2017-02-23
Ms DUNN (Eastern Metropolitan) — My question is for the Special Minister of State. As the Premier’s representative, you would be aware that last year the Premier’s Forest Industry Taskforce unanimously agreed that 36 high-priority interim protection areas should not be logged. This recommendation was passed to the government. Is the minister aware if any of the coupes in these high-priority interim protection areas have been subsequently logged by VicForests?
Mr JENNINGS (Special Minister of State) — I am very surprised! No, maybe I am not surprised, because I was not in the chamber. I was not here for a long period of time, but now finally processes have actually caught up with the fact that I might know something about this matter. I have been assisting my colleagues, including the Minister for Agriculture, in relation to dealing with some forestry matters and have played an intermediary role between the government and the forest industry task force for the last number of months.
As Ms Dunn did indicate, there has been consideration of the conservation status and the priorities of a range of forested areas that the task force had been seeking protection for. Indeed there was a protracted series of conversations between the task force and VicForests about the timber release plan and the way in which it could be undertaken for this summer in a way where there were increasing pressures on VicForests to acquit its contracted volumes of timber, to get the timber allocation in accordance with the timber release plan and, in a very tight schedule of coupe allocation, to achieve a balanced outcome that meets everyone’s expectations on the task force.
Within the 36 that Ms Dunn refers to, the activity that VicForests undertook when they released the timber allocation was to exercise their best endeavours to prevent any of those 36 locations from being harvested during the course of this summer whilst acquitting their obligations. Most of their obligations that we have been discussing of recent time have been the proliferation of the sites where Leadbeater’s possums have been identified and the readjustment of coupes that have been made as a consequence of the ongoing identification of the Leadbeater’s possum, which I would have thought most people from the conservation movement would have been happy about, but that is not necessarily the case, because in fact there is a lot of denial about the significance of the proliferation of the Leadbeater’s possum in the forest.
Notwithstanding that, of the 36, VicForests I believe has allowed harvesting in one of those 36, and I understand that they are making their best endeavours not to harvest any of the others, in accordance with their ability to satisfy the timber release plan and in accordance with what their intention is, which is not to go into those areas.
Supplementary question
Ms DUNN (Eastern Metropolitan) — Thank you, Special Minister of State, for your answer. In relation to that one that you indicate has been harvested, could you confirm whether that contains Blue Vein coupe as one of the logging coupes in that area, and can you also explain why logging was undertaken here, given the unanimous decision of the task force to not log any of those high-conservation areas?
Mr JENNINGS (Special Minister of State) — Ms Dunn I think probably should know better in the framing of her question, because I am sure she is aware of the 36 coupes in question — and Blue Vein was not one of them. Indeed on Blue Vein, as I understand it, harvesting has not proceeded in that coupe.