Victorian Code of Forest Practice
In the face of an environmental catastrophe fuelled by industry self regulation that would have destroyed Australia’s “clean green image” and Australia’s reputation on the international timber market, in 1989 almost 200 years after the first tree fell the Victorian Parliament ratified the first Code of Forest Practices (Code) for timber production in Native forests.
In 1996 the code was re written but contained ambiguous wording and was open to interpretation allowing government regulators to encourage native forest practices to support logging for wood chipping.
Clauses in the 1996 Code made much of the implementation meaningless e.g. The definition of guidance on page 9 is “Forest mangers are not obliged to conduct any of the actions covered under guidance” although “Guidance” made up a large amount to the practical environmental on the ground protection.
The Code was reviewed in 2006 but rather than strengthening the original premise to protect the environment the Department of Sustainability and Environment introduced measures such as “thinning” which clearly transition the native frosts from a state of nature to one of intensive agro forestry namely for wood chipping.
The 1996 code stated that native forests are not to be converted to “timber production”, whilst the revised code does not make this as clear and in fact focuses more heavily on “timber” conversion activities like:
- Thinnings
- Fertilizers
- Intensive harvesting practices
- Seed selection
In other words the current revised code is focusing more heavily on converting native forests to “timber production” than on protection of the environmental values.
For this very reason the 200 revised code was opposed by environmental groups who submitted concerns to the independent consultancy GHD. Unfortunately the Department of Sustainability and Environment used these comments to further close loop holes in the code.
The Labor government of the time tried to rush the changes through and the changes to the code were illegally gazetted by the Victorian Environment minister of the time the Hon. John Thwaites (Ironically of legal background). Hence it wasn’t passed till 2007.
Unfortunately the current code does not have a structure that reflects the bureaucracy that governs it.
The code is ambiguous because it references many other documents that govern it whilst those governing documents are much less prescriptive and much less binding.