In our Dec/Jan issue, Carter Holt Harvey CEO Peter Springford accused the Government of selective political hearing on employment issues, and of "ignoring" timber industry concerns about the new Employment Relations Act. So we asked Judith Ford to take a closer look at the select committee process and your chances of influencing political policy in New Zealand.

Australia's 'Year of the Built Environment' in 2004 left many important conservation legacies - not least some powerful reasons why we should be building more timber houses, as Rilke Muir reports.

A test case of the legal limits of free speech, or a major threat to the future of Tasmania’s timber industry? Australian correspondent Rilke Muir investigates the case known as the ‘Gunns Writ’

The New Zealand Government couldn’t wait to declare its support for the Kyoto protocol. Now that it has got its wish, there are revelations of inadequate planning and serious underestimation of the costs of compliance. Elizabeth Howarth reports on what these developments could mean for the nation and the forest industry whose carbon credits many feel have been hijacked for resale to international buyers.

The South African Government wants out of the forest industry. So, when water and forestry minister Buyelwa Sonjica announced in late January that another 140,000 ha of plantation would be transferred to new private operators, we asked our new correspondent John Mortimer to background the story.

These should be the darkest of days for New Zealand nursery operators: new forest plantings are way down, restocking delayed and plantations are being turned over to pasture. But there is still plenty of enthusiasm and enough energy to keep the old argument going about the virtues of bare-rooted versus container grown stock.

The softening of the transtasman housing market and the trend towards solidwood products are clouds on the MDF horizon, but the product is still predicted to become the mass market choice, as Judith Ford reports.

Rumours have been circulating in New Zealand that the Forest Industry Engineering Association (FIEA) is almost dead in the water and that the Forest Industry Contractors Association (FICA) could suffer a similar fate