govt funding

PM to consider funding timber industry move from native forests to plantations

Matthew Denholm From: The Australian July 16, 2010 1:39PM


Julia Gillard helps Tasmanian MP Sid Sidebottom during a visit to Burnie.
JULIA Gillard says she will consider funding a package to restructure Tasmania's timber industry.
The Prime Minister, visiting marginal seats in the state's north for the first time since becoming Labor leader, endorsed negotiations underway between peak timber industry and union groups and conservationists.

There is a discussion happening between people who have spent a lot of their lives fighting and arguing, Ms Gillard said on a visit to Burnie, in the marginal Labor-held electorate of Braddon, a so-called timber town.

I think that's a good thing that discussion is happening.

That discussion is continuing. If at some point that discussion generates a proposal for consideration by government, then I'll consider it.

She denied the government was involved in the talks, which aim to find a lasting solution to the decades-old conflict over native forest logging in Tasmania.


However, it is understood federal Forestry Minister Tony Burke is being kept informed of progress in the talks, involving the National Association of Forest Industries, Timber Communities Australia, the CFMEU forestry union, The Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Any deal to shift the industry out of native forests and into plantations would require hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars in federal funding.

The talks are continuing, with agreement understood to be close but by no means guaranteed.