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Victoria’s beleaguered native forest timber industry is being swamped with green lawfare cases, costing VicForests $4.8 million in 2020-21. Source: Weekly Times The state-owned forest manager’s latest annual report shows it “has been the respondent to an unprecedented volume of third-party litigation”, which locks up coupes, delays harvesting and forces VicForests to pay harvest and haulage contractors compensation as it struggles to meet contracted log volumes. “These cases, brought by groups opposed to sustainable native timber harvesting are founded on claims that VicForests has or will breach its regulatory obligations flowing from the Code of Practice for Timber Production 2014”. Even when VicForests wins cases it has struggled to recover court-awarded costs against environment groups. One of those is the anti-logging group My Environment, which took VicForests to the Supreme Court in 2014-15 where it lost the case and an appeal. The court ordered My Environment to pay VicForests $1.23m to cover its legal costs. But My Environment has refused to pay the $1.23m, which has now also accrued penalty interest of $769,513. A search of My Environment’s financials shows it has total assets of $3610, received no donations in 2020 and has four volunteers including its chair, Sarah Rees. Ms Rees sits on the Australian Forest Stewardship Council along with Australian National University academic Chris Taylor, who have both been critical of VicForests. One of Ms Rees social media tweets even stated: “If it’s FSC certified it’s not native”. That criticism prompted VicForests’ to suspend its attempts to gain FSC accreditation in August last year, complaining it would “not receive a fair assessment”. FSC referred the complaint to its Disputes Resolution Committee, which after 12 months wrote back to VicForests chief executive Monique Dawson stating, it had: ASKED Ms Rees to write a public letter to FSC Australia New Zealand members in support of FSC Controlled Wood especially in a native forest setting. RULED VicForests’ complaint about Mr Taylor was not upheld. STATED it had “received several complaints about member conduct” and its disputes committee considers the organisation “should have a policy that clearly sets out members’ obligations … when publicly commenting about FSC related issues”, which should be enshrined in its governance manual.  

The $11.3 million Eric Tweedale Stadium in Western Sydney is this year’s overall winner of this year’s Australian Timber Design Awards. The stunning stadium, offering a new home for community sport and providing residents and visitors with a revitalised facility, is also winner of the People’s Choice Award and the Public and Commercial award. Source: Timberbiz The 22nd Australian Timber Design Awards were presented at a virtual event last night. The stadium is a benchmark for sustainable construction with a key focus on an intricately detailed timber roof structure designed by dwp|Design Worldwide Partnership. Lead Designer and Project Architect of the stadium Ivana Simkovic of dwp|Design Worldwide Partnership said the stadium was a benchmark in terms of cost effectiveness, efficiency, design quality and sustainability. The mass timber canopy contains one of the largest discontinuous and double cantilevers, and as a stadium canopy, it is a first for Australia. The stadium includes a 760-seat grandstand with change rooms, multipurpose rooms, first-floor function space, commercial kitchen, and outdoor viewing deck. “The stadium has been designed with the best practice principles of sustainability and simple form which will seamlessly blend into the existing Granville Park and surrounding neighbourhood,” Ivana Simkovic of dwp|Design Worldwide Partnership said. The roof structure design was very ambitious; the main cantilever spans 8.5 m over the spectator’s seating, 13.7 m beams span over the multipurpose area and a double cantilevered roof frame at each end of the roof structure. The entire roof slopes west and is supported by 26 – 240 x 380 mm timber glulam columns. The use of a mass timber structure in the Stadium is a first for glulam timber in Australia, representing an impressive achievement in timber engineering. It was named after the longest living Australian rugby player, Eric Tweedale, who turned 100 this year. The Greater Sports Facility Fund and Cumberland City Council jointly funded the project. The award for use of Certified Timber went to Nadine Samaha from level architecture for the Royd Clan’s House near Geelong. The Compressed Laminated Timber (CLT) panels and Glulam portals for the structure relied on Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA). All timber was cut precisely in factories and assembled on-site to suit the design geometry with minimal transport trips. Choosing CLT was crucial for the sequestration of carbon, for its insulation value, thermal mass index, and biophilic properties. Photographs of all the winning projects are at: https://timberdesignawards.com.au/winners-gallery And the winners were: Residential Class 1 – New Buildings Casey Brown Architecture for Permanent Camping 2 Residential Class 1 – Alternation or Addition Matt Elkan Architect for Smash Repair House Multi-residential Cox Architecture + Carr for Adelaide Oval Hotel Public and Commercial dwp Australia & Northrop for Eric Tweedale Stadium Interiors fit out residential buildings Jackson Clements Burrows for Divided House Interior Fit-out – Commercial Buildings Fitzpatrick and Partners for F+P Studio Furniture and Joinery Tzannes for Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas Landscape Site Office for Station Street Mall Stand Alone Structure Baber, Burry, Chen & Gattas for Suspended Remnants – A Funicular Timber Pavilion Australian Certified Timber Nadine Samaha – Architect for Royd Clan’s House Recycled Timber Cox Architecture for Eden Port Welcome Centre Timber Veneer Tzannes for Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas