After being audited in May 2019, and the audit report being finalised in February this year, Sustainable Timbers Tasmania (STT) this week were finally courageous enough to publically announce that it had once again failed FSC certification.
No one seems at all surprised!
It has been more than 10 years since STT promised to gain FSC certification.
That’s 10 years of failure!
With Bunnings Hardware promising to only sell FSC certified products after 31st December 2020, the future for STT is not looking good. Bunnings is the largest retailer of Tasmanian oak products from Tasmania’s public native forests.
On 1st July this year Bunnings announced they would no longer sell public native forest products from Vicforests.
The long, slow, bitter, costly road to oblivion for public native welfare forestry in Australia is entering its final phase.
Meanwhile instead of questioning its own failings, or plotting a new course for the future, the forest industry is now waging an all out publicity war on anyone it regards as an enemy, including the FSC and Bunnings.
The culture within the forest industry has become neurotic and hostile.
How the forest industry responds and behaves in this final closing down of public native forestry in Australia will impact the greater industry for decades to come.
If the industry continues its current hostile virulent campaign then the brand/industry damage will be severe indeed.
The private forestry sector in Australia is already starved of oxygen in attempting to generate a positive image and message to the marketplace and the community.
A few more years of negative hostile publicity will alienate more of the marketplace and the community, and further isolate the forest industry.
The Australian forest industry desperately needs to improve its support within the broader community. Right now the opposite is happening.
Will the private forestry sector remain silent as its future is destroyed in this battle?
- By the way this article had no impact whatsoever on the FSC audit:
Apparently the FSC is perfectly happy supporting fraudulent behaviour in the forest industry.
Tasmanian Blackwood Growers Cooperative 
“Let’s fast track that plan!”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/special-reports/more-trees-will-grow-jobs-economy/news-story/8b4fd3b46144584213fd106525ee0d6e
That’s forest industry speak for “hand over the taxpayers money now” and more political protection and subsidies please.
This is a typical piece of forest industry windy hyperbole; full of bluster, promise, and foreboding. I’ve been reading this kind of rubbish all my long forestry career.
The forest industry cannot convince Australian farmers to include commercial treegrowing in their business models.
Why?
Because the forest industry in Australia has zero commercial credibility!
So who then is the audience for this article?
None other than Governments and politicians of course.
This article is not written for the farming community.
As usual the forest industry talks about growing demand and supply shortages but fails to talk about markets, costs, prices and profits.
Forest policy in Australia has always been about loggers, sawmillers and processors – regional jobs.
Forest policy in Australia has never, ever been about profitable tree growers.
This article talks about regional jobs and communities, and deliberately avoids any mention of profitable tree growers.
Saving regional jobs – ie. Welfare forestry – is a major focus of the forest industry.
But welfare forestry is a dead end; a road to failure.
The only truism in this article is “we need to grow the plantation estate significantly and strategically”.
If forestry markets are so positive as this article wants us to believe, then why isn’t the marketplace responding and farmers planting trees? Surely that is the way markets work is it not? More demand triggers higher prices triggers more supply etc, etc.. Classic economics!!
But Australia does not have a forestry market. There is no relationship in Australia between wood supply, demand, price, cost and profit. None!
And that is the result of deliberate industry and Government policy.
The end result is that the forest industry has no commercial credibility and farmers don’t plant trees.
And the forest industry has no clue whatsoever how to fix this problem except write blustering rubbish like this.
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Posted in Commentary, Plantations, Politics