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The Housing Industry Association wants the newly elected Federal Government to make housing a first-order priority from day one, saying any delay or political grandstanding will only deepen the nation’s housing crisis. Source: Timberbiz “HIA would like to congratulate the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese and the ALP for securing its term of government and it looks forward to constructively working with them in the new parliament,” HIA Managing Director Jocelyn Martin said. “We additionally would like to thank Peter Dutton for his two decades of service to the Australian parliament and equally to Michael Sukkar, who has been a key housing advocate in both government and opposition.” Ms Martin said access to a home, whether to rent or own, was becoming unattainable for too many Australians. “This is a challenge that demands a major response in the first days and weeks of the new term of government,” she said. “HIA has been clear throughout the election campaign that all sides of politics must provide bold and courageous leadership to deliver on the nations critical housing shortages and meet the National Housing Accord target of 1.2 million new homes. “The industry has laid out the plan through HIA’s Let’s Build agenda, to fast-track planning, unlock land, invest in infrastructure, and build the skilled workforce needed to deliver the homes Australia needs. “Too often, we see housing policy used as a platform to showboat rather than solve real problems. Australians want practical and meaningful reform. Holding housing legislation hostage to political theatre only pushes the dream of home ownership further out of reach.” Ms Martin also pushed back against any suggestion that the housing crisis lies outside the Federal Government’s remit. “We’ve heard it too often that housing and planning is a state issue, or that the Commonwealth has limited levers to pull. That excuse simply doesn’t stack up anymore,” she said. “The Federal Government has the influence, the resources and the leadership role to bring all levels of government together. It can drive the coordinated policy, funding and reform needed to move the dial on supply and affordability not just tinker at the edges.” Ms Martin said this had been reinforced in the election results and with voters outlining housing as a key issue to be addressed as a matter of priority. “We urge the new Government and the entire Parliament to work together to implement the solutions already on the table,” she said. “Housing Australians must not become a casualty of politics-as-usual. We can’t afford more years of delay and stalling of key policies being implemented – we need action within weeks not years.”

The author read an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2025) article by Fiona Willan in relation to a carbon scheme to protect trees from logging. The ABC article is available here. It is understood that this would see state forests added to the nation’s existing carbon credit scheme and the proposal is one of four chosen for priority development by the federal government and the state government agencies that manage the forests could then earn carbon credits by slowing or stopping logging. Industrial polluters could then buy those credits to offset their emissions as the nation moves towards its goal of reaching net zero by 2050. The proposal has been criticised by the timber industry and the federal opposition. The author glanced through the article and proposal, other information at hand, and noted important issues that were not and apparently are not being considered, especially considering the potential scale of proposed reduced timber harvesting, important forestry and carbon science areas not assessed, loss of active and adaptive management, minimal rates of prescribed burning underway in SE Australia, increasing eucalypt decline, large contiguous fuel loads across landscapes, mega fire concerns, loss of forest fire fighter expertise and the fact that conservation lockup isn’t protection from decline nor bushfires. The US is well onto reducing bushfire risks, increasing forest fire resilience, reducing carbon emissions and tackling community safety under their US bipartisan infrastructure bill, US National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy and other legislation and policies.  Here in Australia, much of the focus appears to be focussed on destroying native forestry harvesting and it is the authors belief is that Australia is currently paying and will pay the price for this. The author has outlined 10 important factors in Section 2 in relation to the push to stop or reduce native forestry logging under an expanded carbon credit scheme, these are outlined in the full review document attached here: The complete article is available here. There is considerable science supporting the success of native forest harvesting in capturing carbon, this is outlined in detail in the review. In the author’s opinion, what is usually missed in relation to native forestry and harvesting and carbon capture and offsetting science include a number of issues: The science supporting the value of native forest harvesting in relation to carbon capture is ignored The areas harvested each year are small Growth of older trees slows down and in most cases decay increases, reducing carbon storage Regrowth is progressive each year over the small areas allowed for native forestry, capturing carbon. If past harvesting hadn’t occurred, there would have been a lot more emissions Adaptive and active management assist in addressing the carbon issue. Forest Corp are working on tackling eucalypt decline, due to the lack of mild fire across landscapes to improve forest health and optimise carbon capture Considerable volumes of carbon are stored in harvested wood products. Including sawn timber, veneers, beams, flooring, poles, fencing etc Considerable areas are retained in flora reserves and other areas Forest access, fire trails and skilled forestry operators increase speed of bushfire attack in many situations, reducing loss of carbon from bushfires Inevitable intense bushfires resulting from minimal prescribed burning and long fire interval policies kill large numbers of trees and markedly reduce the health of remaining trees for around 10 years plus, the carbon impacts are that high. This further reduces carbon storage, in most cases markedly.  In relation to the disastrous impacts of the 2019/ 20 bushfires on carbon emissions, there are many papers in relation to this; and Transport distances and carbon usage is low with local production and large with imported timber. These are all important issues that are conveniently missed in green agendas. Attempting to stop native forestry for so called imaginary climate change credits is not the answer, seriously, again ignoring many key factors and science. Lock up management does not work, adaptive management does, and it is totally unclear to the author why Australia and some governments would consider closing or reducing native timber harvesting/ thinning, including within dense, high fuel load areas and areas suffering from eucalypt decline, to attempt to gain carbon offsets. Opportunities to realise carbon and biodiversity benefits using native forestry science and adaptive management are outlined in Section 3. It is important that Forestry Australia has submitted an alternative carbon method proposal for consideration under the Proponent-Led Method Development Process for the ACCU Scheme called Enhancing Native Forest Resilience.  This focusses on improving the health and resilience of native forests and encouraging active, adaptive management of native forests across all land tenures to assist Australia in meeting its Paris Agreement targets, all important issues. The US bipartisan infrastructure bill, US National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy and other legislation provide an effective approach to reducing fuels, increasing prescribed burning, improving forest health and forest resilience and expanding community wildfire mitigation work, reducing the extent and impacts of wildfires and consequent carbon emissions.  This provides a model for Australia, a practical approach and not an offsets scheme. John O’Donnell was a forester with the then NSW Forestry Commission for 11 years. He holds a Bachelor of Science (Forestry) Hons 1978 from Australian National University and a Post Graduate Diploma in Agronomy and Farming Systems from the University of Adelaide 1996 and 1997, majoring in environmental issues in agriculture. He was awarded a Commonwealth Forestry Scholarship in 1976 and 1977.  

You couldn’t make this stuff up even if you tried. If you had written a book about a global economic situation such as the current one, it would have been a flop as it would have seemed too farfetched and laughable, but here we are. Let’s not for a moment think that this isn’t what the majority of Americans signed up for though as tariffs and protectionism were a large part of Trumps campaigning and it’s not like he’s known for being predictable. Add to that the fact that something had to be done to stem the bleed that has led the US national debt to rise by US$12.3 trillion in the last five years to a total of US$36.2 trillion (sound familiar?) I’m not sure that severing everyone else’s arteries is the best way to stem your bleed, however. The tariff roulette wheel has been spinning furiously for the past few weeks, and you would have more chance of hitting a bullseye on a dartboard blindfolded after drinking a bottle of whisky than predicting where tariffs will end up on a country-by-country basis. What we do know is that our largest trading partner, China, probably isn’t going to fare that well. In 2024, around 30% of the furniture manufactured in China headed off to the US. China is not the biggest supplier into the US however with Vietnam exporting double the value of Chinese exports into the US. Of the total volume of furniture consumed in the US, 52% was made domestically, but the actual value of the imported furniture inputs was 63% meaning that some imported products were used in domestic manufacturing. So, what does this mean for NZ? With a current US: China tariff of 145% (pick a number for what it could be next week) it’s very likely that there will be a significant reduction in goods manufactured in China headed to the US – furniture included. NZ grown radiata is very popular in the Chinese furniture industry due to its properties as it can easily be sawn, dried, glued, laminated, painted and stained. This sector has become more important to NZ as the construction sector continues to suffer and demand for NZ radiata in construction has reduced significantly from 2021 onwards. Having said that, China demand for NZ logs is still strong with off port uplift in the order of 70,000m3 per day in late March. On port inventory remains a bit stubborn at a shade under 4million m3, however, this has reduced by 100,000m3 in the past few weeks. March is historically a big supply month for NZ and this year was no different with plenty of vessels on the water. This supply, along with uncertainty in the market, has resulted in a downturn in buyer sentiment with April CFR prices dropping 8-10% based on March numbers. This drop in sentiment has led to a reduction in AWG prices across NZ of around NZ$10/JAS. Generally, reductions are reasonably static across exporters however, April has seen a significant spread across the board with reductions between NZ$8 and NZ$16/M3 depending on exporter and port. The effect of tariffs on bulk shipping rates will depend on reciprocal tariffs as the US only accounts for 2.3% of global dry bulk demand, however, it does account for 5.7% of dry bulk exports. FOREX has been playing the game if you’re an exporter with fluctuations between mid US$0.55 and US$0.57. Every cent reduction in the $NZ:US is around NZ$3/m3 on the bottom line for AWG prices. The Chinese log futures market hasn’t been terribly positive of late either. After trading mostly positively since its inception, pricing has dropped around 10% since the beginning of March primarily due to negative market sentiment. Carbon prices dropped off a cliff in early March falling from $63/NZU to around $55/NZU by month end. Market jitters are not helped by the likes of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton, suggesting that it was time to phase out forestry offsets for fossil fuel emissions. That’s all well and good but cows aren’t yet farting oxygen, and the large majority of the population still drives to work (let’s not start on the conversation about the lifecycle carbon footprint of EV’s). The domestic market continues to show resilience with prices mostly flat for the second quarter of the year. Once again, tariffs could come into play here as a significant volume of the clearwood sawn from pruned logs is sold into the US DIY market. Currently, there is a temporary tariff exemption on NZ forest products. This exemption for timber and lumber products came about through internal US lobbying by the likes of the American Building Materials Alliance and the National Association of Home Builders who urged the White House to rethink tariffs that would weaken a critical supply chain for housing affordability and construction, particularly in a time when areas have been affected by natural disasters. Additionally, the US Secretary of Commerce is investigating the role imported timber plays in national security. The US military spends US$10 billion annually on construction alone so wood-based products are seen as a vital part of national security. So, there we have it folks, a proverbial global crap shoot. Those forest owners with locked in, long term export prices will be sitting pretty for the next quarter or two while tariff-gate plays out. NZ supply will start reducing over the next month with the wet season upon us and lower prices preventing some jobs from starting which will see Chinese port inventories reduce into more comfortable territory hopefully putting upward pressure on prices…hopefully. Marcus Musson, Forest360 Director