THE Australian Forestry Products Association’s (AFPA) target to double the economic value of the state’s timber manufacturing sector was met with mixed responses from Mount Gambier’s political aspirants at last week’s candidate debate.
While all candidates in attendance expressed support for boosting the domestic market, the four political hopefuls differed in their plans to help support the objective.
Liberal candidate for Mount Gambier Craig Marsh welcomed the plan, but labelled the 2050 target conservative.
“I think there are lots of opportunities in this document so that we can see this could actually be quite easy to achieve,” he said.
“I think it is a great plan, but I think at 32 years away it is probably quite conservative.
“A Marshall Liberal Government will unlock new economic activity in our region by injecting $150m over the next 10 years to support employment growth in the regions through our regional growth fund.
“We’ve put in place this fund to promote jobs and to promote this sort of plan into the future.”
Australian Conservatives candidate for Mount Gambier Gregg Bisset said any plan to grow domestic timber manufacturing had
to be undertaken in collaboration with the viticulture and agriculture sectors.
“We need to make sure all competing interests are well-served and looked after,” he said.
“We also need to make sure it fits in with the plan of the whole South East because if we have one plan off to one side, these need to be dovetailed together.
“This plan is an aspirational target and I think an aspirational target needs to have some meat put on the bones and by that I mean we need to have some serious planning.”
Independent Member for Mount Gambier Troy Bell said cost and access to raw material, wages and power were key cornerstones in boosting manufacturing, saying his $21m vision for a biomass facility would address the three points.
“With biomass you can actually get the products with power down and that goes straight into manufacturing to lower the overheads for a manufacturing business to be able to compete with the log price – or the export price – on wood fibre,” he said.
“We export $3.5b of wood fibre out of Australia and we import $5.5b of wood product back in, that’s a $2b deficit in the wrong way.
“That $2b could be here in Mount Gambier or in other places around Australia, but here is a key cornerstone in manufacturing.”
SA-Best candidate for Mount Gambier Kate Amoroso backed the economic security of the domestic industry.
“We absolutely need to ensure initiatives are put in place to support the continued growth of the forestry industry right across the supply chain,” she said.
“We need to include a stronger focus on forestry supply chain industry clusters.
“This is important for helping to create more jobs and raise productivity resulting in the growth of our regions.”
