Australia: Market will now learn more than just credit lines and tax breaks
The Federal Government should intervene to stop native forests being
exported as woodchips at the expense of the Green Triangle’s hardwood
plantation estate, according to a leading academic. Dr Judith Ajani, a
postdoctoral fellow at Canberra’s Australian National University, said
a decade of unresolved problems were “coming home to roost” in the
sector. She said marketing issues stemming from rapid expansion of
bluegum plantations over the past decade would come to a head amid the
global economic contraction.
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Dr Ajani said she had long been critical of the Federal Government’s
plans to triple the nation’s plantation estate without appropriate
market research. “Planting and investment has been driven by demand
for tax minimisation and not an understanding of the wood market
reality,” she said. She said there was already an oversupply of
hardwood chips, exacerbated by product from Australia’s native forests
accounting for 70pc of exports. “There are strong arguments that we
shouldn’t be involved in that, particularly from an environmental
perspective, but nevertheless that is in the market and making life
harder for hardwood plantation growers,” she said. “It is a national
issue and now is the time for the Federal Government to start thinking
about an economically coherent forestry policy and the key aspect of
that is making sure our plantation resource is given priority.” Dr
Ajani said plantations could not compete with cheaper native forest
exports. She said work also needed to be done to value-add to hardwood
resources in Australia and this not only involved pulp and paper
mills, but should extend to wood panels, particularly for Asia.
She said the uptake of hardwood panels continued to grow, despite the
economic downturn due to their versatility, and plantations could
provide an alternative source to softwood timber from diminishing
temperate forests in the northern hemisphere. Dr Ajani said hardwood panel exports from Australia would not compete with the nation’s softwood harvest, which was primarily used for domestic building timber, but create new opportunities.
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The Federal Government has rejected calls by a leading academic to give priority to plantations for hardwood exports, rather than allow continuing harvests from native bushland to dominate the market.
Dr Judith Ajani, a postdoctoral fellow at Canberra’s Australian National University, told The Border Watch last week the economic downturn would hit exports hard.
She said native forests continued to account for the majority of woodchip exports and plantations would face marketing problems after expansions based on tax incentives, rather than market realities.
Commonwealth action to focus on plantation chips, rather than product from native forests, could help overcome the problem, according to Dr Ajani.
But a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry said yesterday the Australian Government did not regulate commercial timber harvesting.
“These are commercial decisions made by the industry, who are best placed to assess their long-term plans and programs,” she said.
“The commercial use of native forests for export products is governed by Regional Forest Agreements – these agreements, which were established after comprehensive regional assessments, ensure public native forests are managed sustainably, and that both the conservation and commercial values of forests are protected.”
The spokesperson said ABARE statistics showed 51pc of woodchip exports were from native forests.
Timbercorp forestry general manager Tim Browning said this figure was not a problem and wood fibre production still needed to be boosted overall to meet consumption.