Australia goes soft on timber ban

Aug 26, 2009. /Lesprom Network/. Forestry Minister Tony Burke has quietly signed off on changes watering down an election promise to ''ban'' imports of timber illegally logged overseas to instead ''promote the trade'' of legal timber, as reported by Australian paper The Age. It comes as the peak body for the local plantation and paper industry joins Greenpeace today to call for the Government to fulfil the election promise to block illegal timber imports. In a document obtained by The Age and signed by Mr Burke in January, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry recommends the new policy direction be adopted as it ''leaves open the option to consider a broad range of policy options for combating illegal logging''. The document also says the domestic industry has concerns that ''any action'' to block timber from illegal logging overseas may hurt its bottom line. The Federal Government believes that of all timber imported into Australia, 9 per cent - worth $400 million annually - is logged illegally, mainly in Indonesian and Papua New Guinean rainforests. During the 2007 election the ALP promised it would ''encourage sourcing of forest products from sustainable forest practices and seek to ban the sale of illegally logged timber imports''. But under the changes approved by Mr Burke, the policy now states ''the Australian Government will combat illegal logging and its associated trade by establishing systems that will promote trade in legally logged timber and wood products and, in the long term, trade timber and wood products from sustainably managed forests''. Reece Turner, forests campaigner for Greenpeace, said the policy to ''block'' illegally logged timber in Australia has now been abandoned with the minister's approval and called for the Government to keep to its election commitment. Greenpeace today will release a statement from paper and plantation industry group A3P and several other timber companies calling for the policy to be implemented. It comes on the back of a number of large timber and furniture retailers - including IKEA, Bunnings, Fantastic Furniture, Danks Hardware and Simmonds Lumber - making a similar call in June. Mr Burke said he was committed to a policy that has ''systems of verification and certification which begin in the country of harvest and continue through to nations where the timber processing occurs''. ''That's why Australia has already negotiated agreements with Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and why we're in further discussions with Malaysia and China,'' he said. The Agriculture Department has commissioned the Centre for International Economics to prepare a report considering all policy options from a voluntary industry code to full bans. It was expected CIE's report and policy recommendations would be handed to the minister in July, but Mr Burke said he had not yet received either.