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Tasmania’s $10 million On Island Processing Program is helping boost value-adding of Tasmanian timber across the State, including at Bakes Sawmill which this week opened its upgraded mill at Gowrie Park south of Devonport. Source: Timberbiz Resources Minister Felix Ellis said that, supported by a $147,688 grant from the State Government, the sawmill had successfully completed installation and commissioning of new wood treatment equipment. “This new equipment will re-direct 420 cubic metres of timber per annum to produce treated timber for a range of products, adding value to what was previously chipped residue wood,” he said. Instead, the wood treatment equipment allows Bakes Sawmill to value-add and treat the timber to produce: Building cladding products Building framing timbers for internal and external use Landscaping and garden products in a range of profiles, and Treated natural logs for cabins. Bakes Sawmill is one of seven Tasmanian timber processing facilities to share in a $6 million investment through the first round of the On-Island Processing Program to help the forestry sector turn existing wood supplies, as well as wood residues, into higher-value products. Mr Ellis said that successful local projects are adding value to the current timber harvest, optimising the use of wood residues and waste, reducing the need for imported wood products and supporting the local construction industry. “The program is also helping to improve timber recovery processes that will see more local wood replacing imported timber, increased output of treated pine products and an expansion of the amount of sawn timber and by-products generated from lower grade logs. “Everyone knows the Rockliff Liberal Government is the strongest supporter of the forestry sector which supports more than 5600 jobs in regional Tasmania,” he said. “Tasmanians also know that they cannot trust Labor when it comes to forestry. Given half a chance they will do a deal with the Greens and shut down this industry which is vital to our building sector and also providing fibre for a plastic-free future.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has committed to stripping the Environmental Defenders Office of all Commonwealth funding should he win the next election. The EDO, which again began receiving money from Labor last year after a 10-year funding drought initiated by the Abbott government, recently lost a case brought by the North East Forest Alliance (NEFA) against the Commonwealth of Australia and the State of NSW with its lawyers arguing that the RFA should not have been renewed without assessment and approval under federal environment laws. Source: Timberbiz And it lost a landmark case against Santos’s $5.3bn Barossa LNG project, with claims the company’s proposed 262km pipeline off the Northern Territory would cause irreparable damage to First Nations people and their sites being rejected. In that case Federal Court Judge Natalie Charlesworth offered a stinging critique of the claims put forward by the EDO, saying that she had “drawn conclusions about the lack of integrity in some aspects of the cultural mapping exercise, which undermined my confidence in the whole of it”. Mr Dutton, speaking at a Chamber of Minerals and Energy event in Perth, said the EDO’s conduct in the case discredited the non-government organisation and it should be defunded as a result. He said a Coalition government would not allow activists to hold sway over Australia’s industries and economy. And on Monday, Northern Territory chief minister Eva Lawler confirmed she had tasked her environment minister with taking a closer look at its $100,00-a-year contract with the EDO. Shadow Minister for the Environment, Fisheries and Forestry Jonno Duniam welcomed the Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton’s announcement. “The Albanese Government should never have given the EDO $8.3 million. The only thing that the EDO has done is frustrated our courts and brought important projects to a standstill,” he said. “It is beyond belief that the Albanese Government has undermined Government environmental approvals processes by funding an organisation that appeals these decisions. “The environmental lawfare the EDO has engaged in needs to be called out. Industry partners need to have confidence that they won’t drown in green and red tape when they invest in Australia. But the Albanese Government has instead sent a clear message to partners that they should look elsewhere,” he said. “Labor has not held the EDO accountable for its inexcusable conduct in the Barossa court case and needs to do so.” Shadow Minister for Resources, Senator Susan McDonald said the EDO’s lack of integrity was exposed when Justice Charlesworth slammed it for its conduct in the Barossa court case, highlighting confected evidence and cases of witness coaching. “The Labor Government should not be funding ideological activist organisations to bring forward vexatious claims and launch actions against the government’s own regulator, just to secure votes in inner-city seats under threat from the Greens political party,” she said. “It is time the EDO comes clean and tells the Australian people whether the funding used to attack our vital energy projects was taxpayer money or whether it comes from unnamed foreign donors.”