24 August 2012

Australia and New Zealand have signed a pledge to work together to stamp out illegal logging, but NZ wood exporters are worried that their shipments could be caught up in an Australian ban.

Australian Federal forestry minister Joe Ludwig and his New Zealand counterpart, associate primary industry minister Nathan Guy, signed the pledge in Canberra on Tuesday, during forestry talks at Parliament House. Their talks included discussions about Australia’s Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill 2011.

Minister Ludwig said the arrangement recognises that illegal logging and associated trade is a significant global problem and that Australia and New Zealand will together play an important role in combating these practices.

Minister Guy said Australia and New Zealand share a significant trade in timber products. In 2010-11, New Zealand was the largest export supplier of forest products to Australia with trade valued at $715 million.

"New Zealand is a low-risk market because we import very little timber, however it makes sense for our two countries to work together.”

New Zealand Wood Processors Association chief executive Jon Tanner says this country strongly supports international measures to ban illegal logging.

But he says what's concerning the timber industry is the lack of any definition so far in the Australian bill about what illegal timber actually means.

"The definition could be narrow, it could be incredibly broad. The industry is extremely nervous, both exporters in New Zealand and importers in Australia, that we won't be able to define and describe our products as legal because we don't know what we're trying to describe."

Mr Tanner says it might go beyond timber products to all wood-fibre products, such as packaging - for example, the sort of packaging that encloses a 25-kilo bag of milk solids or a tray of kiwifruit or apples going across the Tasman.

"In the sense that that packaging may contain recycled fibre, which could have come from anywhere in the world," he says, "it will be very difficult to put your hand on your heart as an exporter and say that those products are packaged in legal packaging."

The Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill 2011 passed the Australian House of Representatives yesterday and will soon be introduced to the Senate. New Zealand has a representative on the stakeholder working group for the development of the legislation.

Sources: ABC News, Radio New Zealand and NZ Government media release