branson told the Australian, adding that “with the supply becoming less, it means the utilisation of the log needs to be much better, so there’s no waste.”
“It’s been a time of growth for us, but we’re not growing bigger, just maturing… I’ve got 14 employees, and I need to keep their kids going through school.”
For what it’s worth, Jackie Jarvis, the state’s Forestry Minister—who earlier this year admitted that she was “confused” when talking about the forestry budget during an error-riddled parliamentary hearing, said that—to help the industry transition from native forestry.
“Some sawmills that received this support chose to continue with reduced volumes available from ecological thinning and mine site clearing activities,” Minister Jarvis said. “With the end to commercial native forest logging, the new Forest Management Plan 2024-33 recognised the need to manage our forest for forest health outcomes.”
According to John Clarke, a forestry consultant who spent 30 years working for the state-owned Forest Products Commission, the logging ban must be scrapped so government and industry can work together to manage forests sustainably: “It’s like a Magic Pudding if it’s harvested sensibly,” he said. “You can use the products for all those wonderful uses that we love, and it’ll grow again if it’s good management.”
Could WA face a “Wood Famine” due to poor government policy?
Last year, Wood Central contributor Gavin Butcher claimed that the state government could face a wood famine from 2030, with the wood shortage exacerbated by the native forest ban.
“To maintain the construction industry, particularly housing, there will need to be a massive increase in timber imports or a transfer to other materials,” Mr Butcher, himself a former director of the state-owned Forest Products Commission. “When the government announced its native forest logging ban in 2021, it made promises.”
“It promised to honour all contracts through the end of 2023 and maintain the wood supply for furniture makers and domestic firewood…but the WA Forest Products Commission’s 2021/22 financial year’s production statistics show that the production level from native forests fell by 25%.”
“Firewood supplies ran out during the middle of last winter, consumers went cold, and prices skyrocketed due to the failure to meet demand,” Mr Butcher said last year, “at the same time as it was struggling to supply wood, the government was paying workers to leave the industry.”
- To learn more about the decision by the WA (and Victorian) State Government to close the native forest industry and its impact on long-term supply, visit Wood Central’s special feature.
