Tasmania’s opposition leader will send Forestry Tasmania in to log World Heritage listed areas if elected at next year’s state poll. Source: ABC News, Yahoo7, The Australian
The new Coalition Government plans to reverse the heritage listing of 120,000 hectares of forests.
The Liberal Party opposes the state’s forestry peace deal and the forest reserves legislation, which seeks to shrink the industry.
State Liberal leader Will Hodgman said he would send the state-owned timber company in to the de-listed World Heritage areas to access specialty timbers.
“We’d allow that to happen and to provide that resource that’s needed to grow the industry … including in the recently listed world-heritage area,” he said.
Upper House independent Adriana Taylor included an amendment to the peace deal legislation allowing for logging in contingency coupes inside the protected areas.
But it is understood the World Heritage listing supersedes that.
The Wilderness Society is warning the forestry wars would rage again if the logging goes ahead.
Spokesman Vica Bayley said doing that would plunge the forestry industry back into conflict with conservationists.
“This is an agreement that needs to be delivered in full,” Bayley said. “It’s got outcomes for the conservation community and for the environment, it’s got outcomes for workers, for the broader community and for the industry.
“You can’t just cherry-pick bits of a comprehensive agreement like that and expect it to hold together.”
In a statement, acting premier Bryan Green agreed it would reignite forestry conflict and erode international markets.
Green said the Liberal’s position is at odds with the timber industry and what its customers want.
Greens leader Nick McKim said any logging would mobilize conservation groups.
“There’s no doubt that if this happened … that would be an end to the agreement and it would plunge Tasmania back into conflict and division and I’ve got no doubt that would translate to protests on the ground and action in the markets,” he said.
Law experts have doubted whether Australia has the power to ask for the listing to be revoked without having to pull out of the World Heritage convention altogether.
McKim warned environment groups would again lobby Asian markets to boycott Tasmanian timber products if the forest peace deal is ripped up.
“The environment groups, some of them, are in Asia now with the Premier talking up the Tasmanian industry in the markets,” he said.
“But the environment groups have been very clear if the agreement falls over they’ll be back over in Asia all right, but they’ll be sending a very different message to the markets.”
Activists have already protested outside the Hobart headquarters of veneer processor Ta Ann.
The CFMEU construction union, as well as key industry players including veneer-maker Ta Ann warned the sector could not survive a return to conflict provoked by rescinding the World Heritage listing.
They united with green groups to plead for the Coalition to reconsider its policy, warning it was “wrongheaded” with key markets demanding top-flight environmental certification offered under the peace deal.
The union’s membership is behind its leadership in backing the forest lock-ups it opposed in 2004, with three independently run secret ballots of workers backing the forest peace deal.
CFMEU Tasmanian organiser Julian Cooke said workers at sites across Tasmania realised consumers had shifted sentiment and the industry had to follow or face collapse.
“The peace agreement will give confidence back to our markets, in particular Japan, and with that confidence, companies such as Ta Ann are now gearing up to make further investment and increase production,” Cooke said.
“If the agreement falls over and collapses, the fear is that Ta Ann will collapse with it and employees will lose their jobs, with the terrible flow-on to the rest of the community.
“People need to sit down and get their heads around the industry and how it is today and how — through this agreement — we can improve the industry and go forward.”
“I will be urging that before any changes are made to existing frameworks that people take the time to genuinely engage with the market and understand what the changes have been, because they have been dramatic,” said Ta Ann executive director Evan Rolley.
“There is no way the momentum in markets is going to reverse. That momentum is for environmental certification, for sustainability, for storing carbon. All these things are the realities of our modern life.”
He denied the industry was effectively being blackmailed into backing the forest reserves by conservationists who had the power to prevent the industry achieving the FSC certification demanded by markets.
“No one is holding a gun to the head of our company,” said Rolley, a former head of Forestry Tasmania and pro-logging veteran of the decades-old former forestry wars.
Ta Ann employs up to 100 people at its two veneer mills both in depressed regions and is banking on rebuilding markets on the back of the peace deal to enable it to add a third shift to both plants.
As well, it plans construction of a new plywood mill, employing 75 to 80, at Smithton, in Tasmania’s northwest.
Rolley said the timber industry had written to the Coalition seeking a guarantee that it supported FSC certification, which he agreed would be jeopardised by an Abbott government seeking to wind back the World Heritage area.
On a practical level, constitutional experts have raised doubts about the federal government’s ability to have World Heritage listing rescinded, while industry figures said no company would find markets for products tainted by being sourced from these forests.
However, Abbott and senior Coalition spokesmen were standing by the policy, which commits an incoming government to “seek to have it (World Heritage listing) removed”.
“There is almost 50% of Tasmania locked up. We can’t turn the whole place into a national park. The vast areas that are already protected are the areas that deserve to be protected,” said Abbott.
Coalition environment spokesman Greg Hunt said the World Heritage listing was done against “community will” and included regrowth forests and plantations.
“I have no issue with FSC (but) it is not the role of a certification system to determine what forests might be accessed or not,” Liberal forestry spokesman Senator Colbeck said.
“I have difficulty with the argument that FSC might be withheld because of a deal that has nothing to with what FSC is really supposed to measure. This would make it not a certification process but a political tool.”
Senator Colbeck claimed the swing against Labor was most pronounced in traditional forestry towns. That swing was 19% at Smithton, 16% at Scottsdale and 12% at Geeveston.
