The Bendigo and Adelaide Bank needs to look at the facts, acknowledge the sustainable nature of Australian native forestry and end its ban on lending to businesses in the sector. Our native forestry is world leading environmentally, responsible for essential everyday products and forms the lifeblood for thousands of people in rural and regional Australia, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA), Diana Hallam said today.
"Bendigo and Adelaide Bank needs to stick to banking and stay away from greenwashing. If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledges the science behind the sustainable management of native forests, then surely the Bank can also. The Bank is treating native forestry as an extractive industry, not what it is, a renewable industry," Diana Hallam said.
AFPA's call joins with the Tasmanian Forest Products Association (TFPA) and Tasmanian Government Minister for Business, Industry and Resources, The Hon Eric Abetz MP who have both this week highlighted the Bank's decision to withdraw its lending to family forestry contracting business T P Bennett and Sons. AFPA has heard of further examples of the Bank failing to support valued community businesses in the sector.
"Australian native forestry operations and the businesses that work in the supply chain are part of an essential and sustainable sector that harvests and replaces just 6 in every 10,000 trees in Australia's native forests. Whether they be forest managers, contractors, harvesters, in transportation, or processing and manufacturing in mills - this sector is clean and green - and it needs long-term committed financiers to support the regional communities it underpins. Communities Bendigo and Adelaide Bank purports to support," Diana Hallam said.
"The fact is - if native forestry ceases to exist in Australia, we will be forced to import all of our hardwood timber and fibre for products like home furnishings, decking and furniture - from places with lower environmental standards than Australia - and that means worse environmental outcomes for the planet. We will have replaced an industry governed by world leading environmental standards and substituted it for one with worse environmental credentials.
"Hopefully the 62 per cent of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank's corporate staff who completed climate change training in 2024 understand the perverse outcome their policy is promoting. Possibly, that training could also have included the findings of the IPCC's 4th Assessment that states 'a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit.'
"This ill-informed, virtue signalling must end. Leaving the lights burning throughout the night in any of the Bank's offices, flying directors to meetings and driving fuel motor vehicles is far more a risk to the environment than the work Australia's family forestry contractors are involved in.
"The science is clear, managed native forests support the climate, communities and the economy. I challenge Bendigo and Adelaide Bank to reverse its decision on native forestry finance," Diana Hallam concluded.
