{"id":751501,"date":"2026-06-21T20:36:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T20:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/751501\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T20:36:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T20:36:21","slug":"victoria-ended-logging-now-its-using-tasmanias-native-forests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/751501\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria ended logging. Now it’s using Tasmania’s native forests"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a freezing, foggy morning as the Searoad Mersey II docks at Melbourne Port.<\/p>\n

We’ve had a tip-off that the truck we’re looking for is on board.<\/p>\n

Hours later, it appears, loaded with Tasmanian logs.<\/p>\n

We chase it.<\/p>\n

Trees from Tasmania’s public forests are not meant to leave the island. But two years after Victoria banned logging in its own state forests, Four Corners has discovered there are Victorian sawmills now relying heavily on Tasmania for supply. In some cases, Victorian taxpayers are even subsidising the practice.<\/p>\n

\"A Four Corners follows a truck loaded with logs from Melbourne Port to a sawmill.(Four Corners: Rob Hill)<\/p>\n

We follow the truck east on the motorway, to Melbourne and beyond, on to country roads in the Yarra Valley.<\/p>\n

The log truck turns into a mill in Powelltown, a picturesque former logging town, an hour and a half from the port.<\/p>\n

When we walk to the fence line, we see a timber yard with piles of logs, many with the white stickers used to mark those from Tasmanian state forests.<\/p>\n

\"The Logs in the Powelltown mill, many with white stickers.(Four Corners: Rob Hill)\"A Piles of logs at the sawmill.(Four Corners: Rob Hill)<\/p>\n

It’s clear this sawmill, in a state that’s banned native logging in public forests, has shifted its supply.<\/p>\n

And it’s not the only one.<\/p>\n

Logging public forests<\/p>\n

Just a few kilometres from one of Tasmania’s famed multi-day hikes, the Three Capes Track, the forest gapes open for hundreds of metres.<\/p>\n

Trees are scattered over the muddy ground where they once stood.<\/p>\n

This is what remains of a logging coupe in the island’s south.<\/p>\n

\"An Logs ready to be taken to mills.(Four Corners: Rob Hill)\"An A logging coupe in 50-year-old regrowth forest.(Four Corners: Rob Hill)<\/p>\n

Tasmania has a regulated logging industry, which the state government says is one of the most stringent in the world.<\/p>\n

Part of the state timber company’s mandate to harvest these trees is to support economic growth in Tasmania.<\/p>\n

The state government told Four Corners no logs from public forests like these were leaving the island to be processed interstate.<\/p>\n

That is not what Paul O’Halloran and Patrick Johnson have seen.<\/p>\n

The environmentalists reckon they’ve spent hundreds of hours at the Devonport ferry terminal, in the state’s north, watching logs leave the island.<\/p>\n

O’Halloran says there was a big uptick in 2023, around the time Victoria announced its native forest logging ban.<\/p>\n

\"A Paul O’Halloran and Patrick Johnson have compiled hundreds of photos of log trucks at Devonport.(Supplied: Patrick Johnson\/Paul O’Halloran)\"A The pair say they have spent hundreds of hours at the ferry terminal.(Supplied: Patrick Johnson\/Paul O’Halloran)\"A The government says the truckloads are from privately owned forests.(Supplied: Patrick Johnson\/Paul O’Halloran)\"A The environmentalists believe some must be from public forests.(Supplied: Patrick Johnson\/Paul O’Halloran)<\/p>\n

He became incensed.<\/p>\n

“Tasmanian native forests are already unsustainably logged, and this is just putting more and more pressure on [them],” O’Halloran says.<\/p>\n

The Tasmanian government says the hundreds of truckloads the men have documented over the past three years are from privately owned forests.<\/p>\n

Johnson doesn’t buy it. He thinks with the sheer volume going across, some must be coming from the public estate.<\/p>\n

“In my view, it’s plundering the resources of Tasmania to fill a gap that they’ve got in Victoria because the government made a decision to stop logging.”<\/p>\n

The ban and the billion dollars<\/p>\n

Victoria’s Labor government announced in 2019 that it would stop logging in state forests from 2030.<\/p>\n

A few years later it blindsided the industry, bringing forward the ban to the start of 2024.<\/p>\n

A $1.5 billion pool of money was set aside by the government to support the transition away from native logging. It included investments to move to plantation timber along with money it was contractually obliged to pay to sawmills for cutting off the log supply.<\/p>\n

There were no provisos on how most of it was to be spent.<\/p>\n

The mill we followed the truck to, Powelltown Sawmills, received $9 million in compensation from the Victorian government.<\/p>\n

Four Corners has found it regularly receives native timber logs from Tasmania, from both private and public land.<\/p>\n

Another business is even more intertwined with Tasmanian logging, and it’s effectively being kept alive by Victorian taxpayers.<\/p>\n

The public money trail<\/p>\n

The biggest native hardwood sawmill in Victoria, Australian Sustainable Hardwoods (ASH), now mainly survives on trees from Tasmania: half from plantation and half from native forests.<\/p>\n

It received more than $49 million from the Victorian government’s transition fund over three years.<\/p>\n

\"Lengths Australian Sustainable Hardwoods’s mill in Heyfield.(Four Corners: Rob Hill)<\/p>\n

Forensic accountant Daniela Juric reviewed eight years of ASH’s books. She says government money has enabled the company to buy timber from Tasmania.<\/p>\n

“It looks like an entity that’s struggling to stay afloat without the additional compensation from the Victorian state government.”<\/p>\n

David Lindenmayer, professor of ecology at Australian National University, says Victorians are now effectively paying for logging in Tasmania.<\/p>\n

“The Victorian taxpayer is subsidising destruction of the forests in Tasmania \u2026 that’s just appalling and inappropriate,” he says.<\/p>\n

ASH managing director Vince Hurley says it’s wrong to characterise it as taxpayers’ money as most of it was from a penalty payment they were legally entitled to.<\/p>\n

“You need to ask the Victorian government why they banned native logging and therefore were liable for failure-to-supply payments. I think that’s a question for the Victorian government.”<\/p>\n

\"A Australian Sustainable Hardwoods managing director Vince Hurley.(Four Corners: Rob Hill)<\/p>\n

Hurley says the company has used the money to expand its manufacturing capability and turn low-grade wood from Tasmania into high-value products, like benchtops and mass-engineered beams.<\/p>\n

With 200 people working at the mill, he says the money is keeping the local town alive.<\/p>\n

“Most [Victorian sawmills] closed and [their owners] can drive around in their gold-plated Rolls-Royces or whatever they bought with it,” he says.<\/p>\n

“We’ve reinvested that money in the business to enable ASH to still be here.”<\/p>\n

Victorian taxpayers’ investment in the company, and its logging, goes deeper.<\/p>\n

In 2017, the government paid $61 million buying into the mill when its previous owner threatened to close. Part of that cash gave the government a 49 per cent share in ASH, with the controlling stake shared between Hurley and four other private shareholders.<\/p>\n

The five of them then borrowed money from ASH to buy a Tasmanian sawmill.<\/p>\n

The mill guaranteed ASH access to timber from native forests in Tasmania. Four Corners has learnt the Victorian government green-lit the move.<\/p>\n

\"A A log truck headed to the Tasmanian mill owned by ASH.(Four Corners: Rob Hill)<\/p>\n

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan rejected the suggestion Victoria was shifting logging pressure to Tasmania, saying the government was backing workers and regional communities.<\/p>\n

“We’ll always look at ways to back workers, particularly in these small rural communities where companies like this one, they’re a big and important source of income and support for that area.”<\/p>\n

Environmental Justice Australia’s Nicola Rivers says the government’s $1.5 billion should be funding plantations rather than buying logs from interstate.<\/p>\n

“I think when the Victorian government has ended native forest logging in its own state and told Victorians that native forest logging was ending, it would not \u2026 meet anyone’s expectation that it’s then sourcing its logs from Tasmania,” she says.<\/p>\n

‘Don’t understand why it’s frowned upon’<\/p>\n

ASH can get its timber from Tasmania’s state forests because of the sawmill it owns on the island.<\/p>\n

But just who was selling whole logs from public forests to the mainland remained a mystery, until a phone call out of the blue tied everything together.<\/p>\n

James Neville-Smith, who owns a third-generation timber business, seemed surprised by the Tasmanian government’s insistence that public forest logs weren’t leaving the state.<\/p>\n

Because he has been selling them to Victorian sawmills.<\/p>\n

“It’s a tiny volume and I don’t really understand why it’s frowned upon. I mean, I do understand it would be ideal \u2026 to process everything in Tasmania.”<\/p>\n

\"A James Neville-Smith says Australia could never move to 100 per cent plantation timber.(Four Corners: Rob Hill)<\/p>\n

Neville-Smith says because he had re-tooled one of his sawmills to plantation-only, he needed somewhere else to process his hardwood logs and get products to the supply chain.<\/p>\n

“We have a contract to take the logs. So if we can’t process them because we’re processing plantation logs, then what do we do with them?”<\/p>\n

He says leaving the native trees in the ground isn’t an option because ultimately, consumers want the product.<\/p>\n

“I’ve still got a business that supplies hardware stores and manufacturers all around Australia with beautiful timber that’s in demand,” he says.<\/p>\n

“We need the volume going through the supply chain.”<\/p>\n

\"Two Tasmania’s government says its industry has stringent regulations.(Four Corners: Rob Hill)<\/p>\n

Tasmanian Resources Minister Felix Ellis says it is “disappointing to hear that some logs from state forests may be being on-sent interstate for processing”.<\/p>\n

He says companies are expected to make every effort to process logs in Tasmania, even though current native timber contracts don’t require it.<\/p>\n

“New supply contracts, which are currently under negotiation, will require all timber supplied by Sustainable Timber Tasmania to be processed within Tasmania,” Ellis says.<\/p>\n

The next coupe<\/p>\n

Hugh Nicklason, from the Wilderness Society, has spent much of the past few years monitoring the impact Victoria’s ban has had on Tasmania.<\/p>\n

He takes us to an area in the Central Highlands, not too far from the Overland Track, where a road has just been pushed through and logging is due to start soon.<\/p>\n

He says it’s one of many coupes in the area due to be logged in the next few months.<\/p>\n

“I would say up here is probably the worst logging still happening in Australia today,” Nicklason says.<\/p>\n

The trees in this alpine region are slow-growing, and he estimates the ones around us are 100 years old.<\/p>\n

\"Two Hugh Nicklason says this area in the state’s Central Highlands is at risk of being logged.(Four Corners: Rob Hill)<\/p>\n

Sustainable Timber Tasmania denies there’s been any increase in logging. It says harvesting levels over the past five years have consistently been approximately 5,000 to 6,000 hectares per annum.<\/p>\n

But Nicklason believes the Victorian shutdown has increased logging in areas like this.<\/p>\n

“The reality is that the industry has been on the decline for decades,” he says.<\/p>\n

“That demand should be going down. But because Victoria has ended native forest logging but hasn’t properly transitioned out, we’re seeing vast amounts of timber being sent over there instead.”<\/p>\n

Watch Four Corners’ full investigation, Timber Turmoil, tonight from 8:30 on ABC TV and ABC iview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Photography and video: Rob Hill<\/p>\n

Devonport truck photos supplied by Paul O’Halloran and Patrick Johnson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s a freezing, foggy morning as the Searoad Mersey II docks at Melbourne Port. We’ve had a tip-off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,360658,75,48883,14839,16287,90932,128,12654,90933,111847],"class_list":["post-751501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-sustainable-hardwoods","tag-environment","tag-forestry","tag-four-corners","tag-jacinta-allan","tag-logging","tag-science","tag-timber","tag-timber-industry","tag-wilderness-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}