The NSW Agriculture Minister has been urged to halt negotiations to extend North Coast Wood Supply Agreements, with critics saying native forest logging makes no environmental or economic sense post-bushfires and now floods.
In Budget Estimates this week, Agriculture Minister Dugald Saunders admitted he had not read a Natural Resources Commission report leaked last year which found native forests were at risk of "serious and irreversible harm … from the cumulative impacts of fire and harvesting".
He confirmed Forestry Corporation NSW, the state's main supplier of native timber, sent letters to North Coast logging companies late last year saying negotiations had commenced to extend their contracts for another 5 years.
If extended, the contracts would lock Forestry Corporation into harvesting "existing annual quantities" of native trees in state forests.
Independent South Coast MP Justin Field grilled Mr Saunders on the feasibility of guaranteeing such volumes given the reduction in viable timber supply in state forests after the Black Summer bushfires.
Mr Saunders said Forestry Corporation manages wood supply over a 100-year sustainable yield model.
"State forests generate renewable timber products … in a way that is carefully managed so that forest values are preserved, and forests continue to grow and produce renewable timber in perpetuity", Mr Saunders said.
But Mr Field argued there was no reason or imperative to renew the contracts.
The NRC report, commissioned by government, determined the volume of high-quality wood supply on the north coast has been reduced by nearly 20 per cent.
The report recommended a three-year suspension of all logging from February 2020 in extreme risk zones and restricted logging in high-risk areas.
"Let's see a formal government response to [the NRC report] before [they] start signing the state up to wood supply contracts that [they] may never be able to deliver."
A spokesperson said the Forestry Corporation was working with North Coast customers to extend the contracts that expire in 2023 to provide the "short term certainty they need to continue investing in their businesses and creating jobs for local people".
Taxpayers exposed to millions in financial liability
There is concern the contracts are financially irresponsible given the government would have to pay compensation if it failed to fulfil them.
"Imagine signing the state up to tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts that you can't deliver," Mr Field said.
In 2014, the government paid Boral $8.5 million to buy back some of its timber allocations.
Nature Conservation Council chief executive Chris Gambian said the state needed to make sure they were not "unwittingly signing up to commitments it won't be able to meet".
According to Greens MP David Shoebridge, profits from Forestry Corporation's plantation business subsidise "loss-making native forestry operations" which saw a $20 million loss last year.
That figure only took into account the cost of logging and the bushfire recovery bill, and did not include the potential fallout from breached contracts or the missed opportunity to profit from carbon credits.
Forestry Corporation has also recently faced fines for illegal logging in attempts to meet contractual obligations.
Loggings contracts at odds with koala strategy
President of the North East Forest Alliance, Dailan Pugh, said the extension of logging contracts contradicted the government's verbal commitments to double koala populations by 2050.
"We regularly go out to the forests, we do surveys, we find areas where koalas survived the bushfires," Mr Pugh said.
"The NRC recommended there had to be increased retention [of the largest trees] yet the government refuses to implement that advice."
