A federal insider, a veteran Tasmanian forester and a Snowy Mountains community leader are the latest names on the speaking program for the 2026 Forestry Australia Symposium, three sharply different vantage points on the question at the heart of the event: how forestry earns and keeps the trust of the communities around it.

Natasa Sikman, Steve Whiteley and Sarah Norris join a bill headlined by keynote speakers Stan Grant and Dr Simon Longstaff AO, with more names to be announced in the coming weeks. The three-day event runs at the Rex Hotel in Canberra from Wednesday 7 to Friday 9 October.

Early-bird registration closes this Sunday, 12 July, so there is only a short window left to lock in the discounted rate before standard registration applies.

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Sikman brings the view from inside federal politics. She spent two decades in Parliament, including a stint as chief of staff to former Labor agriculture minister Joel Fitzgibbon, before crossing into forest products advocacy, where she led policy at the Australian Forest Products Association and stepped up as its acting chief executive. Now advising Chevron on federal government affairs, she has built a career where forestry meets politics, which is much of what the Symposium sets out to unpack.

Natasa Sikman, former acting chief executive of the Australian Forest Products Association.

Whiteley offers the view from the forest floor, and few know that ground better. A University of Melbourne forestry graduate with more than 40 years in the sector, he ran Sustainable Timber Tasmania, the state’s public production forest manager, for a dozen years until retiring in 2025, steering it through the delicate work of managing public and private forests side by side. He now chairs the State Fire Commission, the governing and policy body for the Tasmania Fire Service, and was the founding chair of the Forests and Forest Products Network.

Steve Whiteley, Independent Chair of the Tasmania State Fire Commission.

Norris rounds out the trio with the view from the community, and she comes to it as a local. A proud resident of the Snowy Mountains, she is head of social impact and community at Snowy Hydro Limited, where she leads the company’s work on community partnerships, education and First Nations engagement. Across more than 15 years on major infrastructure, energy and government projects, she has specialised in helping organisations build trusted relationships with the communities around them while delivering complex work. Her message lands squarely on a Symposium about social licence: that regional communities should not merely be consulted, but should actively shape the decisions that affect them, and share in the lasting outcomes.

Sarah Norris, Head of Social Impact and Community at Snowy Hydro Limited.

Norris will share a plenary session with three speakers announced earlier in the year, each of whom has built a career on the community side of contested projects. Janina Gawler spent 15 years at Rio Tinto as its vice president for communities and social performance, where she wrote the company’s social performance standard and negotiated land access and First Nations engagement across Australia and North America, and now runs the consultancy RST Solutions for Community Engagement. Luke Martin led Salmon Tasmania, and before it the Tourism Industry Council of Tasmania, roles that placed him at the centre of some of the state’s sharpest debates over social licence. Alexandra Gartmann, chair of the Australian Farm Institute and a former chief executive of Rural Bank and the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal, has spent more than 25 years on the resilience of rural and regional communities.

This year’s theme, The forestry story: Strategies for improved awareness, social licence and effective engagement, frames a program that builds on Forestry Australia’s 2025 Conference in Adelaide and its 2024 Symposium in Ballarat. It gathers the forest science and management community to work through how forestry explains itself to the audiences that will shape its future, from local communities and Traditional Owners to policymakers, the media and the public.

About the 2026 Forestry Australia Symposium

The 2026 Symposium runs at the Rex Hotel, Canberra, from Wednesday 7 to Friday 9 October, across two days of plenary and concurrent sessions followed by a day of field trips. Early bird registration closes this Sunday 12 July, at $765 for members, $1,095 for non-members and $95 for full-time student members, inclusive of GST. Full registration covers all sessions, day catering, the Welcome Reception on 7 October, the Symposium Dinner on 8 October and one field trip on 9 October. Registration and the full program are available on the conference website, and invoices can be arranged through conference@forestry.org.au.

About the 2026 Forestry Australia Symposium