Victoria has failed to comply with its obligations under the Central Highlands Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) as renewed in 2020. Like the other ‘modernised’ RFAs, the revised Central Highlands Agreement followed a 2 year public consultation and scientific assessment process. For Victoria to have breached so many of its provisions, while perhaps not corrupt, is certainly outrageous.

On 2 October 2022 RFPG wrote to our local member Helen Haines asking her to convey to the Commonwealth Environment Minister, our call for an audit of Victoria's failed forest regulation as provided for in the 'modernised' RFAs.

In relation to Listed Species and Communities, Victoria has breached its commitments under Cl.25G for its forest management system to:

• ‘provide for the conservation and recovery of Listed Species and Communities’ by failing to arrest the precipitous decline in many tree-dependent threatened species, including Greater Glider, Powerful Owl and Sooty Owl.
• ‘be based on the best available science and give consideration to the advice of, or any determinations made by relevant scientific bodies or committees’ by continuing to log ash forests - the habitat of many Listed Species - despite the red-listing by the IUCN of the mountain ash ecosystem;
• ‘provide for active management of Native Forests in order to build their resilience and diversity’ by continuing to log ash forests - the habitat of many Listed Species - despite a dire age profile as outlined in RFPG’s submission to the Major Event Review;

Victoria has breached several commitments which specifically underpin Commonwealth accreditation of its Forest Management System under Cl.46 and Cl.47 by:

• ignoring key provisions of the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act, especially s.4B relating to cumulative impacts, long-term impacts and indirect impacts, contrary to Cl.47;
• failing to disclose to the public (and presumably the Commonwealth) in the 2018 Review of the Allocation of Timber Resources, and in the following revised Allocation Order, that it was shifting harvest level compliance from a gross to net coupe area, thereby almost doubling the area VicForests is permitted to harvest compared to the previous rules
• weakening a provision of the 2014 Code of Practice for Timber Production designed to help limit the impact of bushfires in so-called Bushfire Moderation Zones, thereby breaching Cl.47, and ignoring the Code of Practice for Bushfire Management on Public Land also breaching Cl.47;
• deleting provisions of the 2014 Code of Practice for Timber Production requiring VicForests to consider certain long-term impacts in setting its Timber Release Plan 
• Other weakenings of the 2014 Code of Practice for Timber Production in 2021 and 2022 under the guise of clarification, were adopted despite clear evidence (see RFPG’s first and second submissions to these ‘reviews’) that the amendments not only changed the original intent but were specifically designed to enable logging to continue unimpeded by legal action (see 2020 and 2021 Victorian Government Media Releases), thereby breaching Cl. 46.

Victoria has breached numerous other commitments in the Central Highlands RFA which, along with the above, amount to abrogation of the Agreement. These include:

• failing to review the ‘comprehensiveness, adequacy and representativeness of the CAR Reserve System by December 2021’ as promised in 66G(b);
• failing to ensure that the Major Event Review had access to information needed for it to assess two key elements of its charter (see Cl.38F-I): harvest levels and the CAR reserve system;
• failing to report on the annual and cumulative harvest volume (including sawlog, pulp wood and commercial firewood) since 1 July 2019 (Cl. 69K);
• failing to abide by its Statement of Regulatory Intent, implicitly breaching Cl.44.
• failing to update the main indicator system which guides biodiversity and ecosystem monitoring in Victoria’s native forests (as promised in Cl.48-50); shortfalls in the indicator system render meaningless the commitment to continuous  mprovement in Cl.40B and Cl.46; and
• ignoring widespread regeneration failure, as documented in a 2021 Report, After The Logging, and failing to increase the protection of treeferns (in breach of Cl.62C(b)) thereby breaching Cl.39 by not “ensuring that harvested areas of Native Forest on Public Land are successfully regenerated, maintaining the natural floristic composition”.

The same breaches of differently numbered clauses will have occurred in the other four Victorian RFAs.

Dr Haines replied promptly that she had forwarded our call to the Minister.  

Our letter to Dr Haines was accompanied by a detailed information paper setting out the detailed evidence demonstrating Victoria's failed regulatoin.  

Just one week after we wrote the Victorian Auditor General's Office tabled its report into DELWP's Office of the Conservation Regulator (OCR) which provides a stinging critique of the failures of the OCR to effectively regulate logging in Victoria.   

RFPG invites Victorian forest conservationists and their organisations to write to the Commonwealth Minister supporting our call for an audit of failed forest regulation in Victoria.

Letter to Helen Haines