Wednesday, 21 September 2022

Timber industry

Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (20:33): (2145) My final adjournment matter for the year is for the Minister for Agriculture, I believe. The Victorian timber industry, an exemplar of sustainable environmental practice, is being ground to death, and this government is complicit in that. The government has signed the death warrant for the industry and for timber communities, but it is now allowing the execution to take place ahead of schedule. A recent article in the Weekly Times talked about 115 jobs to be lost in Orbost, with two mills on the brink of closing due to a lack of logs. The future of this town and indeed all timber towns under this government is to become retirement villages for older unemployed people while the young move away.

A few weeks ago this Parliament passed an amendment to Victoria’s forestry laws that increased penalties for people who disrupt logging work. The laws are designed to target people who do not just protest but who sabotage and interfere with workers at their worksites. The problem the workers are facing is called lawfare. Well-funded activists will break the law to cause disruption, and when they get sued for the damage they cause they will use their financial backing to draw out court cases and drain resources from their victims. Activists also bring frivolous lawsuits against VicForests and draw out proceedings, which drives up costs and causes delays.

In its 2021 report VicForests revealed a cost of $4.8 million from legal proceedings brought against it. Some of these cases had been already investigated by the regulator before legal actions were taken. The ongoing court cases choke the supply of timber and are killing the industry. This kind of lawfare should not work in a properly functioning legal system. Judges should identify the practice and award legal costs in addition to damages. The recent bill increased penalties for disruptive behaviour, which makes it more expensive for activists to engage in this kind of lawfare, but despite passing this legislation the government is helping cause the problem in the first place. They are playing both sides.

Documents obtained via a freedom-of-information request show the former minister, Mary-Anne Thomas, directed VicForests to avoid recovering the $2 million debt owed by MyEnvironment activists. When questioned at the time the minister lied and said she had not given this direction to VicForests. She covered up her lie by denying the freedom-of-information requests on false grounds. The only reason we have those requests now is because of an appeal that was lodged through VCAT.

In the past lies and cover-ups were a big deal; after eight years of the Andrews government, they appear to be par for the course. It is time we had an honest government. I call on the minister to stop playing both sides and to provide clarity to both VicForests and logging activists regarding which logging is legal and which is not. Just make the regulations make sense, let VicForests recover reasonable costs and stop the destruction of the industry ahead of time. It is not too much to ask.