Coroner & Legal
MP leads a new war of the woods
Tony Mulder
Only months after achieving the impossible – peace in Tasmania’s forests – timber chiefs and greenies face the unthinkable: a sudden return to war.
This time, however, they face a conflict not of their making designed by the armchair forest warriors of the State’s Upper House.
After 2½ years of tortuous negotiation, splits and spats, peak timber groups finally made peace with peak conservation groups in November last year.
The Tasmanian Forest Agreement, designed to end 35 years of bitter division, is unique in being a genuine and final compromise by both sides, rather than a quick political fix.
In return for agreeing to a staged protection of 504,012 ha of native forests in regions such as the Styx, Florentine, Weld and Blue Tier, the industry is promised the green accreditation for its products increasingly demanded by customers and consumers.
Unlike previous forest deals cobbled together in election campaigns to secure green preferences or ‘the doctor’s wives’ vote, this was a deal done by loggers and greenies directly, and despite the politics rather than because of it. Now the politics threatens to destroy it.
Despite the deal being supported by the leadership of all the main timber industry groups, the Liberals – at a State and federal level – have seen it as a means to paint Labor and the Greens as in cahoots to destroy jobs.
In reality, the deal came about only because of a downturn in the industry, linked in part to market demands for greener product as well as the higher dollar and the growing supply of cheaper woodchips elsewhere.
Forestry Company, Gunns’ exit from native forest logging, to secure financial and community backing for a plantation-fed pulp mill, freed up enough forest resources to make a pact possible.
However, the process dragged on for so long – partly because of the realisations that there was less timber available than previously thought – that the Liberals were able to paint it as the cause of the industry’s woes rather than the solution.
This approach has been enthusiastically embraced by some members of the Tasmanian Legislative Council, a powerful Upper House dominated by independents, many with strong Liberal links.
[b]A House Divided [/b]
Initially the Council appeared equally divided – seven votes to seven – on whether to pass the enabling legislation that is vital to enshrine the new forest reserves and revised timber volumes.
The deadlock has stalled the legislation, which must pass if Tasmania is to continue to access $300 million in federal funds to restructure the industry and diversify the State economy.
One of the industry’s few surviving large employers, veneer maker [b]Ta Ann[/b], has pleaded with MLCs to back the legislation. The Malaysian company warns that without green certification and support for its products offered by the deal it will have to close two mills and cancel a planned third, costing at least 120 jobs. MLCs appear unmoved having in recent weeks hardened their resolve against the legislation in its present form.
Some MLCs believe they can improve the deal via amendments. Until now these have been within the bounds of what green groups, such as The Wilderness Society can live with.
However, there are amendments proposed that would rewrite the agreement so fundamentally as to force conservationists to walk away from the deal. These include increasing the agreed size of the annual sawlog harvest and delaying the creation of the lion’s share of new national parks until 2015, to ensure the greenies keep to their promises to back green certification for industry.
[b] Mulder’s amendments[/b]
This approach – led by “independent Liberal” MLC Tony Mulder – may be well intentioned, however, the view that MLCs can significantly rewrite the deal in which every clause has been’ negotiated to death’ (to quote participants to the agreement) through 2½ years appears to many to be naïve, arrogant and disingenuous.
Some independent MLCs, like the Liberals, simply want to destroy the agreement. Some MLCs believe the industry can get a better deal by waiting for a change in government at the State and federal levels. Others appear to see collapse of the agreement as a means of precipitating or at least further guaranteeing the demise of the State Labor-Green power-sharing government.
Having now twice postponed the debate on the legislation rather than see the peace deal shot down via unacceptable amendments, the government appears lost for a next move.
Even lobbying by former pro-logging premier, Paul Lennon – a backer of the peace deal – has failed to swing MLCs onside.
If the government forces a vote – the legislation is due to be debated again next week – the government risks amendments being passed that effectively destroy the agreement.
[b]Politics options [/b]
Labor’s choices then would be to back the amendments, and thereby fail to secure peace in the forests, not to mention risk a fatal split with the Greens; send the legislation back to the Upper House and calls its bluff; or admit the deal is dead and seek to salvage whatever it can.
The government could decide to postpone the vote in the hope the numbers might be different after elections in three Upper House divisions on 4 May. However, it is unclear if the peace process, the federal funds that underpin it or the timber companies such as Ta Ann would survive further delay.
The best hope for a deal appears to rest with persuading Mulder to modify his amendments to a point where the peak conservation groups can live with the outcome.
Mulder’s hand-grenade amendment defers 270,000 ha of the initial 395,000 ha of forests (agreed for immediate protection) until 2015. Even then, these forests would become national parks only if green groups had helped industry achieve full Forest Stewardship Council certification. For the green groups, this is unacceptable.
As a compromise, the government has encouraged MLCs to get behind an alternative amendment from another MLC, Mike Gaffney. This would prevent the gazetting of the 270,000 ha tranche of forest reserves until green groups had helped industry achieve a lesser form of FSC certification known as “controlled wood status”.
The greenies can live with this, given that “controlled wood status” would take only 3 to 6 months to achieve; allowing protection of 395,00 ha before any change of State government next year.
If the deal is to survive, it appears Mulder and the majority of MLCs lining up behind him will have to accept some kind of hybrid between his amendment and Gaffney’s.
A compromise is not hard to imagine, except that Mulder is not prepared to budge much further.
“There’s room for movement on the edges but the bottom line is that the bulk of the stuff [forests] still should not be going into reserve, until such time as FSC is delivered”, Mulder said.
The problem for conservation groups is that full FSC certification can take up to 2 years by which time most expect the Liberals to be in government.
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Edwards warns of immediate and significant job losses such MLCs persist in their deal-breaking amendments.
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Mr Edwards also believes sinking the deal could prove fatal for the State-owned Forestry Tasmania, which he says needs FSC certification to find markets for wood residues. “FT itself may not survive”, he says.