Alex Bainbridge, Hobart
Despite claiming his plan would protect forests and jobs, Prime Minister John Howard's October 9 election victory means that high-conservation-value forests in Tasmania will continue to be destroyed while timber industry jobs remain insecure over the long term.
Nevertheless, the Wilderness Society pointed out that "old-growth forests have won the forests referendum" because over 54% of Tasmanians gave their first preference votes in the House of Representatives to parties promising to save forests while only 42% voted Liberal. This gives forest activists a strong base to continue campaigning.
Environmentalists' anger has also been focussed on pro-woodchipping Labor Premier Paul Lennon who refused to come out in support of federal ALP leader Mark Latham's forest policy in the lead up to the election.
Both Latham's and Howard's forest policies left significant aspects to be detailed after the election. However, of the two, Latham's policy clearly offered more promise for saving the forests.
Prior to the election, the Wilderness Society, Greenpeace and the Australian Conservation Foundation issued a united statement slamming Howard's forest announcement as a "disaster for Tassie's old growth forests".
"The Coalition's forest policy is nothing more than a logging plan with a conservation figleaf", said Alec Marr of the Wilderness Society.
Greens Senator Bob Brown said in an October 8 media statement that "we want the forests on Mr Howard's list saved, but the list of forests he'll send to the chainsaws is twice as long. The forests reprieved under Howard's plan are remote, unlikely to be logged soon and not to be properly defined on a map until after the election."
The fact that Howard did not specify which forests he intended to save, along with his promise to remain within the bounds of the 1997 Regional Forest Agreement (RFA), has given considerable leeway to the woodchip industry and the state government to press for larger financial handouts from the federal government. This is because the RFA gives the state government power to influence or veto changes in its provisions. Presumably therefore, "negotiation" will also take place over precisely which areas will be included in the 170,000 hectares "saved".
There is no reason to think that the Howard government — unrestrained by an impending election — will not be sympathetic to meet the demands of the timber industry bosses.
On the other hand, the Howard government is bound to feel some of the pressure from a concerted and growing campaign to save the old-growth forests. The Wilderness Society has identified the following advances made by the forest campaign in the last year:
* Placing the forest crisis in Tasmania firmly on the national agenda.
* Shifting Labor Party policy, "which should result in greater federal parliament scrutiny of Tasmanian forestry issues".
* A promise from Howard to protect 170,000 hectares of old-growth forests in the Styx, Florentine, Tarkine, Blue Tier, Great Western Tiers, North-East Highlands, Eastern Tiers, Central Highlands and private land.
* A pledge by the state government to end 1080 poisoning on public land by December 2005.
* A pledge by Howard to work with the Tasmanian government to end 1080 poisoning on both public and private land by December 2005.
* An end to Forestry Tasmania's exemption from freedom of information legislation.
* Increased funding for research on the impacts of forestry on water and on Tasmanian devils.
These gains have been won by a determined grassroots campaign, including mobilisations of up to 15,000 people in Hobart in March and at least 10,000 people in Melbourne in June. This campaign needs to continue in order to save the forests, and there is every reason to be confident that it can have an impact.
Already, since the election, forest activist and Socialist Alliance candidate Glenn Shields has noticed that people "are starting to think we need to get up off our arses now or else it will be too late".
"I'm getting phone calls from people I wouldn't have expected to get phone calls from asking when the next [protest] actions will be", Shields told Green Left Weekly. He believes the most important thing is to build unity in local communities in support of progressive demands in order to resist the impending onslaught from Howard.
This should be possible, Shields believes, because from his observations around Huonville prior to the election, "even some people I know who work in the industry weren't terribly concerned about Latham's [forest] policy. But many working people were terrified about what would happen to them if John Howard got back in."
From Green Left Weekly, October 20, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.