Industry insights on skills needs
The Forest and Wood Products IRC’s 2019 Skills Forecast identified the following generic skills as top priority for the industry:
- Technology
- Environmental sustainability
- Language, Literacy and Numeracy (LLN) (Foundation skills)
- Design mindset / Thinking critically / System thinking / Solving problems
- Communication / Virtual collaboration / Social intelligence.
A range of top priority industry and occupation skills were identified, including:
- Information and communication technology skills
- Middle management skills
- High level financial skills
- Specialised skills.
The Forest and Wood Products IRC's 2020 Skills Forecast highlights a number of key issues affecting the Forestry sector:
- Climate change is driving a push for planting more trees
- Bushfires, and the increased risk of bushfires, are impacting the sector in both terms of the resources available to the sector and new training challenges posed
- Ensuring workplaces are as safe as possible, particularly in remote areas
- The ongoing challenge of accessing training in thin, regionally dispersed, markets
- Employers throughout the country continue to be concerned about the need for career pathways into and within the sector.
The impact of the 2019–20 bushfire season on native and plantation timbers was far greater than anticipated and will have a significant impact on the sector now and into the future, particularly in New South Wales, Victoria and on Kangaroo Island in South Australia. Maximising salvage operations was a priority in the immediate aftermath of the fires. In the short term, demand for harvesting and haulage of plantation softwoods exceeded the capacity of the industry, and sawmills put on extra shifts to process salvaged wood. In the longer term, re-establishing plantations will be a major focus. The environmental constraints on re-establishing plantations require a different skill set than the work associated with establishing plantations in areas unaffected by fire.
By mid-2021 the forest industries had completed the immense job to mill the huge volume of sawlogs that were blackened during the 2019–20 summer bushfires and get that timber to market. Unfortunately, more than half the burnt trees in the fire affected regions were too young to save, with the salvage focus on getting all the trees older than 19 years and as much as possible of those over 12 years – resulting in harvest running 80% above normal. Work was also well underway to regenerate the forests damaged during the blazes with 4,500 hectares replanted in 2020 and another 7,000 hectares on track for 2021.
Australia is headed towards a major cliff in timber framing production, with current estimates that Australia will be 250,000 house frames short by 2035. The state-by-state analysis reveals just how many house frames short of demand Australia will be by 2035: Victoria will be a city the size of Geelong short, New South Wales will be Wagga Wagga and Tamworth short, Queensland will be a city the size of Cairns short, South Australia a Mount Gambier short, Western Australia a Bunbury short, Tasmania a city the size of Kingston short, the Northern Territory a town the size of Tennant Creek short and the Australian Capital Territory a suburb the size of Kambah. The report shows that state and federal governments need to seriously tackle the policies which will drive forward new plantings of the right types of trees at the right scale and in the right places. While the industry welcomed the Federal Government's announcement in October 2021 that new forestry plantations in key timber regions of Victoria and southern Tasmania will be able to participate in the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) and contribute towards Australia's 'Net Zero by 2050' target, further work is needed to ensure that the five remaining Regional Forestry Hubs which as yet do not have the same access to carbon markets – in Central and Southern New South Wales, Northern and Southern Queensland and the Northern Territory – are quickly given the same opportunities.
Some governments are listening to the Forestry sector and several premiers have made significant announcements. In October 2020, Victoria's Premier announced New Nursery to Grow More Timber and Gippsland Jobs whereby Victoria's forestry transition will be supported with the creation of a new state-owned nursery in East Gippsland, which will also help local forests and economies recover from the devastating 2019–20 Victorian bushfires. Establishment of the $10 million Victorian Forest Nursery will increase the eucalypt seedling supply chain and create up to 30 new jobs, most of which will be ongoing. The Program is part of the Government's $110 million investment in plantation timber. It supports the Victorian Forestry Plan and the timeline it sets to transition from harvesting native forests to a plantation-based sector. Currently five-out-of-six trees harvested in Victoria are from plantations and the state has the largest area dedicated to timber plantations in Australia. The nursery is expected to have a production capacity of up to five million seedlings each year, which could support plantings and reforestation of around 5,000 hectares annually. Production of eucalypt seedlings will support bushfire recovery replanting, forestry coupe regeneration, timber plantations and farm forestry programs in Gippsland as state forest harvesting decreases over the next decade. The East Gippsland community will benefit from new learning opportunities developed in consultation with the Forestec campus of TAFE Gippsland, along with options to reskill and employ existing timber industry workers. The nursery will also present opportunities for involvement and collaboration with local Aboriginal organisations.
In September 2021, Western Australia's Premier announced a record $350 million investment to expand the State's softwood plantation timber industry. This investment is expected to provide at least an additional 33,000 hectares of softwood timber plantation, with up to 50 million pine trees planted, sequestering between 7.9 and 9.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. It is estimated that around 60 direct timber industry jobs and 80 indirect jobs will be created as part of the expansion plan, with the new jobs initially associated with the plantation establishment program.
The Forest Management and Harvesting Industry Reference Committee is currently overseeing the Responding and Assisting in Bushfires Project. Forest workers are increasingly being deployed during the bushfire season to perform roles that are distinct from their roles as forestry operations contractors and managers. Working in bushfire management, mitigation and firefighting has been described by the industry as being as much a core part of work as tree harvest operations or planting. Forest workers are involved in firefighting activities, including:
- Defending resource and forestry assets
- Salvage operations after the fire has passed
- Fire suppression efforts in land use such as farms and national parks
- Make-safe operations and road clearing
- Re-establishing plantations.
Forestry operators need to be effectively trained and ready to respond and assist but it is unclear whether all current employees have the skills to perform all these roles.
Victoria's Country Fire Authority (CFA) updated their Forestry Industry Brigades: Training Specifications and Guidelines in August 2020. Training and development of Forestry Industry Brigade (FIB) members is a vital component in ensuring consistent operational service delivery and safety of all members. This document provides core information to FIB members and training officers and is designed to:
- Identify training requirements for FIB officers and members
- Put these requirements into context with regard to national accreditation
- Explain how training is to be implemented
- Explain the skills development pathway, recognition and assessment process
- Identify learning materials that support FIB members to acquire the appropriate skills for their role
- Support FIB members involved in planning, coordinating and conducting training
- Promote process consistency and equitable access to training resources for all FIB members.
Effective training is a key risk reduction activity in the Forestry sector. The Forestry Log Haulage: Draft Code of Practice identifies the risks associated with loading and transporting logs and describes equipment, procedures, training, and other methods to eliminate or minimise those risks. Training must be task specific and audience orientated to effectively build the knowledge of participants and key information, however technical, should be covered in a way that ensures a clear understanding is obtained by all participants. Training of all parties in the log haulage industry is particularly important as experience in another heavy vehicle industry is not necessarily transferable to log haulage. Key activities are listed for the various roles involved with log haulage.
- The safety training program, Safe and Skilled, has been enhanced to deliver even more safety awareness for employees across Forestry sector workplaces. The Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) Growers Chamber ratified a suite of program improvements designed to ensure employees are correctly trained on safety. With the assistance of skills development organisation, ForestWorks, Safe and Skilled now has an additional list of approved predecessor units which means that prior training will receive the recognition that it deserves. Furthermore, the program will now annually review and revise units to ensure that they are current, and their prior status is recognised.
