The State Labor Government’s so-called transition of native forest harvesting to plantation hardwood timber has again been shown to be a disingenuous fabrication.

East Gippsland Nationals’ MP, Tim Bull, said Labor spruiked in a media release, it had planted one million seedlings in Gippsland, providing no detailed information regarding the species of seedlings used.

“I then lodged questions which were recently responded to and confirmed all one million plantings were pine (softwood), not one was hardwood,” Mr Bull said.

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly stated building with wood is the biggest climate change mitigation measure we can take and goes on to say we should be using a balance of plantation and sustainably harvested native forest.

“Not only has Labor removed native timber harvesting in contradiction to this, it is not looking to replace the resource.

“It again begs the question Labor has never been able to answer - where is our hardwood supply going to come from both in the short term and long term?

“The height of hypocrisy is, that this government ended the native hardwood industry, yet is ironically putting out media releases spruiking that it is building Victorian infrastructure with hardwood sourced from the Top End of Australia.

“The Allan Labor Government has committed to building a series of new piers around Port Phillip, using Darwin Stringybark.

“Labor never planned a transition to hardwood plantation, it was simply more weasel words from the government and yet another case of their dishonesty coming back to haunt them,” said Mr Bull.

Monday, 4 November 2024