THURSDAY, January 21 …
• Rosemary Bolger, ABC: Forestry Tasmania boss Bob Annells’ exit linked to anti-logging protests, Opposition says The flare-up of conflict over logging has been linked to the departure of four out of six Forestry Tasmania board members, including chairman Bob Annells. About 70 people turned out at Lapoinya in the state’s north-west on Tuesday to protest against the clear felling of Forestry Tasmania’s 49-hectare regrowth coupe. Police arrested a 66-year-old Wynyard man using the State Government’s new anti-protest laws for the first time. Hobart nurse, Jessica Hoyt, has also been charged under the 2014 Workplaces (Protection from Protesters) Act and could face jail. Ms Hoyt says she wants to see the area spared from logging and was distraught when the charges were laid against her. “I bawled my eyes out, I grew up in Lapoinya,” she said. “That forest has been a part of my life for life for 33 years. “It’s wrong, it’s wrong, everything that’s happening in that forest is wrong.” Resources Minister Paul Harriss said Mr Annells decided not to seek reappointment as head of the government business for “personal reasons” …
• Brenda Rosser in Comments: We have too much CO2 in the air now. So the North Pole and the South Pole are melting and our Tasmanian climate is now much hotter and dryer. That’s why the fires are burning out of control this week and growing much bigger very quickly. Simplot can’t get enough potatoes to process in Ulverstone. The dairy hands have been laid off because the milk of the cows has dried up. The farmers are very angry because Hydro Tasmania won’t give them the extra water they need to grow their crops in this 16 year long drought. We’re in planet earth’s 6th Great Extinction and that includes us. I know what our government can do! Enforce the further destruction of living things and put anyone who dare to protest in jail.
• Tim Thorne in Comments: The use of the word “drought” in comment #7 is misleading. A drought is an abnormal interruption to a climate pattern. Droughts break eventually. Our current hot, dry weather is part of a changed climate pattern, linked to a global climate change which is not going to revert to an earlier pattern. Forestry practices, along with everything else we do that affects the balance of atmospheric gases, must take into consideration the existing changes to climate patterns and be in line with attempts to minimise those changes.
WEDNESDAY, January 20 …
At approximately 9:30 AM this Morning, Jessica Hoyt, nurse, mother and a child of the Lapoinya Forest was arrested in the Coupe in an action to prevent the destruction of this High Conservation Forest.
• Advocate: Man arrested for hindering workers at Lapoinya logging project | pictures, video
• Paul Harriss, Minister for Resources: Lapoinya Protests Media Release
The Government is a strong supporter of free speech and the right to protest.
But we also unashamedly support the rights of people to earn a lawful living.
In this context it is very disappointing that some people yesterday chose to allegedly break the law and impede lawful forestry operations at Lapoinya.
Suggestions that our workplace protection laws prevent people protesting are just plain wrong.
It is noteworthy that around 70 people protested at the coupe yesterday, but only a small handful chose to try and make their point by allegedly breaking the law.
Police and Forestry Tasmania personnel on site are more than happy to assist protestors in directing them to where they can protest and make their point, without impeding workers or endangering their own safety.
I also reiterate the point that Lapoinya is a regrowth forest, it has been harvested before. It is also directly next door to a pine plantation. The 290 ha Flowerdale River Reserve, also next door to the Lapoinya coupe, is preserved in perpetuity.
The Greens and the environment movement also need to explain why they now think the coupe is so high conservation value it should be protected, when they failed to nominate it for protection under the job-destroying forest deal.
It seems it was okay to harvest this coupe while the Greens were in Government, but it’s not okay to harvest it under the Liberals.
It looks like another case of the Greens moving the goalposts, a sport they are world champions at.
• Paul Harriss, Minister for Resources: Forestry Tasmania Board Media Release
The Government has approved a number of changes to the Board of Forestry Tasmania.
The changes were required following advice from the Chair, Bob Annells, that he would not seek reappointment following the expiry of his current term, and as a result of other vacancies.
Mr Annells’ term expired last month. He has advised me that after careful consideration over the Christmas break, he has decided not to seek reappointment.
The Government has accepted his decision and thanked Mr Annells for his leadership over the past three years – a particularly challenging period for both Forestry Tasmania and for the industry.
Mr Annells will chair his final Board meeting on January 27.
The process for appointing the new Forestry Tasmania Chair will commence immediately and is expected to be completed in the coming months.
Dr Dan Norton has agreed to act as Interim Chair pending the recruitment of the new Chair.
Dr Norton is one of Tasmania’s most accomplished board directors. He is the Chair of TasNetworks and until recently was also Chair of TasPorts.
The other new directors of Forestry Tasmania are Professor Mark Hunt, Dr Lyndall Bull and Ms Suzanne Baker. They replace retiring Board members Geoff Coffey, Bob Smith and Rob Woolley.
• Bryan Green in Comments HERE: Paul Harriss should go, not his Chair
• Bob Brown Media Release …
HODGMAN’S DRACONIAN LAWS SNARE TYPICAL TASMANIAN RURAL COMMUNITY
The Hodgman government’s draconian laws to deprive Tasmanians of the centuries-old right to peacefully protest have created community havoc at the first test, environmentalist Bob Brown said today, after Jessica Hoyt, who was raised in Lapoinya was arbitrarily arrested in her local forest.
The forest is a previously safe habitat for rare and endangered species including the Tasmanian devil and giant Tasmanian freshwater crayfish.
“The arrests and mandatory fines handed out today and yesterday at Lapoinya show a government which has lost touch with its rural heartland. Will Hodgman, also out of touch with Tasmania’s natural bounty, has only himself to blame. He was led by the logging companies, with a ring through his nose, to host these draconian laws.”
“The Hodgman government has underestimated the love of place which is at the heart of many Tasmanian communities.”
“One independent economic analysis estimates the cost to taxpayers of this unnecessary invasion of the Lapoinya forest at $50,000 but, with Forestry Tasmania’s bid for FSC certification undermined, the flow-on costs will be much more”, Bob Brown said.
There will be a small rally to support the Lapoinya community in Hobart’s Parliamentary Lawns tomorrow, Thursday, from 12.30 to 1.00pm and the public is welcome: no one will be arrested.
• Cassy O’Connor Media Release …
Incompetent, Divisive Forests Minister Must Resign
Cassy O’Connor MP | Greens Leader and Forests spokesperson
Wednesday, 20 January 2016
Resources Minister, Paul Harriss, is presiding over a debacle in his portfolio and all of it, his own making.
Forestry Tasmania is in complete disarray. Its hopes of securing Forest Stewardship Certification (FSC) look increasingly like a pipe dream with the resignation of Bob Annells as Chair of the Board, and the loss of other key Board members who supported the principles of the Tasmanian Forest Agreement.
As the Minister who has presided over this debacle, Paul Harriss should take the honourable course and resign his portfolio.
The timing of Mr Annells’ resignation and the announcement that three other members of the Forestry Tasmanian Board will not continue in their roles comes the day after Minister Harriss wilfully reignited the forest wars at Lapoinya.
Minister Harriss has clearly put respected members of the Forestry Tasmanian Board in an untenable position.
He’s ‘ripped up’ the Tasmanian Forest Agreement and set out to log Lapoinya, with no justification, in the face of strong community resistance.
Minister Harriss promised that “mums and dads” would not be affected by the Liberals’ draconian anti-protest laws*. Yesterday at Lapoinya, a retired and respected anaesthetist was arrested, and today a Hobart nurse has been arrested and will face charges.
Minister Harriss needs to clarify whether senior people at Forestry Tasmania who were working towards a solution at Lapoinya were overruled by him as Minister. Is the logging of Lapoinya about cynical, divisive politics and a desire to restart the forest wars for political purposes?
Has cynical, divisive politics led to the resignation of Bob Annells and others on the FT Board?
Is this cynical, divisive and highly political approach to forest policy going to destroy any slim chance Forestry Tasmania has of securing FSC?
Mr Harriss is not a fit and proper person to hold a Ministerial commission and he must resign.
* http://www.premier.tas.gov.au/releases/protecting_workers_from_radical_protesters
• Luigi in Comments: I never cease to be amazed at our good fortune in having Paul Harriss at the helm of forestry issues in Tasmania. Which other Minister would have the courage to make pronouncements about the guilt of an (alleged) Lapoinya demonstrator before it goes to Court? But where is he when we really need him? We’re all dying here in the North with all the smoke from the bushfires – so thick you can almost cut the air with a knife. We need Paul to speak out on this as he usually does. That would fix it. “Let me make this crystal clear.” Hallelujah!
• Joan Rylah in comments HERE: Greens shift the goalposts again
