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❓ A WA parliamentary question on sandalwood industry regulation and rehabilitation, revealing expenditure, locations, contractor details, and contract breaches. The response provides financial data, identifies contractors, and details environmental breaches, but lacks specific cost breakdowns for integrated operations.

AnsweredQoN 2269Legislative Council

Asked

2 December 2014

Member

Hon Robin Chapple

Portfolio

Forestry

QuestionView source ↗

I refer to the regulation of the sandalwood industry and rehabilitation of areas that have been harvested, and I ask: (a) how much money has the Forest Products Commission (FPC) spent on sandalwood rehabilitation and reseeding since 2004, by year and by category of expenditure; (b) at what locations was the sandalwood rehabilitation and reseeding done; (c) is the Minister aware that four wheeled motorbikes are being used in the reseeding operations despite their use being banned by all government departments: (i) if yes to (c), what action has been taken to deter the practice; (d) what studies or assessments have been conducted to quantify the effectiveness or otherwise of expenditure in terms of sandalwood regeneration; (e) where are the assessment reports on the success or otherwise of FPC’s sandalwood rehabilitation and reseeding works published; (f) how many companies, or individuals, has FPC contracted during this time period to carry out sandalwood rehabilitation and regeneration works; (g) will the Minister table a summary list of sandalwood contractors, what they were contracted to do and how much they were paid: (i) if no to (g), why not; (h) how many of these contractors in (g) are ex-employees of FPC, or are companies owned or operated by former employees of FPC; (i) in contracting various people and companies to carry out sandalwood rehabilitation and regeneration works, how many breaches of contract has FPC identified in relation to sandalwood rehabilitation and regeneration, including seeding works; (j) what investigation of these breaches have been undertaken, what were the findings and what penalties have applied; (k) what breaches have been committed by contractors in relation to environmental issues; (l) how are FPC’s sandalwood reseeding and rehabilitation contracts awarded; (m) what contracts has Grant Pronk Forestry been awarded; (n) what contracts have been awarded to Kevin Haylock; (o) has the FPC carried out an assessment of recent sandalwood seeding that was conducted West of Coolgardie, where the seeds were not buried; and (p) who conducted the seeding and at what cost?

AnswerView source ↗

Answered

21 April 2015

Responded by

Minister for Agriculture and Food representing the Minister for Forestry

Response time

140 days

(a) Prior to financial year 2010, the Forest Products Commission (FPC) seeding operations were integrated with harvesting. It is not possible to determine a separate cost of these works.
Since 2010, the direct expenditure on sandalwood regeneration is as follows:
Financial Year
2011
2012
2013
2014
Seed
$352 171
$310 377
$267 790
$345 238
Contract payments
$127 845
$85 597
$157 750
$140 470
Vermin control
$0
$0
$0
$5 538
Other materials and equipment
$5 129
$4 487
$71 114
$14 553
Total
$485 145
$400 461
$496 654
$505 799
This excludes expenditure under harvesting and seeding contracts.
(b) Sandalwood reseeding and rehabilitation has been undertaken in areas throughout the range of harvesting operations that have been assessed as being conducive to sandalwood establishment.
(c) Yes.
(i) The FPC does not ban the use of four wheeled motorbikes.
(d) The relevant studies are -
· Brand, J.E., Sawyer, B., Evans, D.R. (2014). The benefits of seed enrichment on sandalwood
(Santalum spicatum)
, after 17 years, in semi-arid Western Australia.
The Rangeland Journal
36, 475-482.
· Sawyer, B. (2013). Sandalwood
(Santalum spicatum)
establishment in the semi-arid and arid regions of Western Australia.
The Rangeland Journal
35, 109-115.
(e)
The Rangeland Journal
.
(f) From 2004 to 2014, the FPC contracted 55 companies to complete regeneration works as an integrated component of sandalwood harvesting operations. Since 2010, four companies have been employed for the specific task of completing sandalwood regeneration works.
(g) [See tabled paper no.].
Note the FPC is not able to provide details regarding payments for regeneration works for those companies that performed these activities as part of integrated sandalwood harvesting operations.
(h) One
(i) Since 2009 one default notice has been issued in relation to sandalwood rehabilitation and regeneration.
(j) An incident report was created which included an assessment of the causes and assigned appropriate corrective and preventative actions. The breach notice required the contractor to remedy the identified issues and make operational changes to prevent reoccurrence. The contractor was not able to provide such a demonstration and it was mutually agreed to terminate the contract.
(k) Since 2009 six event of default notices have been issued in relation to
all
sandalwood harvesting and regeneration contractors. These were for operating outside prescribed boundaries, removing undersized trees, below standard seeding, clearing tracks and littering.
(l) The current regeneration contract was awarded through public tender process.
(m) Nil
(n) Nil
(o) Yes
(p) Walladar Enterprises. This was an integrated seeding and harvesting operations and it is not possible to provide details of separate costs.

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