Sold out!

As the smoke clears from the decision of Mitsubishi Paper Mills (MPM) to insist that woodchips supplied by Tasmania are not sourced from old growth forests, the real tragedy of the forest industry and its paid mouthpieces is revealed.

MPM has previously indicated its desire to move away from purchasing woodchips sourced from native forest destruction. Now it is official policy and it will no longer profit from old growth forest destruction in Tasmania. MPM is to be congratulated for taking a strong lead and sending a clear message to Tasmanian industry and Government. Woodchipping native forest is unacceptable in the new international marketplace.

In an era of climate change, desertification, global deforestation, species decline and an environmental awakening in the developed world, it is hardly surprising that the consumers of paper products are demanding an environmentally responsible product.

We live in a world of markets and market driven forces. If the primary producers can’t supply a product the world demands, the world will move on.

Bulldozed on

When releasing the Supplementary Regional Forest Agreement, Premier Lennon was right when he said that international markets would demand change. Hopefully other buyers will follow MPM’s lead and thereby encourage Gunns and the Tasmanian Government to use the latest $250 million injection of Commonwealth and State funding to assist industry onto a truly sustainable path.

The writing has been on the wall for a long time and the Tasmanian timber industry has ignored the signs and bulldozed on.

The latest example is the native forest-fed, polluting pulp mill proposal being pushed onto the Tasmanian community. Why would responsible pulp purchasers want a product that relies on native forests, discharges pollutants into the ocean, consumes vast quantities of scarce freshwater and adds a range of new pollutants to the air shed of the people of Launceston and the Tamar Valley?

Of course the industry advocates such as TCA and FIAT have come out with predictable, tired lines. The furphy of job losses and world’s best practice are wheeled out over and over as if, by attrition, we will believe them when heard often enough.

1200 jobs shed

The export woodchip industry has long been the leech sucking the life out of Tasmania’s forest industry. Statistics show that increasing woodchip export has corresponded with a decline in industry jobs. It is not too hard to understand. As logs are diverted from the sawmills, into the chipper, to be processed by one man and the push of a button, local sawmills have closed down.

In 1980 there were 205 registered sawmills employing 3000 Tasmanians, by 2003 there were less than 40, employing 1350 people. A 2003 report in the Australian Financial Review, based on ABS statistics, revealed the Tasmanian timber industry, in its entirety, had shed more than 1200 jobs since 1997. (This is the year the RFA was signed, and the cap restricting woodchip exports was lifted.) Sadly, history shows that there has been noticeable lack of voice from within the industry, standing up for starved sawmills, sacked workers and questioning the wisdom of unrestricted export woodchipping.

Currently, up to 90% of old growth timber removed from an average clearfell coupe in Tasmania is woodchipped for export. It is estimated that we export a total of over five million tonnes of woodchips each year, more than twice the amount of all the other states combined, with an alarming proportion of this from old growth forests.

These facts speak for themselves.

More laughable than the above, sad story of workers sold out in the name of record profits, is the ubiquitous line, “world’s best practice”. This and the claim that the paper companies may now source their product from a less responsible, forest destroying country is wearing thin.

Divided societyVica Bayley is forests campaigner with the Wilderness Society.