Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to share some statistics with you that I have obtained about revenue from sawlog sales compared with pulp log sales in the East Gippsland region. The revenue from sawlog sales in 2013-14 was $5.2 million; the revenue from pulp log sales was $12.5 million. In terms of volume, we had 2½ times as much pulp log being removed from this forest as sawlog, which is part of the reason why you have more value coming from pulp log sales than sawlog sales. In fact, the price achieved for a metre cube of sawlog compared to a metre cube of pulp log in East Gippsland was the same. It was $67 per cubic metre, whether it was for sawlog or whether it was for pulp log. So what I want to know is: would this meet your higher values test? If not, can you give an unequivocal guarantee that forestry operations with revenue ratios like this would in fact fail the higher values test and so-called waste wood from these operations would not be eligible for renewable energy certificates?