Timber Workers 'live In Poverty'
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday August 28, 1995
The Carr Government has been accused of breaking a promise to provide a $60 million compensation package for families affected by its forestry reforms after a plea for aid from one Cooma company was rejected.
Mr Peter Cochran, the National Party MP for Monaro, said yesterday that foresters and contractors in the State's south-east forests had been put out of work and forced to live in poverty by the Government's forestry policies.
He said as many as 150 people were likely to be out of work in the area within three months, yet the promised $60 million package for redundancies and redeployment had not materialised.
But a spokeswoman for the Minister for Land and Water Conservation, Mr Yeadon, denied last night that the Government had broken, or intended to break, its promise to provide financial help for families who lost jobs through the restructuring.
She said the restructuring, involving a 30 per cent reduction in timber quotas, would not take effect for another 12 months.
The Government would introduce amendments in the coming Budget session of Parliament to allow it to gain access to funds now tied up in three separate environment trusts.
In the meantime, the new Resource and Conservation Assessment Council is working to identify high-conservation, old-growth forests before reporting to Cabinet to save them from logging.
But Mr Cochran said there was no guarantee the amendments to pave the way for the compensation package would be passed, because the Government did not have a majority in the Legislative Council. This would leave families affected by the restructuring without any form of financial support.
He said the money should be available now, but one Cooma family, Don and Kate O'Reilly, had already been rejected after they applied to the Government for assistance.
"The O'Reilly family at Cooma are now tragically out of work and in the position where they will be forced to move to Victoria for work," Mr Cochran said. "Despite their applications and correspondence with Kim Yeadon, the minister, there has been no response suggesting there will be any funding package available.
"This is the tollways revisited."
Mrs Kate O'Reilly told the Herald the family's contracting business had been starved of timber for 10 weeks and they urgently needed $6,500 to make the monthly payments on their machinery and another $12,000 to shift to Victoria to find work.
Mr O'Reilly sleeps in a caravan near their machinery in the Badja State Forest because they can no longer afford to pay a nightwatchman to guard it against the "saboteurs" who have vandalised it three times.
But Mr Yeadon's spokeswoman said the O'Reillys had been hurt by the Federal Government's move in March to protect 264 forest areas from woodchipping, rather than by any decision of the Carr Government. So they did not qualify for State help.
She said the Government remained committed to removing $60 million from the environment trusts to fund the compensation package for NSW timber workers.
The Government is negotiating with the minor-party MLCs who hold the balance of power in the Upper House to gain support for the proposal to break into the environment trusts, which were established to fund special environment projects.
© 1995 Sydney Morning Herald