My campaign to challenge the manner in which the Tasmanian Forests Agreement Bill, 2012, was dealt with by the Parliament of Tasmania …
Last week I wrote a letter to His Excellency the Governor of Tasmania, petitioning him to withhold Royal Assent for the Tasmanian Forests Agreement Bill, 2012, on two grounds that I specified. This letter is attached (Download below).
As I understand it, Royal Assent for this Bill is to be conferred on June 3, 2013.
Those grounds were that, in my opinion, the government of Tasmania, being the Premier and her Ministers, held the Legislative Council in contempt in the manner in which it entered into and signed an agreement, entitled “Tasmanian State Government and Commonwealth Government Commitments to assist with the Implementation of the Tasmanian Forests Agreement”, which in my opinion sought to subvert the intent of the amendments made by the MLC’s, and was made worse by the fact that they sought to disguise and conceal the content of the document from the debate in the House on April 30 by refusing to table the document, while having made public statements in the intervening period claiming to support the amendments; and secondly that the Parliament of Tasmania was misled in that the information contained in Schedule C: Special Species Contingency Areas, a Government amendment to the Bill, was a misrepresentation of the facts, and it was misrepresented as advice from Forestry Tasmania.
I have since come to realize that His Excellency the Governor (Peter Underwood) is more likely to heed the advice of the Executive Council, being the Premier and her Ministers, and that the Bill will be accompanied by a certificate from the Attorney General certifying that the Bill has been passed by the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council, and that it is in order for him to sign, rather than take notice of a request made by myself.
In light of this realization, I have decided to petition the President and Members of the Legislative Council to take action under the powers and responsibilities available to them, with respect to the complaint and the allegations I am making.
I await the outcome of this action with great interest.
I sat through most of the debate on this Bill in the Public Gallery of the Legislative Council during mid-April, 2013, including one post-3.00am session, and I made a submission to the Select Committee of Inquiry into this Bill, and sat through many of the hearings of that Inquiry, and gave evidence on one occasion. I sat through all of the debate on the Bill when it returned to the House of Assembly on April 30, and I was disgusted with what I witnessed. Since the conclusion of that sitting, and the passage of the Bill, I have obtained a copy of the “Commitments” document, and it is attached below.
I remain deeply concerned that the provisions of this Bill will have a substantially deleterious impact on the capacity to sustainably supply Special Timbers of appropriate quality and quantity across the suite of species to ensure the continuance of a thriving arts-based manufacturing industry as promised by the Prime Minister and the Premier of Tasmania in their agreement of August 2011, and as promised by the Government of Tasmania in the intent claimed as they promoted this Bill, and that the dishonesty in their actions must be challenged.
The Legislative Council spent a lot of time debating the arrangements for Special Timbers, and noted that the Signatories Agreement claimed a significant portion of the state forest previously designated as the 98,200 hectare Special Timbers Zone, and this was calculated to result in a reduction of around 60% in the sustainable annual harvest of Special Timbers species other than Blackwood. Under the Special Timbers Strategy, the calculated sustainable annual supply was 12,500 cubic meters, of which 10,000 m3 was Blackwood, and up to 500 m3 of most of the remaining species such as Huon Pine, Myrtle, Celery-top Pine, Sassafras and King Billy. These are small amounts, but they are for iconic and treasured slow-growing species that I and many believe are of great cultural significance, and sustainable amounts must be made available to artists and craftspeople for many generations into the future.
The Legislative Council agreed with the proposition that for such species the best harvesting model was to tread lightly over a broad area, and with sensitive harvesting methods. As in the Special Timbers Strategy, this would mean no clear-felling, no re-generation burning, and single stem selection. This meant that in considering the Bill, it had to be either no new reserves, or permit light-touch harvesting for Special Timbers across the reserves. The latter actually happens in many reserves and HCV forest areas in other parts of the world, including in some World Heritage Areas. There was a lot of pressure to approve the Tasmanian Forests Agreement Bill, and in particular the amendment on Special Timbers by the Member for Elwick, Adriana Taylor, which was carried unanimously, gave the critical votes to enable passage of the Bill to occur. This is now why there is such consternation amongst Special Timbers advocates, and such a resolve to challenge the state government for its subversion of the intent of the Legislative Council amendments, and the federal government for their complicit activities.
Will the campaign to withhold Royal Assent be successful? Who knows? There is not a lot of time remaining between now and when signing is believed to occur, but moving debate on the issue into the public arena may assist. I am hoping to elicit responses from key players in both houses of the parliament, and perhaps this will focus more attention on the process of Royal Assent. The withholding of Royal Assent has not previously occurred in Tasmania, at least not as I have been able to discover.
A useful paper entitled Royal Assent in Victoria was published by Kate Murray of the Legislative Assembly in 2007 for the ANZACATT Parliamentary Law, Practice and Procedure Program. The opening paragraph in that article is as follows:
“In October 2005, the Governor of Victoria withheld the royal assent from a bill on advice from thePremier. This caused private concern for parliamentary staff, outspoken complaints from some members of Parliament and even somewhat of a media frenzy, well a frenzy relative to the usual media attention paid to parliamentary procedure. The withholding of assent led to a range of questions. What exactly is the legal and constitutional basis for royal assent in Victoria? How has the procedure for giving assent changed over the 150-year history of the Parliament of Victoria? What are the roles of the clerk of the parliaments, the governor and the executive in the process and, in particular, who can and should advise the governor?”
Governors in Tasmania usually have a quiet and pleasant time, and certainly nothing like what vice-regal counterparts had to endure in other places, such as Sir Humphrey Gibbs, the last Governor General in Rhodesia, or Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, who resigned after the coups d’etat of 1987 in Fiji. Maybe a little excitement around here would be good…
The Tasmanian Forests Agreement Bill, 2012, is a poorly constructed piece of legislation, and if it survives this campaign and gains Royal Assent, it will still fall at the first hurdle, which will be when the first Durability Report faces its mathematically impossible task, let alone any consideration of the dubious FSC certification.
Meanwhile, I and others will continue our campaign against the current nomination to extend the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, which is to be considered at the annual meeting of the World Heritage Committee in Phnom Penh from June 17-27.
I note that both the Federal Minister for the Environment, Tony Burke, and the Tasmanian Premier, Lara Giddings, are pushing hard for the WHA extension and are opposed to any harvesting within them, however sensitive,and both (although Tony Burke from only recently) are Arts Ministers, and as such have a responsibility for arts-based industry, which I suggest includes the Special Timbers manufacturing sector in Tasmania. It is the only sector of the timber industry that extends all the way downstream to the retailing of locally designed and made high value products, and I would have expected the Arts Ministers to be doing more to save and promote these activities rather than severely restricting access to the very element on which their survival depends.
Download:
My letter to His Excellency the Governor:
Letter_to_the_Governor_2.docx
21- point Commitments document:
ACF_TasForestsAgreement_implementationassistance.pdf
Kate Murray article:
http://www.anzacatt.org.au/prod/anzacatt/anzacatt.nsf/0/505B80874BB16C24CA2573C800834661/$file/Kate%20Murray%20on%20assent%20in%20Vic.pdf
Examples from other jurisdictions:
http://newindianexpress.com/nation/article1432356.ece
George Harris is a self-employed furniture designer/manufacturer of thirty years standing, using Tasmania’s unique Special Timbers. He is President of the Huon Resource Development Group, which is affiliated as a branch of Timber Communities Australia and Chairman of Fine Timbers Tasmania, which owns and operates the Chain of Custody system for Special Timbers. See www.chainofcustody.com.au
