Tasmanian forest deal signed
By Kylie Moon
HOBART — A Tasmanian Wilderness Society protest in Perth, 15 minutes' drive from Launceston, on November 8 failed to prevent John Howard and the Tasmanian politicians there for the day from signing a 20-year regional forest agreement (RFA), struck between the forest industry and state and federal governments.
The RFA puts up for grabs huge tracts of Tasmanian native forest, including the south-west and the Tarkine, for unlimited woodchip and log exports.
As part of the RFA, industry is being handed $110 million by the government, in "compensation" for 400,000 hectares of new forest reserves being set up.
These reserves consist mostly of narrow corridors of forest along roads and streams (which by law are not allowed to be logged anyway), forest on extremely steep slopes, dry scrubby forests and significant tracts of forest with little commercial value due to the smallness, sparseness or remoteness of the trees.
Tasmanian Greens Senator Bob Brown referred to these new reserves as "the world's most expensive postage stamps".
He said, "The people of Tasmania get a Swiss cheese and spaghetti reserve-system while mainland-based logging companies like North and Boral get the lion's share of the forests".
The Forest Protection Society, a pro-industry lobby group, has claimed that the government has sold out to the Greens, but in reality the environment movement has gained very little from the RFA, being completely shut out of RFA discussions.
North Forest Products, the largest hardwood chip exporter in the world, was "rubbing its hands with glee at its AGM last week at the prospect of increasing its woodchip exports by another million tonnes per annum", said Brown.
"The woodchipping industry is getting a 100-fold return on the almost $1 million of election campaign donations it has made to the Liberal and Labor Parties."
Tony Iltis, an activist in Everyone for a Nuclear Free Future (ENuFF) and the Democratic Socialist Party, condemned the RFA, saying that natural resources should belong to all the people and not to corporations.
"It's time that the forestry industry was brought under democratic control", he said. "We must ensure that the campaign against the RFA gathers further momentum."