Forestry and timber mill workers from Tumut have told a state inquiry about the long-term impacts job losses in the sector will have on their town.
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This week a state parliamentary inquiry looking into the long-term sustainability and future of the timber industry held two virtual hearings, with witnesses appearing from a number of sectors and key groups.
The inquiry comes after the devastating Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20 destroyed 45,000 hectares of plantations in the south-west slopes region - around 40 per cent of the local timber supply.
This loss is expected to lead to a downturn in timber supply and a loss of jobs in the sector, with new plantations taking decades to regrow to a harvestable size.
Delegates from the AKD timber mill in Tumut told the inquiry on Wednesday that while timber processing had remained at capacity while burnt timber was salvaged, the downturn is now being felt.
"The timber supply issues from the bushfires has seen our mill go from two shifts to one shift, taken skills away from the town and [is] also taking other skills with them," AKD employee David Webb said.
Mr Webb said that when local families in Tumut are forced to leave, it's not just the timber industry that is impacted.
His wife is a midwife at Tumut Hospital and said the community fears they will lose services if staff are forced to leave with their families.
Mr Webb said the hospital "needs everyone they can get up there at the moment", and that his wife currently driving to Wagga for maternity shifts because "there's no maternity getting done in Tumut at the moment".
"If the timber industry was to get any worse here we would probably just take our family over there to Wagga, which we really don't want to do because we've been here forever," the father of four said.
Mr Webb also said that when children move from town, there are smaller class sizes - and this means less subjects to chose from in the HSC.
"[My daughter would] like to be a scientist, but she can't chose things like physics or economics because there won't be enough kids for the class," he added.
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Fellow AKD employee Sharon Musson, who has been employed in the industry locally for 24 years, said many families - including her own - have multiple people working within the same field.
She said the financial impacts of job losses would be huge for such families.
In the short term, Ms Musson is advocating for three main measures to keep the sector going: redirecting any export logs to the domestic market, assisting with the freight costs of these logs, and optimising redirections, so that big logs go to mills and smaller logs are processed into cardboard and chips.
A solid plan for continuing to grow plantations is needed for the long term, she argued.
"Make an incentive for even private landowners to put these forests in [and] plant for the future," Ms Musson said.
Alison Rudman, the NSW District assistant secretary for CFMEU, suggested a Forestry Industry Advisory Council is formed to advise different departments and levels of government during this time.
"When you look somewhere like [Tumut] where close to 60 per cent of the resources [are] now not available, there is a real problem there," she said.
"They are down to that one shift and obviously our concern is what that means for both local jobs and local communities that rely on those jobs."
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