By JESSE GRAHAM
ANTI-LOGGERS are demanding more than $60 million from VicForests as unpaid dividends for logging forests, although the timber company said its payments are in line with profits.
Members of MyEnvironment, Healesville Environment Watch Incorporated (HEWI) and the Knitting Nannas of Toolangi (KNOT) delivered an invoice to the offices of VicForests in Healesville and Melbourne at 11am on Friday 8 November.
The invoice totalled $61 million that the environmental groups said is owed from six years of not paying dividends.
VicForests representative Andy McGuire accepted the invoice from the environmental groups and said he would pass it on to the accounts department, before returning to his office.
According to head of HEWI Steve Meacher the number is calculated from a VicForests performance review for the Treasury in 2010 that the company should produce a return on equity of 15 to 20 per cent.
Mr Meacher said the unpaid dividends were calculated on the lower percentage figure and that, while VicForests had proposed a $250,000 dividend for the state government, he had doubts about it being paid.
“This is inadequate and there is no guarantee it will ever be paid,” he said.
“The 2011 annual report contained a similar proposal to ’pay a dividend of $1,260,000 in October 2011’, but this has never been paid,” he said.
“Although $61 million is a substantial sum, it is a very reasonable amount to expect in exchange for access to a massive and valuable public resource.”
VicForests Director of Corporate Affairs Nathan Trushell said the focus of the company was not just on its short-term profitability but on the long-term sustainability of the industry.
He said the industry had reduced the amount of timber it was cutting in order to protect the resource.
“Harvest levels in Victoria’s forest are the lowest they have been in 20 years and earlier this year we announced its (the timber industry’s) plans to further reduce harvest levels in ash forests,” he said.
“While we welcome the scrutiny of our financial performance, similar claims regarding VicForests’s return on equity were made by the same groups last year using figures taken from a report written in 2009.”
Mr Trushell said the 2009 report projected returns based on favourable conditions and that, since then, the industry had been hit by the Global Financial Crisis and the Black Saturday bushfires.
He said VicForests has generated $12 million in profit since 2004, with more than $5 million paid in dividends to the Victorian government.
