Importing timber from other countries

In parallel, Environment Information Australia will compile biennial “State of the Environment” reports and designate “national environmental information assets”, consolidating the Commonwealth’s role in defining environmental baselines and priorities. These reforms extend federal oversight into matters of national environmental significance, including threatened species, World Heritage sites, wetlands, and emissions-intensive projects, embedding an additional approval layer into land and resource use decisions.

The result is a sharp increase in timber imports. Removing local supply for furniture, flooring, cladding, joinery, and structural applications does not eliminate demand; it displaces it offshore. Between 2015 and 2024, total forest and wood product imports increased by approximately 53 per cent in real terms.

By 2024, around 90 per cent of Australia’s hardwood consumption was met through imports, sourced primarily from Southeast Asia, Europe, and South America. Imported hardwood is used extensively in residential construction, engineered wood products, furniture manufacturing, and interior finishes – sectors that historically relied on locally harvested native timber.

Timber imports now represent several billion dollars annually in foregone domestic production. Regulatory oversight in exporting countries varies widely; in some jurisdictions there is illegal logging, weak labour protections, and poor environmental enforcement. While domestic logging bans may reduce visible impacts within Australia, they externalise environmental and social costs elsewhere, undermining the global conservation objectives they are intended to advance.

The contraction of the hardwood sector also carries significant regional consequences. The native timber industry has traditionally supported tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs across harvesting, haulage, milling, manufacturing, silviculture, and associated services. Many of these jobs are located in regional and rural communities with limited alternative employment opportunities.

Timber processing facilities often function as anchor employers, sustaining local supply chains, apprenticeships, and population stability. The closure of state forests to logging has therefore imposed adjustment costs that are unevenly distributed, with regional communities bearing the brunt of policy decisions largely driven from metropolitan centres.

The ecological consequences of logging bans are likewise more complex than often assumed. The prevailing narrative anticipates the restoration of pristine wilderness through exclusion of extractive activity. However, the removal of active forest management has, in many regions, contributed to dense understorey growth, weed proliferation, and increased habitat for feral species such as cats. These conditions elevate fuel loads and disrupt ecological balance. The 2019–20 Black Summer fires starkly illustrated these dynamics, with vast tracts of unmanaged forest acting as tinderboxes under extreme weather conditions. The absence of selective harvesting, road maintenance, and fuel reduction materially shaped the severity and spread of those fires.

Australia’s restrictions and bans on hardwood logging exemplify the unintended consequences of environmental policy when regulatory ambition outpaces institutional capacity and ecological nuance. The substitution of domestic production with imports, the erosion of regional industries, the deterioration of active land management, and the layering of approval regimes raise fundamental questions about effectiveness, proportionality, and coherence.

Conservation outcomes depend not only on exclusion but on stewardship; economic sustainability requires alignment between domestic demand and supply; and environmental credibility hinges on accounting for global, not merely national, impacts.