MURUPARA TIMBER FORESTS SHOULD BE MILLED SOON

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 53, 19 October 1949, Page 5

MURUPARA TIMBER FORESTS SHOULD BE MILLED SOON

(Special to Beacon) Wellington, Tuesday

Referring to the Murupara pulp and paper-making project when the estimates were being considered in the House of Representatives, Mr W. Sullivan (National, Bay of Plenty) said that when the matter was raised on another occasion the Minister said he would table a report on 'it. That report had not yet been provided, and yet the House was being asked to vote £161,000 to meet initial expenditure on the project.

The Ministry of Forestry (Mr Skinner): “I did not promise a report on the project, but a report on the conference which dealt with it, and which I attended.”

Mr Sullivan said the House was entitled to a report and also a layout of the project and all the other information available. The Minister: “As soon as the details of the scheme are/ agreed to they will be made public.” Not Proper Way

Mr Sullivan said he did not think it was a proper way to conduct business to ask the House to sanction an expenditure of £161,000 without precise details .having been made available.. The sawmillers and workers in the sawmill industry were to be congratulated on the increased output of timber, reported to be 473,300,000 feet for the year, said Mr Sullivan. He was ‘ sorry the Department had altered the overtime subsidy rates prevailing for a long time. There was no back-log of timber, and even in timber producing districts there was almost a timber famine.

An anlysis of the 473,800,000 extra feet of timber showed that 52,400,000 feet was secondary timber, 153,300,000 was pinus insignis, 22,000,000 was exported, and only 398,000 feet was left for use in the country, and a large percentage of that timber was of pinus insignis. The people had to become reconciled to the use of pinus insignis as a building timber. Of the 22,000,000 feet exported, 6,300,000 feet was indigenous building timber. Why was it necessary to export that indigenous timber to Australia when. New Zealand was starving for building timber? The Minister had indicated that there was a good supply of timber, but the report showed that in the Wairarapa, Taranaki and Gisborne areas there was a serious shortage, and that shortage existed elsewhere. Timber yards carrying 500,000 feet of timber could not very often supply one house-building order, and three to five months’ delay was involved in getting suitable timber. The Minister should reinstate the subsidy to encourage output.

Exotic Plantation Mr Sullivan said that many years ago he had suggested to the Department that an exotic plantation should toe established north of Gisborne, and he was glad that notwithstanding the delay, the report indicated that further needs of Gisborne would have to be provided from exotic timber to be planted in the Gisborne area. The job should have been done long ago. Indigenous timbers were running out. In the Te Whaiti and Minginui areas the stage had been reached where proper forest management was needed. The State Forest Service controlled Maori bush as well as bush on Crown lands and of course State forests. There were about 300,000 acres of exotic timber controlled by that service, and sugestions had been made that much of the exotic forest had reached maturity and should be milled, exported or sold as soon as possible.