The President of Timber NSW has put a three-point plan to NSW Premier Chris Minns at Parliament House this afternoon — backed by an unprecedented accord amongst unions, scientists and industry associations that speaks to the severity of the decisions now before the Labor state government.
Wood Central can reveal the delegation included both unions with responsibility for timber workers, the TFTU and the AWU, along with forest scientists and the full value chain, in a unified push to provide certainty on wood supply, cut red tape on private native forestry, and build a genuine skills pipeline for regional communities.
Today, Wood Central spoke to Alison Rudman, the NSW Secretary of the TFTU — Australia’s only union laser focused on timber workers — who joined Andrew Hurford, president of Timber NSW, and Tony Callinan, the NSW Secretary of the AWU, at Parliament House for the second day of a special industry roundtable that brought the full weight of the sector’s workforce and its employers into the same room as government.
“To have the two unions that cover the supply chain, coupled with the industry associations, sends a powerful message to the decision makers that need to understand the realities of good business,” Rudman told Wood Central tonight, following two days of meetings that she said were unlike anything the NSW timber sector had previously mounted at Parliament House.
It comes after Wood Central yesterday revealed that timber workers, scientists and employers were pushing the Minns government to extend wood supply agreements — due to expire in 2028 — establish local procurement rules and invest in regional skills, even as Bob Brown Foundation activists unfurled an “End Native Forest Logging” banner on the steps outside as the talks ran inside.
On wood supply, the coalition’s position was unambiguous, with Hurford pressing the government for a 10-year rolling extension of agreements covering both the hardwood and softwood sectors. The industry’s reference point is the Bob Carr era, when sweeping national park expansions came paired with 20-year supply guarantees that gave operators, banks and investors something to actually plan against — a model that acknowledged the simple reality that capital does not flow into industries without long-run certainty. That architecture no longer exists.
In the current credit environment, no lender will refinance or commit capital to a timber business without a runway that clears 2028, and no business plan built on five-year terms attracts the institutional investment the sector needs to modernise. The banks have already made their position clear.
The second ask was the removal of dual consent on private native forestry, with Timber NSW CEO Maree McCaskill pointing to a regulatory double-up that she said was draining time, money and goodwill from private landowners who had already navigated one approvals process in good faith. Under the current framework, landowners who hold an approved plan through Local Land Services must still lodge a separate development application with their local council — a process that can cost between $10,000 and $50,000 in environmental impact assessments alone and can take up to 2 years to resolve.
“Remove the requirement to submit a DA to local council — local council doesn’t have the expertise. It’s very intensive, takes a lot of resources. It’s duplicated the process, bureaucratic,” McCaskill said.
Workforce was the third pressure point, and ForestWorks was in the room to make the case. The structural problem the native hardwood stream has carried quietly for years is one of critical mass — there simply is not enough volume to sustain a standalone TAFE course, which means young people in timber towns cannot access structured pathways into the industry through conventional channels.
The position put to the government is that on-site training delivered directly into rural and regional communities — where the mills are, where the workers already live, and where the next generation needs to see a genuine career — is the only model that works at the scale and geography the sector actually operates across. The wages in timber are strong. The visible pathway in is not.
The coalition also put a broader forest industry plan on the table, one that pairs a Koala Park commitment with designated plantation zones, forest production areas and processing precincts positioned near regional population centres — a framework for rebuilding the sector without conceding further ground to lock-up and one that attempts to answer the government’s conservation obligations without dismantling the industry’s operating base.
