Industry stalwart Terry Edwards says jobs in danger of shift to Victoria

Terry Edwards, who headed the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania for 16 years, has come out of retirement to warn that the state's timber processing industry faces shutdown if the government doesn't take action to protect it.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews this year ended native forest logging in the state, forcing Victorian sawmills who received compensation from the government, to seek feedstock elsewhere.

"Victorian companies are coming down here, holding on to fistfuls of Dan Andrews' dollars, competing against local Tasmanian interests," Mr Edwards said.

Local sawmillers were concerned that state-owned Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT) was willing to award contracts over plantation timber resources to Victorian companies, leaving Tassie sawmills without material to process.

Tasmanian timber contractor T.P Bennett and Sons recently lost out on a contract with Sustainable Timber Tasmania it had filled at short notice in favour of a Victorian company.

Mr Edwards said Tassie timber processors should have priority access to STT plantations, since they were planted in order to protect local sawmills hit by forestry agreements that locked up large portions of Tasmanian forests.

"We are now seeing STT saying to those sawmills that 'you have no preferential right to those plantations, they will be sold to the highest bidder, even if that highest bidder is a sawmill owned by the Victorian government'," Mr Edwards said.

Among the companies that stood to lose out was Smithton-based Britton Timbers, which employs about 100 workers in Smithton and another 25 in Somerset, and indirectly supports as many as three hundred jobs in the community.

"Brittons in Smithton ... are 110 years in business in Tasmania, and that is being put at risk by these activities," Mr Edwards said.

Another company was the Neville Smith in Mowbray - the state's biggest timber mill.

Chief executive officer Andrew Walker has been contacted for comment.

The government has confirmed it temporarily froze bidding as a result of the backlash over T.P Bennett and Sons, but Mr Edwards said it needed to go further.

"We want this process stopped," he said, adding that the government should direct STT to negotiate a process for the distribution of plantations to the industry.

He said the local benefits test used during STT tenders, which currently gives a 5 per cent weighting advantage to Tasmanian bidders, should be increased.

Resources Minister Felix Ellis said he was "very concerned" about the effect of the Victorian government's "catastrophic" decision to shut down their native forestry sector.

"I have raised the recent tender directly with STTs Board and they are undertaking a review of the tender process," he said.

"Importantly, the tender is on hold and no further harvest and transport tenders will be released until their Board has considered these urgent matters."

Noting STT's use of only a 5 per cent local benefits test, he said he had asked the company to see what more can be done to ensure Tassie jobs are supported.

Only one of five recent STT tenders had gone interstate, he said.

Labor Leader Rebecca White said work for Tasmanian businesses and sawmillers should be prioritised, and the industry was being put at risk.

"The Labor Party wants to see Tasmania-first applied as a policy setting for companies working for STT," she said.

"The government needs to make a clear and unequivocal commitment that the plantation resource will be made available on a first right-of-refusal basis to Tasmanian sawmillers."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: