Victoria’s mills want local timber. Can the Coalition’s forest pledge deliver it safely?

Victoria’s Coalition is offering mills a route back to local public-forest timber—but tying that supply to restoration and bushfire prevention, not an unrestricted resumption of commercial harvesting. Its October 28 election pledge would send wood recovered through thinning and fuel-reduction work to Victorian processors. The proposal depends on a Jess Wilson-led Coalition winning government at the November 28 election.⁠11⁠2

That connection is both the policy’s attraction and its central dispute. Mills see supply and employment; conservation groups see native logging returning under a different name. Whether communities become safer and forests healthier depends on the work selected, not simply on finding a market for the wood.

The proposed Forest Management Program would target 5,000 hectares of degraded public forest annually for thinning and fuel reduction. Recovered timber would become sawlogs, firewood, biochar or mulch, with revenue reinvested in Victoria. The package also promises maintained firebreaks, pest and weed control, more rangers, expanded cultural burning with Indigenous Victorians, and increased annual reporting on biodiversity and ecological outcomes.⁠11

Those commitments should not be rolled into one impressive-sounding total. The 5,000 hectares concerns targeted thinning and fuel reduction. Doubling planned burning is a relative promise without a stated starting baseline. Separately, public land spokesperson Melina Bath promises to work towards treating five percent of treatable public land annually, invoking the Bushfires Royal Commission, but without a year for reaching it.⁠11

“Make no mistake, this is about forest management,” Bath told ABC. She argues that firebreak work would yield logs while helping firefighters enter forests during wildfires, and that ending native timber operations damaged Gippsland and the north-east. Nationals leader Danny O’Brien presents the treatment program as support for regional jobs.⁠1

Hurley expects local timber to support employment and offer consumers a better price. He also says Heyfield has been affected by bushfire three times in 25 years. Those are understandable reasons for welcoming the proposal, but his price forecast remains a business expectation, and the town’s fire history does not establish that this thinning program would have prevented those fires.⁠1

Wood Central reports Bath’s “raw estimate” of 100,000–200,000 tonnes of timber annually from thinning and salvage. That is not a guaranteed supply commitment. Mills would still need wood of suitable quality, available reliably and economical to process; an area target alone cannot promise lasting employment.⁠15

Commercial native timber harvesting in Victoria’s state forests ended on January 1, 2024. VicForests closed that June, transferring its remaining property, rights and liabilities to the government. The forestry transition program ended in June 2026. These were substantial changes to public-forest supply, not the closure of Victoria’s entire timber industry.⁠3⁠1

Victoria retains Australia’s largest plantation estate: 382,600 hectares, mainly radiata pine and southern blue gum. Plantation pine supplies construction and pulp and paper manufacturing. The environment department remains responsible for managing state forests for bushfire risk and biodiversity. The choice is therefore not management versus no management, but which interventions should follow the end of commercial native harvesting.⁠3

The Victorian Forest Products Association supports the package. Chief executive Andrew White welcomes lower fuel loads, camera investment and putting recovered timber to its highest-value use. That endorsement makes the commercial interest clear, but does not establish that every proposed treatment would reduce fire severity or protect habitat.⁠15

Opponents include the Victorian National Parks Association, Environment Victoria, the Wilderness Society and the Victorian Forest Alliance, grouped as Victorians for Nature. Alliance spokesperson Nic Fox warns particularly about greater gliders and powerful owls, which depend on hollows in older trees. National Parks Association campaigner Jordan Crook calls the policy “logging wrapped in new branding”.⁠1

The Coalition promises to protect old-growth and hollow-bearing trees. That is a consequential commitment, not yet a demonstrated safeguard: the announcement does not explain how those trees would be identified or compliance enforced. Fox argues that standing forests also provide drinking water, erosion control, carbon storage, habitat and tourism.⁠11⁠1

The alliance’s alternative is plantation value-adding and farm forestry. It cites research covering 42,000 hectares of previously logged Central Highlands mountain ash forest as a warning about regeneration failure, and points to Black Summer’s damage to habitat and timber supply. Environment Victoria’s Chris Schuringa argues that past logging and catastrophic fires have left too little native hardwood for a revival. These are the alliance’s arguments, not measurements of a program that has yet to begin.⁠17

Its financial objections also need careful handling. The alliance claims VicForests lost A$127 million in 2019–23, received A$466 million in government support in 2019–24, and that transition spending reached at least A$1.5 billion. Those historical figures have not been independently reconciled here; they should neither be added together nor mistaken for a costing of this proposal.⁠17

The research does not support a blanket verdict that thinning always works—or never does. A 2025 study of restoration thinning in one regrowth river red gum floodplain forest found minor and temporary effects on understorey fuels. Its abstract describes limited and conflicting evidence for thinning’s effectiveness in Australian eucalypt forests. That is a finding about a particular setting and fuel attributes, not a statewide estimate of lives or properties saved.⁠20

A 2026 examination of mechanical thinning—partial tree removal using tracked or wheeled machines—recognises reduced fire risk under certain conditions in fire-suppressed forest types. It also identifies possible drought-resilience and habitat-restoration benefits in some settings, alongside ecological trade-offs. Neither study predicts the consequences of the Coalition’s program. Forest type, treatment and conditions matter.⁠21

Choosing work by risk rather than acreage is another fault line. Wood Central reports that a parliamentary committee examining the summer fires backed Victoria’s risk-based approach and warned that hectare targets could encourage quotas over risk reduction. Friends of the Earth Melbourne’s Cam Walker likewise warns against pressuring land managers to meet area targets.⁠15

Bath promises to publish fuel-management targets and delivered work. Her claim that management under Labor has fallen below one percent of public land does not supply the missing baseline for doubling planned burns. Transparency would be useful, but the important result is reduced danger where people and ecosystems are most exposed—not merely a larger annual total.⁠15

Earlier fire detection is a separate, less politically divided element. The Coalition pledges A$2.52 million over four years, alongside industry investment, for a A$4.41 million camera network at 18 locations. It promises round-the-clock, 360-degree monitoring across more than 1.46 million hectares, supplying early smoke alerts and real-time intelligence to firefighters. Those are proposed capabilities, not delivered results.⁠11

Wood Central reports that the existing network detected 46 fires in 2024–25—not that it prevented 46 fires—and that Labor has agreed to match industry dollar for dollar towards a A$3.8 million expansion. Detection technology has support on both sides, though the available descriptions do not establish identical scope for the differently priced projects.⁠15

Legal authority remains unresolved. National Parks Association executive director Matt Ruchel argues that former national environmental-law exemptions have gone and much of the state enabling framework has been removed. The alliance says rebuilding broad-scale logging arrangements could take years. These are objections, not a court ruling that the proposed restoration program is unlawful; equally, calling timber “recovered” does not establish permission to cut and sell it.⁠17

A Coalition victory would create an opportunity to attempt the program, not settle those questions. The announcement leaves the first treatment areas, delivery timetable, detailed legal pathway, full budget and numerical commitment to lasting jobs unresolved. For Heyfield’s mills and communities facing fire risk, those missing particulars will determine whether this is a workable forest-management program or a timber promise it cannot reliably deliver.⁠11