By Karen Fredericks
Over the past two years state and federal governments have, one by one, abandoned attempts to legislate for guaranteed continued access by the forest industry to native forests and wilderness areas. This has been a victory for concerted campaigns by environmentalists and overwhelming public opinion against "resource security legislation". In Tasmania the issue brought down a government. But there is more than one way to woodchip the few remaining forests.
The national forest policy, approved by federal cabinet on November 13, may deliver more to the forestry industry than RSL ever did, and public opinion won't be a problem...
The policy, which will go before state premiers on December 7, requires no legislation in order to take effect. It proposes inter-governmental and project-specific agreements along similar lines to the old RSL proposals.
Under the new policy, upon completion of "regional assessments" forestry companies will be given specified guaranteed access to forest resources, including native forests and wilderness areas, for logging.
The policy requires regional assessments to include world heritage, national estate, endangered species, biodiversity, environmental impact surveys and cultural heritage assessments, according to a confidential cabinet minute which fell into the hands of the Wilderness Society.
Decimation of last forests
TWS national campaigner, Peter Warrington, told Green Left that although this may sound impressive the reality is not impressive at all. He believes most current assessment procedures, such as those under existing heritage legislation, merely function to identify the most environmentally precious areas and then fail to immediately protect them. Timber companies then focus on the identified area, fearing that unless they exploit it, entirely and immediately, it may be denied them some time in the future.
This problem is highlighted under the national forest policy, which, as a sweetener to environmentalists, pledges an end to logging of wilderness and old-growth wilderness by 1995. Warrington believes the combined result of this pledge and the rest of the policy will mean decimation of some of our last remaining forests.
"The way I read the policy is that industry's been given a bargain: If you give us what you've got left of wilderness and old growth in 1995, we (the government) will let you have all the regrowth on the national estate. There is no moratorium on wilderness and old growth until 1995, and you can bet your bottom dollar the smart business people are going to say — 'OK. There's no point going for regrowth now, we can get all of that in 1995 anyway. Let's go for all the wilderness and old growth before the time's up.' and the government all for them. The result will be an all-out onslaught on wilderness until 1995".
Unlike the old RSL, where resource security agreements could be no longer than 15-20 years in duration, there is to be no limit on such agreements under the national policy.
TWS is also concerned that the policy recommends government assistance for the establishment of plantations, rather than using the million hectares that are already there. Despite 12 months on the Plantation Advisory Committee, where it was made clear to government that use of existing plantations would be a simple matter, the new policy indicates the government is still swallowing the companies' line that there are no plantations ready to use, and that they need help, taxpayer's help, to get them going.
But probably the most backward aspect of the new policy is that it makes no reference whatsoever to Hawke's 1990 pledge to phase out export woodchipping by the year 2000 (which was the original greenie- sweetener for the introduction of RS legislation) and instead refers to increased export woodchip quotas and no phase-out date.
Warrington says the Wilderness Society believes the policy is no more than an attempt to lock up the most valuable and precious of our forests for woodchipping.
Sid Walker of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW told Green Left that the conservation movement is now convinced that the key threat to Australian native forests is the export woodchip industry.
Current attempts by government and industry to divert attention to other issues, such as pollution and soil degradation — issues the movement acknowledges are extremely important — may be attempts, he says, to draw attention away from the desperate situation facing our forests. Recent media reports have even implied the environment movement has abandoned the forests and moved on to other "more pressing" issues. Walker says such reports are nonsense.
"The economics of the sawlog hardwood industry are very poor". he says "Simple market forces are going to put most of the hardwood mills out of business over the next few years as pressure from competing softwood mills, which are based on plantations, really start to bite. In our view, the greatest threat to the native forests from the timber industry is not chopping down those forests to make sawlogs — it's chopping them into small bits to make bulk paper. The effect of the export woodchip regime is that we have a sort of vacuum pump going round our native forest sucking up all these magnificent old trees and spitting them out as pulp and paper".
Kept in the dark
Both Walker and Warrington point to industry enthusiasm about the new policy as an indication of its likely impact. Their own knowledge of the exact content of the policy is sketchy, as the Keating government has judged it wise to keep environmentalists in the dark. Green Left Weekly tried to obtain a copy of the policy from environment minister our request was denied.
Warrington says TWS found out about the cabinet discussion of national forest policy from an article in the November 11 Financial Review, only two days before the policy was adopted. Whereas industry groups had obviously been briefed on the policy and were fully supportive of it in the media, TWS only got a 10 minute glance at the cabinet document when it was leaked from the federal environment ministry, after the motion to adopt had already been passed by cabinet.
Warrington says TWS has information indicating the discussion of the policy was a very late addition to the cabinet agenda. He points out that November 13 was also the day of the announcement that unemployment had reached an all-time high at 11.3%, providing an excellent opportunity to get all the bad news over in one day.
"We think that [Alan] Griffith, the resources minister, was trying to lock in the PM in so he could take (the national forest policy) to the Premier's conference (on December 7). They knew there was going to be an enormous backlash and they basically wanted to sneak it through fast", Warrington said.
But TWS doesn't see Kelly as an innocent in all of this. While they believe she played some role in the demise of resource security "Mark I", she has been an architect, they say, of the new national forest policy — resource security by other means.
"This is not just more poor performance by the environment ministry", said Warrington. "It not just that the environment is not getting up to cabinet any more, or that its even a non-issue. Rather than being non-committed on the environment the cabinet is now committed to environmental destruction".
But, Warrington added, the policy is not a fait accompli, it must still be accepted by the states. It will be put to a meeting of state premiers on December 7 in Perth. TWS believes South Australia and Western Australia may have environmental problems with the policy and that NSW and Tasmania may vote against it because they will see at as not giving the logging companies enough.
TWS has commenced a campaign urging environmental activists to pressure their own state governments to reject the policy on environmental grounds. Warrington says the TWS approach will be "high-level lobbying and low-level grassroots campaigning".
Sid Walker sees the secrecy surrounding the introduction of the national forest policy as indicative of a serious attempt to sidestep public accountability and ignore public opinion. He points to extensive surveys in recent years which have "consistently proven a preference for conserving the best of our native forests rather than turning them into woodchips".
But all this secrecy, according to Warrington, is merely a taste of what is to come.
"There's no doubt that this is about putting all environmental policy discussions back behind closed doors. There's no guarantee, and we think that there's no likelihood, that any intergovernmental agreements made under the policy will ever be made public. There will be contracts for long term wood supplies that the public will never see. There will just be state bureaucrats working with the Commonwealth Department of Primary Industries and Energy to lock up as much forest as they can as quickly as they can for their woodchipping friends".