The Coffs Coast newspaper, on 24 January 2025, in its News of the Area, reported on a Pyxis Survey looking at five Federal marginal seats in NSW, Queensland and Tasmania. It was reported that the survey findings would impact the forthcoming federal election. The suggestion that this could swing seats regardless of the accuracy of the research is highly dubious.
The overall issue across Australia is the “cost of living”. However, the Pyxis survey puts forestry issues upfront. The results of the survey are not projectable to all people who live in these areas. The survey presents some real issues as to its reliability unless the issues are fully explained. People surveyed were in the Federal electorates of Richmond, Eden-Monaro, Lyons, Brisbane and Griffith.
The survey questions are not neutral and are designed to obtain a result, particularly from the population of people who have been interviewed. The “don’t know’ responses are very low, lower than one would expect when it comes to the complexity of the forestry industry.
Who knows the details of the National Forestry Plan? The questions about the National Forestry Plan are pretty vague because what is the National Forestry Plan? Who knows that the challenge for a hardwood industry based on plantations is 40 – 60 years to establish and grow if the land can be acquired to even plant the trees. It sounds sensible to have more plantations. Anyone would nod ‘yes’ to this. But what happens to this nod when a full explanation of the issues involved is outlined? The nod is no longer a nod!
People have no idea how much land is used for harvesting. Unless survey participants are informed that in NSW, for example, 0.3% of the available crown forest land is harvested a year, and it is selective harvesting, then answers to questions on native forestry are skewed. Asking questions in the absence of this information becomes not a matter of knowledge or lack of it but something else.
It is well known in the polling industry that questions concerning native forestry are so complex. In focus groups it has been apparent that people have no idea about the native forestry industry or how it operates. This raises serious survey technique issues when attempting to put these questions through a telephone survey.
About the survey
The survey consisted of 400 telephone calls in each Federal electorate. Telephone interviewing is the slowest way to collect data, and the information in the report provides none of these details about how the research was conducted. Telephone surveys are problematic because it is almost impossible to get people’s phone numbers, and not many have home phones any more.
This begs the question, how were these phone numbers collected? The survey provides confidence levels, but to what population? It does not seem to be any population other than those who answered the survey. This is a real issue regarding the reliability of the study.
Without further details on how the survey was conducted, it is fair to assume that the very low ‘Don’t know’ strongly suggests this sample has a highly vested interest in ending native forestry. One l could assume that those who have answered the survey might have been sourced from some groups that, in this case, will have anti-forestry tendencies, which might tell you how 400 telephone numbers per Federal electorate were available.
The survey, for what it’s worth, was commissioned by the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation (ACBF). On their website, they claim that their mission is to protect and restore Australia’s forests at scale.
The Executive Director, Lyndon Schneiders, was quoted in the Coffs Coast News of the Area article as saying, “Already, 87 per cent of the wood harvested in Australia comes from plantations”. This figure is an aggregated sum of softwood plantation production and a small figure of native hardwood grown on plantations.
The figure is not only extremely misleading but also highly self-serving.
Mr Schneiders’s quote continues: “Native forest production has declined 80% since 2004”. In 2021, the WA Government closed the WA native forestry industry from 2024. The Victorian Government closed their industry in 2024. Meanwhile, during 2019-2020, extensive bushfires in NSW closed access to some forests, whilst major floods in 2022 further reduced areas available for timber harvesting. In 2024 anti-forestry lawfare caused voluntary closure of other areas along with the NSW Government’s declaration of koala hubs.
A Ministerial Declaration in late 2024 further reduced available areas in working State Forests. These items are known to ACBF, particularly the decision on removing koala hubs from harvest as Mr Schneiders was on the Community Panel assessing the proposed Great Koala National Park.
ACBF is seeking policy commitments for the protection of environmental and carbon values of native forests and a total transition to a plantation-based forestry industry. As with much of the anti-forestry advocacy, which presents oversimplified commentary, manipulation of data, misleading Facebook advertisements, misleading commentary on websites or presenting material as facts that are without foundation, the ACBF falls short as an independent survey. It seeks an ideological agenda in a political circumstance.
- To learn more about surveying and how market researchers can use it to support political campaigning, click here for Wood Central’s exclusive interview with one of Australia’s leading pollers.