The exclusion zone

An interesting letter appeared in The Mercury newspaper (17/5/05) from Mr Glenn Shaw, bemoaning the lack of any consultation with the Aboriginal community over the new agreement between the forest industry and the Liberal and Labor parties.

Mr Shaw makes his displeasure clear, stating that the exclusion of Aboriginals “seems difficult to comprehend” and that Aboriginals object to the Regional Forest Agreement and clearfelling old growth forests in particular.

But the exclusion of the Aboriginal community is not hard to comprehend from where I sit.

“The Lovregana Statement,*” a full page advert (costing approx $5800 by the way) appeared in The Mercury during the federal election campaign and clearly stated that Aboriginals oppose “our forest being locked away.”

This “Statement” included a host of pro-forestry and anti-green quotes and allegations, most appearing to come straight from a pro-woodchipping pamphlet:

“We, the Tasmanian Aborigines, say no more locking away our rights and interests.”

“It does not necessarily follow that locking away forests in National Parks and Conservation Reserves meets our interests”.

“We say to the forest and mining industries that we are committed to reasonable access to natural resources, to economic development and to the optimisation of opportunities for all Tasmanians.”

“We resent conservationists taking it upon themselves to deem what is best for this land. We know their appetite is insatiable.”

[The Lovregana Statement, The Mercury, 2/10/04]

Following the revelation in “The Lovregana Statement” that the Aboriginal community’s position on forestry dovetails exactly into that of the ALP and the forest industry, why would anybody bother including them in forestry negotiations?

In my opinion, this “Statement” itself is the reason for the exclusion of Aboriginals from forestry negotiations; they’re already in the forestry bag so why allow them any oxygen? – they might change their minds if they could see what we’re about to do.

The real question, the one that’s plagued me since “The Lovregana Statement” appeared, is who paid the $5800 for the advert? Was it the Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Council? Was the money allocated for land purchases or for administration of purchased land? Or did the author of the “Statement,” a Mr Glenn Shaw, pay the money?

It would be good if one or more of the organisations representing Tasmanian Aboriginals could make a clear statement about their position on Tasmania’s forests and defend that statement when it’s challenged publicly. At the moment that picture is confused to say the least.

Yours,
Jason Lovell

*”Lovregana” is the Tasmanian Aboriginal word for “forest”.

A note from The Hag:

The ‘Community’ Forests Agreement is beginning to look like a very exclusive club indeed: limited in fact to Big Business and Big Politics, and bugger the rest of the community.

Today’s Mercury also reports farmers’ displeasure:

Mr Dickenson, who has already expressed landowners’ anger at being left out of talks on the agreement, said while crown land forestry was receiving $135 million for locking up 148,000ha of forests, farmers would get no compensation despite losing 480,000ha …

TFGA natural resource management chief executive Ian Whyte told the meeting the agreement’s negotiations were conducted in “great secrecy”, and when the TFGA had asked government representatives whether the private land vegetation retention was an issue, was told it was not in the agreement.

Read more here: Forests deal lashed as farms land grab