In reforming national environmental laws in late 2025, the Labor government included in its self-lauded package of changes the eventual end of the ‘regional forest agreement’ or ‘RFA’ exemption, which is the loophole that exempts native forest logging in Australia from federal oversight. That loophole will close in mid-2027.
At the same time, Australia has committed, under international agreements, to protect 30 per cent of our land and sea by 2030. Real protection of our high biodiversity native forests amounts to a major contribution to meeting these obligations.
The point of removing the RFA exemption was to bring native forest logging in line with other industries and projects by requiring federal assessment and scrutiny of impacts on matters of national environmental significance, including threatened species and ecosystems.
Ending the RFA exemption, of course, left the obvious question: what arrangements would be implemented in its place where logging of native forests continues – as it does, in some form, in Tasmania, Victoria and NSW?
Last week’s Budget gives some insight into how the federal government intends to regulate logging of native forests going forward, setting aside millions in public funds to ‘progress a landscape-scale approval pathway for jurisdictions with RFAs and provide stronger environmental protections alongside regulatory certainty and supporting a sustainable and prosperous future for the industry.’ This signals the government is planning for logging to continue.
Before we go any further, it should be explained that logging of native forests is an activity that has proved, over decades, to be an ecological travesty, a legal train-wreck, and an economic basket-case, which is to say an industry producing large-scale environmental destruction at vast cost to taxpayers, often incapable of proceeding lawfully despite very favourable political protection.
In Tasmania and NSW, for example, native forest logging is undertaken by state-owned logging agencies that operate with a monopoly over public timber resources and have, over many years, been propped up by vast amounts of public money. This situation is a result of the fact that native forest logging simply cannot be conducted at scale in a manner that is ‘sustainable and prosperous’.
After the middle of next year, logging could continue on a project-by-project basis, where any proposal to do so may require federal assessment and approval. However, the current federal response reflects the fact that they are currently negotiating with certain states about how to create a new substitute regime to maintain the status quo: native forest logging at a similar scale and intensity as today.
There are a few ways to do this under the new laws. But the worst of these – and one the government has already indicated a preference for – is where the federal government would enter into an agreement (called a bilateral agreement) with a State that allows the Federal government to rely on the State’s assessment of impacts on matters of national environmental significance, even though the States typically lack the resources, independence and/or expertise to do so.
In place of an exemption from federal law, State-managed logging would proceed, in more or less the same way, with endorsement under federal laws. Such an approach is embedded in a proposed ‘Timber Fibre Strategy’ – a highly controversial plan written by logging lobbyists under serious consideration by the federal government.
There is a real concern that this would operate in practice as an RFA exemption 2.0, with little meaningful federal oversight of what is happening on the ground. Such a ‘landscape-scale approval pathway’ is essentially a smoke and mirrors trick – the appearance of change while everything stays the same.
An alternative ‘landscape-scale’ option under federal law may be an updated form of regional planning, termed ‘bioregional plans’. The concern with using this tool is that the 2025 changes enable fast-tracked approval within bioregional plans – ‘go’ zones or ‘development zones’. Applied to native forests, environmental protections could simply be turned off or absent in areas where logging is to occur. Even if some form of protection were to apply, it would likely be subordinate to the intention to enable logging.
A minimum necessary step in regulating the management of our native forests could be achieved through ‘strategic assessment’ of logging policies or programs. This well-established device under the EPBC Act enables assessment of environmentally harmful activities proposed at scale, with appropriate scientific scrutiny and public oversight.
While requiring careful design, strategic assessment of native forest logging policies or programs would allow environmental impacts to be scrutinised and regulated closely without devolution of power to the States. Logging can also be scrutinised for consistency with Australia’s obligations under international treaties.
Australian taxpayers deserve better than the endless propping up of native forest logging. Communities deserve the economic certainty a full transition to plantations can provide, with about 90 per cent of the industry already there. And our precious remaining native forests deserve so much better than business as usual.
Bruce Lindsay is a Senior Specialist Lawyer at Environmental Justice Australia.
