Questions about one-in-four claim

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

AT least twice last week television media repeated old and now disputed claims that one in four households in Tairāwhiti are dependent on forestry.

The claim, which comes from a study conducted by Waikato University for the Eastland Wood Council 12 years ago, were repeated by Forestry Minister Stuart Nash.

The Economic Impact Assessment (EIA) of the forest industry in the Gisborne Tairāwhiti region report, done in 2011, said “the forestry sector currently employs 1610 FTE (full-time equivalents) with approximately 1035 FTE in the forests, 320 FTE in processing, 145 FTE in transportation and 80 FTE at the port.

“The forest industry and its dedicated service sectors have become a major employment source for the district. They provide an estimated 1610 jobs — roughly 3.1 percent of the district’s population.

“Given (there are) 15,000 households in the region with 4434 FTEs, then more than one in four households in the region have a person whose job is dependent on forestry.”

The report offered no further supporting evidence.

That claim gained more traction with political scientist Dr Bryce Edwards saying in The New Zealand Herald’s The Front Page podcast that “one in four people” on the East Coast have some sort of employment relating to the forestry industry.

Stats NZ figures from 2022 differ.

These put the number employed in forestry and logging here at 970.

The region’s labour force is estimated by Stats NZ to be about 27,000, meaning 3.6 percent of jobs here are in forestry.

Independent economic research company Infometrics puts the forestry workforce at a similar level.

“The Infometrics Regional Economic Profile for the year ending March 2022 shows that there were around 900 people employed, on average over the year, in the forestry industry and forestry

support services specifically — around 3.6 percent of total employment in the Tairāwhiti area,” chief executive Brad Olsen said.

“There are additional jobs in related support services to the forestry industry, alongside more jobs that are indirectly supported by forestry throughout the region, but we haven’t been able to directly quantify this.

“Over the year to March 2022, filled jobs in Tairāwhiti averaged 24,650.

“Forestry and logging make up the second-largest contribution to Tairāwhiti’s GDP, with $181 million (7.4 percent of total local GDP) of value-add contributing to the economy in 2022, according to Infometrics data. The healthcare and social assistance industry (7.8 percent of GDP) was the largest contributor.”

Asked if it stood by the “one in four” claim, Eastland Wood Council released a statement that did not directly answer the question.

“We know that forestry has an important role to play in Tairāwhiti.

“The wider forestry industry supports our communities on the Coast and enables our whānau to put food on the table.

“Our focus right now is on supporting our community, which is our friends and whānau, with the clean-up and immediate humanitarian need that we have before us.

“We have incredibly difficult terrain and soils here on the East Coast so forestry has a role to play in our future, but we do need to make changes to where we plant and how we manage our forests.

“We need to remember that this is about more than just logs. It’s about people, too — those employed from local communities, the local businesses who look after them and obviously people in the communities.

“We can’t lose sight of that.”