By Lisa Macdonald
Anger and disgust are growing over the Keating government's expansion of woodchipping in Australia's vanishing old growth forests.
After recommendations by federal environment minister John Faulkner that the 1995 renewal of woodchip export licences should exclude 1300 areas of high conservation value, the environment movement had optimistically declared 1994 the "Year of the Forests".
Optimism turned to disappointment and outrage at the December 20 announcement by federal resources minister David Beddall that all of the export licences up for renewal this year were to be granted, and quota extensions for the Tasmanian operations North Forest Products and Midway Wood Products would result in an 11% increase in total woodchip exports.
A new licence was granted to Queensland Hardwood Resources, introducing the woodchip industry into that state for the first time. According to Virginia Young, a spokesperson for the Queensland branch of the Wilderness Society, this will require a doubling of the amount of logging in Queensland. "Even without export woodchipping, Queensland loses more native forest each year than any other state", she said.
The resources minister's authority to issue export licences was supposed to be contingent upon advice from environmental agencies and the environment minister. But of the 1300 forest areas recommended for protection by Faulkner, under Beddall's decision only 32 are to survive. Logging has already begun in a number of these areas.
Since the Beddall decision, and despite the cynical timing of the announcement just prior to Christmas, a wide range of anti-woodchipping activities have occurred in more than 20 centres. Alongside the ongoing "Call for Action on National Forest Policy" petition, which has now collected more than 100,000 signatures, protest rallies, public days of mourning, letter writing stalls, public meetings, media conferences and blockades of logging areas have been held across the country. More than 200 people joined a blockade begun on January 19 at the Eden woodchip mill in NSW.
One of the most notable aspects of this campaign is that, for the first time in over a decade, almost every environmental organisation in the country is working together in a nationally coordinated campaign.
ALP reaction
Most of the movement's fire has been directed at Beddall, with Faulkner smelling sweet and the state parties left relatively unscathed. Nevertheless, the whole party is now moving rapidly into damage control mode.
Labor must be feeling nervous, for example, about the Tasmanian Greens' announcement in early January that they are reconsidering the traditional direction of their federal preferences to the ALP because of the woodchipping licence renewals.
Daily meetings are occurring between representatives of the environment peak bodies and the prime minister's office. There is a widely held view in the movement that, in the words of the Nature Conservation Council's executive officer, "Mr Keating is personally responsible because he was able to call the issue into cabinet but declined to do so".
With state elections due on March 25, NSW ALP opposition leader Bob Carr has requested urgent meetings with environment movement representatives. According to the Australian Conservation Foundation's (ACF) biodiversity campaigner, Peter Wright, Carr has made some encouraging noises at these meetings, but no specific or substantial commitments beyond agreeing to scrap the state ALP's current draft forest policy and establish a redrafting process involving closer consultation with the environment movement.
State governments' handling of the woodchip issue is important because, while the federal government issues the export licences, the state governments determine the forest areas to be used.
Beddall announced on January 18 that export woodchipping from national estate areas would now be severely curtailed, but this appears not to have had the desired effect of containing the environment lobby's anger. The ACF urged the ALP caucus to reject the Keating-Beddall compromise, saying that the protection of only 500 of the 1300 sensitive forest areas is nowhere near adequate.
Further, a proposal to protect temporarily 500 specific forest coupes in no way diminishes the volume of woodchips exported; it simply means that the companies will have to exploit other forests.
Legal challenges
The environment movement is placing most of its hopes at the moment in challenging the licence decisions in the courts. This follows the Tasmanian Conservation Trust's successful challenge of the interim licence granted to Gunns Ltd to export 200,000 tonnes of woodchips between June and December 1994.
That challenge, on the grounds that no environmental impact statement (EIS) had been made, was upheld by Justice Sackville of the Federal Court.
There are reports that the government has advice that 10 of the 11 licences granted in December could be overturned using the Gunns precedent. According to North East Forest Alliance spokesperson John Corkill, the North Coast Environment Council Inc, which is challenging the 11th licence, received legal advice earlier this month that the EIS for that licence is also invalid.
To date, the various strands of the conservation movement appear united in their unwillingness to compromise on the demand that the federal government cancel the new and renewed 1995 licences. While pursuing legal channels to halt temporarily woodchipping in sensitive areas, they are insisting that the federal government immediately halt logging and woodchipping in all old growth forests.
As Peter Wright told Green Left Weekly, "We want to see an end to woodchipping in old growth and native forest areas and a transition to a plantation-based industry as fast as possible. If there was any time when we could hope to make some real progress in forcing this change, it is now through the current campaign."
Increasing pressure
The movement's immediate demand is that the government guarantee the protection of all 1300 of the forest coupes identified by Faulkner, at least until a new national forest reserve system has been set up by the end of this year.
Both Beddall's decision in December and the recent Keating-Beddall position blatantly contravene a moratorium clause in the National Forest Policy Statement which requires that, until proper assessments are completed, "forest management agencies will avoid activities that may significantly affect those areas of old growth forest or wilderness that are likely to have high conservation values". The urgency of this demand is underlined by a recent High Conservation Value Forests Study, which found that there are at least 764 such areas under immediate threat from logging and woodchipping in Victoria, NSW, Tasmania and WA.
Alongside the legal challenges, the next stage of the campaign will involve putting more intensive pressure on the federal and state governments through public meetings and rallies, further blockades of woodchip mills and various public actions targeting marginal federal and state seats, in particular in NSW and Queensland. A detailed survey of all political parties regarding their forest policies is also being carried out by the Nature Conservation Council.
The ALP caucus meeting on January 30 is expected to vote on a cross-factional motion put by left member Lindsay Tanner and right member Harry Woods endorsing the original Faulkner recommendations on forest protection.
Optimism about the potential to win this campaign is widespread in the green movement. In the words of Lowe Greens member and Democratic Socialist candidate for the NSW upper house, Bruce Threlfo, "This latest ALP sell-out has convinced many green activists once and for all that we have to do it for ourselves — create our own activist parties, take our own positions and campaign in our own ways for our own interests, not those of the environmentally destructive corporations and their mates in government.
"In both the extent of national coordination and the diversity of campaign methods, we are taking a significant step towards rebuilding a genuinely broad and participatory environment movement with this campaign, one that can win the hard battles and grow in the process".
If the environment movement is to win on this issue, and use the victory to spur progress on the other environmental disasters confronting us, it will need to commit to memory the ALP's woodchipping betrayal and strengthen its independence from both Labor and Liberal so that an inclusive, grassroots, mass movement can again develop in this country.