Christine Milne: ‘Picking over a dead carcass’

Tony Burke seems to be the only one celebrating the passage of the TFA bill.

Federal Environment Minister, Tony Burke: ‘Let not pretend that you’re ever going to get an agreement that will stop there from being a group of… you know… a small number of people who hold up a sign. But let’s also not forget that in this group you’ve got the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Wilderness Society and Environment Tasmania as the ‘umbrella group’ and you’ve got [i]all of those groups[/i] on side with the Agreement, it means you cannot get an effective market campaign that ill damage the Australian market any more. And that… is a massive shift. And when you take out all the peak groups and have all of them on-side with the Agreement, that makes a massive difference to markets for Tasmania.

You’ll get the odd skirmish from small minor… minor groups and things like that. Yeah and I don’t want to set a silly threshold. What we have seen from the last thirty years – ends tonight. And that is something to celebrate.

Senator Christine Milne, Australian Greens leader: What started out as a process to exit native forest logging has turned into a process to entrench native forest logging, to have ET, TWS and ACF promote FSC certification [i]for native forest logging[/i] and also to subsidise that native forest logging with tax-payer dollars… and there are no secure conservation outcomes except the World Heritage extensions and I do congratulate everyone involved in that, including the federal Minister [Tony Burke] and I look forward to the world Heritage nomination going through in June [2013]. But that is the only secure outcome everything else has been pushed onto the never-never… beyond the federal and the next State election. So this so called ‘conservation gain’ is a moratorium that can’t be translated into permanent reserves until after October 2014 and then [i]only[/i] if FSC certification for Tasmanian native forest logging goes through, if in the eyes of the Legislative Council the community has been silenced and there have been no markets campaign… and then also, [i]only[/i] if the Minister decides to make a reserve order. And if he or she doesn’t, then the whole thing falls over. The Moratorium lapses and the legislation lapses and the sawlog quota is restored to 300,000 cubic meters.

And these conservation groups adjudicate through this ‘Special Council’ which is dominated by the forest industry; to adjudicate on the behaviour of whether or not the community has been silenced adequately for the Legislative Council.

The problem is the Legislative Council destroyed the Tasmanian Forest Agreement; they completely destroyed the legislation and the integrity of the deal and all that the Tasmanian House of Assembly is now doing is picking over a dead carcass, actually. The integrity of the whole agreement is gone. It went horribly wrong when Lara Giddings decides to allow her leader of the Government in the Legislative Council to support these appalling amendments and essential means the whole thing lost any momentum in terms of protection. And I fear that the same thing is going to happen… always… millions of federal dollars pour into the logging industry, as Tony Mulder has said that he wants; get the federal dollars, get the industry to rebuild and take a knife to the conservation outcomes and this what is exactly going to happen.

The Giddings Government ought to have upheld the Agreement; that was what everybody said that they would do. And the Government should have taken on the Legislative Council, sent the Bill back unamended – the sense of taking out the Legislative Council amendments – sent it back and said this is the Agreement that has the support of the State and federal governments, now pass it. And it basically would have been a serious taking on of the Legislative Council. Instead of that, the Giddings Government backed away and the ENGOs have allowed them to do so… as have the logging NGOs, and left the House of Assembly picking over the scraps of what has been an Agreement that was hard fought. So that’s what I mean when I say the Agreement is over.

The Tasmanian Forest Agreement is now null and void … the environment groups throughout the State never signed on to the kinds of compromises that have now been agreed by the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly. They didn’t ever agree to that; I certainly didn’t ever agree to the idea that you should hold the reservation of a forest area ransom to a decision by a Special Council as to whether or not they think that the community has behaved well enough and been quiet and hasn’t gone and protested. And if that is the case then they hold to ransom granting a reserve. You cannot silence a community in that way… you just simply cannot take away people’s freedom of speech and right to protest and to stand up for what they believe in … and that is a shocking precedent which would undermine forest campaign communities right around the country… if that was to be upheld. … This trumped up little police force (the Special Council) that will write its report to the Legislative Council to make a judgement as to whether they will ever reserve an area will be found to be illegal.

The Tasmanian Greens were put in an appalling position because the TFA was destroyed in the Legislative Council and Lara Giddings allowed it to be so. She should have stood up and agreed to the integrity of that Agreement being maintained. She didn’t… and the ENGOS didn’t. The Environmental NGOs hand-balled a particularly disgraceful situation to the Tasmanian House of Assembly and the Tasmanian Greens had to do what was the best in the circumstances.

What you got is basically the carcass of that Agreement and people picking over the scraps and deciding what can be salvaged or not. And I have a different view about that than the Tasmanian Greens…. But I also have a national responsibility. And so when I look at this, I can’t possibly allow a national precedent whereby you have these silencing provisions. I can’t have a situation where you say to a third-party body like the Forest Stewardship Council globally that unless they give Forestry Tasmania FSC certification then areas won’t be reserved. And I certainly can’t have a situation where in the future reservation depends on whether a Minister decides to bother putting up a reserve order… and if they don’t it all falls over.

If there is a Liberal Government it’s inevitable that these areas will never be reserved. And it has always been my view is that the only reservation we are going to see is the World Heritage nomination which will go through in June ahead of the federal election. I really welcome the World Heritage extension; it’s something that I was fighting for back in 1989 with Bob Brown and Peg Putt and others and it’s fantastic that at last what was held up by Michael Field and David Llewellyn and others then will now go into World Heritage. And all this talk about ‘great forest conservation outcomes’ is, I think, just talk.

Certainly everyone is going to say what they agreed to was the Tasmanian Forest Agreement and that is not what has been legislated. So, I think people will feel free to be out there campaigning for their forest areas because they are not going to stay silent waiting for after October 2014 to see what the Legislative Council or a future Tasmanian Government might do then.

( The full transcript of Christine Milne’s remarks are on Tasmanian Times, here )

http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2013/04/30/3748583.htm?site=hobart&ref=m21