COLLIE’S Forest Products Commission (FPC) office is expected to close within the next couple of months, taking 12 jobs with it.
The office had already cut administration positions and manager Greg Hodgson in December thought the rest of the local jobs were safe.
But he was in Albany on Tuesday discussing a bleak future with Community and Public Sector Union/Civil Service Association of WA assistant branch secretary Jo Gaines, and staff from FPC offices across the state’s south.
In late January, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Terry Redman ann-ounced he had set up a taskforce to investigate selling the FPC’s fee-for-service and sharefarming division to the private sector. It had eight weeks to report (a period ending in April) but “our jobs should be all right until then”, Mr Hodgson said,
Ms Gaines expected the commission’s share-farming program, which plants and manages trees on more than 600 farms in WA would be scrapped. “The whole exercise is being driven by the Economic Audit Committee and a philosophical position taken by the Government,” Ms Gaines said.
“The Government believed that because private industry was involved in forestry it should be involved in planting trees.”
But the only tree planting involving the private sector was blue gums for wood chips, which were ready for harvest in 10 years.
Only the FPC was involved in planting hard woods which took longer to grow. If it was felled, there would be even more logging pressure on old growth forest. The FPC had more than 50,000 hectares in hard wood tree share farms and more than 500 landholders inv-olved. Ms Gaines said another 120 farmers were ready to sign share farm contracts in the next financial year.
“The FPC was profitable until a major fire in the Gnangara mound and the effects of global financial problem,” Ms Gaines said.
It was only $10 million in the red and this would easily be returned to the Government given its previous record. “It will only take a year or two to overcome the consequences of these events,” she said.
She and Mr Hodgson both asked what would happen to the farmers.
“Sixty-two more jobs in the South-West are to go in the potentially disastrous privatisation,” Ms Gaines said.
Twenty would be lost from Manjimup, 10 from Bunbury, 14 from Albany, 3.5 jobs from Esperance and three jobs from Katanning.
“This is the first attempt by this Government to forcibly sell off a group of workers where the workers will have no right to redeployment in government or redundancy,” Ms Gaines said. “If they do not accept a ‘similar’ job with a private operator (at as little as 80 per cent of their current salary) they will be sacked.
“We call on the Regional Development Minister, Brendon Grylls, and Agriculture Minister, Terry Redman, to not privatise the FPC but to use the small amount of money needed from the $74 million available under Royalties for Regions, to preserve the jobs and the invaluable service the FPC provides to the environment and community.”
Not much money was needed , she said. FPC had been profitable until the global financial crisis and fire had made a huge impact on its income.
“Many farmers will lose income from the commission to manage some of these trees. Who will compensate the farmers? What will happen to those trees ... for the last week, over half the Albany staff have been dep-loyed to Esperance to fight the fires. Who will do this if we lose public service staff with fire expertise to private enterprise?”
Already Australia imported more than $2 billion in timber for building and furniture. That sum would rise, she said.
Shadow Agriculture Minister Mick Murray said FPC could have traded through its difficulties with only a little help from Royalties for Regions funding. “It’s not being shared equitably,” the Collie-Preston MLA said.
FPC was just waiting for federal funds for plantations (federal money is being restructured) but could not hang on that long.
Mr Hodgson said farmers were hoping to lobby the Agriculture Minister at the Wagin Woolarama .
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