Victoria’s Timber Towns are urging Jacinta Allen and the Victorian government to act now and support communities still impacted by its 2024 swift decision to end native forestry, as the East Gippsland community continue to mourn the loss of the historic Swifts Creek sawmill and looks to reinvent itself.
“This mill closure is the glaring outcome of an ad-hoc decision by the government that has lasting impacts across communities at so many levels,” according to Karen Stephens, President of Timber Towns Victoria, which represents municipalities in the state’s north, east and west. “The Swift Creek community need genuine government support that has dependable outcomes.”
Stephens, herself a councillor and mayor of the Glenelg Shire in the state’s southwest, said the closure highlights the ongoing challenges local communities face as they work to find a future for themselves post native forestry.
“The consequences of the government decision are being felt by every household, business and person within the community.”
Karen Stephens, President of Timber Towns Victoria, on spoke of the flow on effects from the decision to cease native forestry in January 2024.
Established by the Ezard family in the immediate aftermath of the 1939 Black Friday bushfires, the sawmill operated for decades as a hardwood sawmill, supplying structural timber, pallets, and general hardwood products from mountain ash, alpine ash, silvertop ash, and messmate.
Speaking to The Weekly Times last month, long‑time community advocate Stephen Richardson said the mill’s closure has left the Swifts Creek community facing uncertainty: “Swifts Creek is in real trouble,” Richardson warned. “The promise to put all those timber jobs somewhere else locally hasn’t been kept.”
Last month, Wood Central reported that Victorian communities, like Swifts Creek, that are at high risk of fire are far less prepared than they were during the Black Summer fires, with the decision to cease native forestry in 2023 contributing to a talent and resource drain across the state’s timber towns.
“One of the consequences of ending native forest harvesting has been the loss of skilled and experienced operators,” according to Steve Dobbyns, executive officer for Forest and Wood Communities Australia. “We are now seeing that in the bushfire crisis, where multiple pieces of heavy plant — including dozers and harvesting machines — are currently stood down because there are not enough qualified people to operate them. Lives, property and environmental assets are at greater risk when that capability is missing.”
It comes as leaders in East Gippsland called on the Allen government to reinstate key roles cut from the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) and Parks Victoria, who, between them, are now responsible for managing the state’s parks and forests in Cann River, Orbost, Bairnsdale, Swifts Creek and Nowa Nowa.
Speaking about the cuts, Melina Bath, Victoria’s Opposition spokeswoman for Public Land, said restoring the jobs was essential to meeting fuel-reduction targets. “To make sure we are doing the right amount of fuel‑reduction burning, we need the best expertise,” she said. “We don’t want to be hamstrung by metropolitan Melbourne decision-making that is highly ignorant of the reality of fuel loads. We need to be regionalising the workforce.”
