The former Chair of the Commonwealth Government’s Forest Industry Advisory Council (FIAC) has delivered a blunt assessment of the Australian Government’s Independent Review of the EPBC Act, arguing the 2020 Samuel Review is “deficient and underwhelming” and provides no credible justification for dismantling Australia’s Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs).
Speaking to Wood Central following a key stakeholder meeting on Friday, Rob de Fégely AM, who from 2012 to 2017 was elected president of the Institute of Foresters for Australia (now known as Forestry Australia), said he felt “honour bound” to speak publicly because the Review examined forestry issues “on my watch and we were not made aware of it.”
de Fégely — who now chairs Sustainable Timber Tasmania and sits on the board of Forestry Corporation of NSW — stressed that his views are personal and independent of those organisations. Even so, he warned that the Commonwealth’s decision to move away from RFAs has “created massive uncertainty” for staff, contractors and customers across public forest agencies.
“The process that was announced on the 27th of November last year is fraught with challenges and, in my experience, probably unworkable.”
Rob de Fégely, the former Chair of the Commonwealth Government’s Forest Industry Advisory Council (FIAC) who spoke to Wood Central today about the “deficient and underwhelming” report which gave justification for winding back the RFAs.
Three major flaws with the Samuel Review — and none justify dismantling RFAs
Upon reviewing the 250‑page report, de Fégely argued that the three forestry issues identified by the Samuel Review do not justify dismantling a system that has taken decades to build.
The Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum Inc v VicForests (2020) case, he said, reflected ambiguity in the law rather than systemic failure, noting that one court case in 25 years “is a sign of a system that is working, not a broken one.”
At the same time, he said the bill moved by Senator Bridget McKenzie removed the ambiguity, which is “exactly how the RFAs were meant to work — a process of continuous improvement.”
The second problem cited — delays in completing RFA reviews — was, in his view, the result of implementation failures shared by the Commonwealth rather than evidence of a flawed framework.
Whilst he also rejected Samuel’s claim that the community does not trust the EPBC Act to deliver environmental benefits, describing it as a qualitative assertion unsupported by evidence, noting that public trust fluctuates across many institutions, from banks and airlines to supermarkets and politicians.
None of the issues raised, he said, justify abandoning “35 years of investment in time, effort and systems” underpinning sustainable forest management. “Forestry is a long‑term business in which plantation decisions span 30 years and natural forest decisions often span a century.”
Show me the data: where is the baseline for national parks and reserves?
de Fégely argued that national parks and reserves lack formal annual reporting, leaving the Commonwealth without baseline data to measure “net gain” in forest environments — a central element of the proposed reforms. And his concerns also extend to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water’s draft policy position, which he questioned how net gain could be measured without statistically valid monitoring of parks and reserves.
A single national standard, he said, cannot reflect the complexity of Australia’s diverse forest types, from Queensland’s spotted gum and ironbark to Western Australia’s jarrah and karri.
“There is a reason that 10 RFAs were established across four states – forests are complex systems, and there is no one-size-fits-all.”
The proposed new mitigation hierarchy — avoidance, mitigation, repair and offsetting — is already embedded in the RFA framework through the reserve system, Codes of Practice, certification and long‑standing offset arrangements.
And while the Commonwealth’s $300 million support package is generous, de Fégely said it appears directed at processors rather than forest managers and therefore does little to improve environmental outcomes.
“I also do not believe that someone or an agency that calls for submissions via their website is undertaking genuine consultation.”
‘I never imagined it would come to this’
Reflecting on 50 years in forestry, he said he never imagined it would become “so damn hard to produce in harmony with nature the world’s most renewable product.” Australia, he said, should be “hanging its collective head in shame” for importing wood despite being the world’s seventh most forested nation.
If the Commonwealth wants to improve environmental outcomes, de Fégely argued, it should focus on the top three threats identified in the State of the Environment report: stopping land clearing, investing in fire prevention and eradicating pest plants and animals, particularly cats and foxes.
“Forest harvesting is a 10th-order issue.”
And that’s why Fégely is extending an invitation to the Prime Minister and federal ministers and officials to travel to visit Tasmania, and see Sustainable Timber Tasmania’s management of more than 800,000 hectares of natural forest: “You will see forests full of wildlife, threatened species being actively managed, extensive eagle and swift parrot surveys, AI‑enabled fire detection, multi‑use forest management and the Tasmanian Forest Practices Authority’s regulatory model in action.”
- To find out more about the EPBC Act and it’s implications for Australia’s forests and forest products value chain, click here for Wood Central’s special feature.
