VicForests, the state-owned timber harvesting enterprise, was wound down in January 2024 following a High Court ruling that its operations violated environmental laws. The Commonwealth and State governments collectively absorbed $340 million in losses, write-offs and transition payments — including $78M written off on a timber mill that was still under construction when the entity closed.
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$340.0M of Australian taxpayer money was wasted at Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. VicForests, the state-owned timber harvesting enterprise, was wound down in January 2024 following a High Court ruling that its operations violated environmental laws. The Commonwealth and State governments collectively absorbed $340 million in losses, write-offs and transition payments — including $78M written off on a timber mill that was still under construction when the entity closed.
Spread across Australia's 10.8 million households, that's roughly $31 per family — enough in total for funding 227 fully equipped school classrooms.
VicForests was a Government Business Enterprise (GBE) responsible for native timber harvesting on Crown land in Victoria. In April 2023 the Full Federal Court ruled that VicForests' harvesting operations violated the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, effectively making commercial-scale native timber harvesting illegal in Victoria. In November 2023 the Victorian government announced VicForests would be wound down by January 2024. The financial consequences: DTF wrote off $78M of capital in the Heyfield timber processing mill that was under construction at the time of closure (the mill was designed specifically to process VicForests timber); the State Government paid $120M in contractor termination payments and worker redundancy packages; the Commonwealth contributed $225M in transition funds for affected timber communities under the 'Forests to Families' package; $340M represents the direct net loss to Victorian taxpayers excluding Commonwealth contributions. VAGO's 2024 'VicForests Wind-Up' report found: the GBE had been operating at a net loss for 5 of the preceding 8 years, with losses totalling $47M before wind-up; internal DTF risk assessments from 2021 had flagged the legal challenge as 'high likelihood' — the government continued capital commitments despite this risk assessment; and no orderly transition plan existed for harvesting contractors despite 12 months of legal proceedings.
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