Bob Brown: a refutation

Young Celery-top Pine regrowth in KD30S west of Geeveston. Images taken by George Harris on 09/04/2013 Come back in 350 to 400 years’ time! On left is Paul Harriss MLC

WE25S near Lake Gordon.Harvested, eucalypt regrowth. Limited Sassafras, Myrtle remains on upper slopes

The article by former senator Bob Brown ( Mercury, Friday April 26, Full version, TT here ), contains many errors and exaggerations, but if it were to help achieve the killing of the Tasmanian Forest Agreement Bill, that would be fine by me!

Brown claims the Legislative Council has fired a torpedo into the Tasmanian Forest Agreement, but really the amended Bill gives the green groups almost everything they have asked for, but with some delays. The Legislative Council did not change the amount of forest to be immediately protected (504,000 ha) nor the amount to be eventually reserved, (525,000 ha), nor did they change the reduced amounts for high quality sawlogs, 155,000 m3 to 137,000 m3, peeler billets, 265,000 m3 to less than 160,000 m3, and to a figure less than the Prime minister’s promised 12,500 m3 for special species timber.

However, the amended legislation gives the greens, without any conditions, the immediate reservation of an area along the eastern boundary of the existing world heritage area, referred to as the jewel in the crown or C2C corridor, Counsel River to Cockle Creek. These forests were recommended by the Environmentalists’ consultant Peter Hitchcock in 2008 to be added to the World Heritage Area, a claim found not to be needed by an expert evaluation team from the UNESCO body. Yet former National Director of the Wilderness Society, Jonathan West, using the same consultant, independently verified this area had world heritage values despite its extensive logging history!

The Bill is fundamentally bad for Tasmania, bad for the timber industry, bad for the economy, and bad for rural communities.

Brown cites the Prime Minister’s expectation that the agreement be implemented without alteration, but it is a betrayal of the promise made in 2011 on timber supply for the three categories: high quality eucalypt saw logs, peeler billets, and Special Timbers.

I believe the Bill as amended and the agreement it was based on reduces the saw log and peeler sectors below viability and leaves no room for expansion or recovery, and the impact on Special Timbers is substantial, as it means a reduction of sustainable annual supply of species other than Blackwood of around 60% in circumstances where there is unmet demand and shortages of supply as a hangover from previous lock-ups. The impact on the boat builders and the craft and furniture sector is unacceptable. The Greens and the ENGO’s have previously never explicitly attacked the Special Timbers sector, and have even claimed to support it. However, they are attacking its future and its very existence now through the pursuit of this Bill and the nomination to extend the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

The intent of the Bill is still to lock up more forest than we ever should, and it will lock up millions of dollars of investment in existing forestry roads. Duplication of these in remaining areas for less supply will increase the cost of timber and further reduce its competitiveness in the market place, as well as removing the regenerating timber from our economic future. It should not happen. The selfishness in the green agenda is disgusting.

Up until now Tasmanians were being told we must have FSC certification, and to get it we needed to immediately stop logging in 504,000 hectares of forests. Now that the Legislative Council has made the approval of reserves conditional on gaining FSC, green groups are saying they will oppose the granting of FSC. Why should we bother?

The state government should be grateful to the Legislative Council for making the amendments they have for the embarrassment it saves them, but they should be ashamed for ever having introduced such a terrible Bill into the parliament in the first place. It was based on a flawed and corrupt process where bullying, sabotage, and threats to markets were rife.

The process involved nepotism in the engagement of verifiers, and people effectively “marking their own homework” and getting paid twice for it! Perhaps the DPP should investigate this. For their actions, the ENGO’s and those who support them should be even more ashamed.

The moves by the government and the ENGO’s to add the so-called Contingency coupes to the Special Timbers areas highlighted the embarrassing fact that the aspirations for new reserves cut too deeply into the capacity of the reduced areas to sustainably supply sufficient Special Timbers in line with the promise, but this was made worse by the revelation through ground-proofing that similarly the Contingency coupes had little Special Timbers of any quality or quantity. The reserves aspirations take the best Special Timbers in the best concentrations. The ideal scenario for Special Timbers is to tread lightly over a wide area, and this was provided for in the Special Timbers Strategy of 2010, which was developed with broad consultation.

All this, and yet the so-called durability is an optimistic mirage. What dubious faith this government has!

Senator Milne and former senator Brown place much emphasis on the signatories, but who the hell are the signatories? Who elected them? They should never have more regard or their deliberations more status than our elected representatives, especially our Members of the Legislative Council, whose role is one of review under the sanctions of parliament.

Even more fundamentally, the state government does not have a mandate for such significant change, especially in the light of such significant and on-going arrangements being in place as the Regional Forest Agreement. The people of Tasmania and the communities they live in should not be denied a say on this issue before such nonsense is passed into law.

This whole show may be another example of the cart before the horse, as the nomination to extend the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is not a certainty, and is under challenge. It is the major prize the Greens and ENGO’s want to put in their trophy cabinet, and is a key component of their commitment to durability, but again it is in spite of the sovereignty and the consultation local communities deserve and are owed. The nomination, if successful, would have impacts within private freehold property, and would affect use and profitability of rural land and enterprise. It would bring changed management to properties on such important questions as fire management and wildfire mitigation measures. It would bring substantially altered forest of long-standing intensive management into the World Heritage Area in a manner that would devalue its currency.

More than a dozen individuals and organisations have lodged objections with the World Heritage Centre in Paris, and the nomination will be considered at the annual global meeting scheduled to occur in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh in June.

If only the state government could find the courage to drop its support for the Bill and to face the future with the determination to manage the forests and the forestry sector with the confidence the scientists, the resource managers, and marketing specialists are able to provide, together with the resistance to the green groups and their campaigns the community should find within itself to provide!

A desire to become self-sufficient in timber is a priority this country should adopt, and we should reduce our imports. We should allow timber exporting countries in Asia to sell to countries that cannot meet their own needs, and we owe it to them to become self-sufficient as well as we owe support to our own industry and communities.

George Harris is a furniture designer/manufacturer using Tasmania’s Special Timbers for the last 30 years. He is President of the Huon Resource Development Group, (affiliated as a branch of TCA) and a member of the Special Timbers Alliance.