Why does the Andrews Government want to make it easier for VicForests to flout the long-term planning principles in the 2014 Code of Practice for Timber Production?  

The decisions that VicForests make when they plan their logging (in drafting and adopting their Timber Release Plan or TRP) have big implications for biodiversity, scenic landscapes and preserving space for other uses of our forests.  

The resilience of our forest ecosystems is under threat from global warming, including recurrent megafires. The increasingly youthful age class profile of Victoria's native forests destablises ecosystems through its impact on habitat and understorey. Saturation forestry (including megacoupes) further fragments habitat.

In the Central Forest Management Area, which includes the Toolangi, Marysville, Black Range and Rubicon State Forests, despite the devastation caused by the Kilmore East and Murrindindi fires, logging has actually increased since Black Saturday.

The Code of Forest Practice sets out six principles which should guide long term planning for native forests logging. In 2007 the Bracks Brumby Labor Government insisted that these principles would apply to VicForests' Timber Release Plan (the TRP) and mandated the Secretary of DELWP to ensure that they did. 

In 2013 the Coalition Naphthine Government revised the Code and removed the explicit stipulation that the long term planning principles must apply to the TRP. However, neither did they explicitly exempt VicForests from complying with these principles. 

DELWP's Office of the Conservation Regulator (OCR) has insisted, against all logic, on applying VicForests' interpretation of the 2014 Code and rejecting allegations which assume that the TRP ought to comply with those long term planning principles. 

RFPG’s recent submission to VicForests regarding the latest TRP variation (here) highlights a range of ways in which the latest TRP fails to comply with the long-term planning principles.

However, the industry remains wary that a judge might find that the principles do apply to the TRP. Now the Andrews Government is stepping in to remove all doubt; proposing a new Code of Forest Practice which is explicitly designed to exempt VicForests from having to abide by these principles.

This would effect a major deregulation of timber harvesting and leave VicForests with no enforceable obligations to guide its formulation of timber release plans. 

The Rubicon Forest Protection Group urges the Government to:

(i) amend the Sustainable Forests (Timber) Act to restore the original sections of the Act (see Ss 39-40 of SF(T)Act 2007) requiring a TRP to be approved by the Secretary of DELWP, and

(ii) transfer the longterm planning clauses, now in the Code, into the Act, as matters the Secretary must consider when approving a TRP.