Lapoinya: The Blog …

FRIDAY February 19 …

• Letter from Lapoinya #7

Last Friday the 19th of February FLAG launched an exhibition at Artscape in Wynyard displaying a stunning array of photographs of coupe FD053A before and after clearfelling titled “Paradise Lost”. It features work by local Nicholas Higgins and international photographer Ryland Pearson-McManus. The free exhibition runs until Friday the 4th of March and is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10.00am til 2.00pm.

Direct Actions have continued in coupe FD053A this week in the community of Lapoinya. Yesterday a couple from Somerset entered the coupe in the afternoon and stopped work for the day. There have been no arrests or fines issued in recent weeks, but in their second action, the wonderful Val Warner and her daughters Fiona and Sarah stopped work in the coupe and were moved on by police. They cannot return to the coupe for 90 days without instant arrest so now say adieu to Tasmania. FLAG would like to thank them for their support and all those who have come to rally around this little North-West community in the last few months. FLAG will fight on and invite supporters to continue to visit and take a stand against clearfelling. If you would like to assist FLAG’s efforts please contact Ruth on 0400 957 994 or email ruth.groom@wilderness.org.au.

THURSDAY February 18 …

Val and her caughters

• Ruth Groom: Letter from Lapoinya #6

The resignation of resource minister Paul Harriss this week has given the Lapoinya community hope that change is in the wind. The community is seeking a meeting with newly appointed Forest Minister Peter Gutwein to ask that he calls a halt to the clearfelling of coupe FD053A, now that Forestry Tasmania have their peeler logs which was the main resource requirement driving the logging in this 49ha coupe. They are asking that FT now refrain from continuing the harvest and particularly from the planned high-intensity burn that follows. The cost to the community is already high, with the local infrastructure under pressure, and local residents and school bus dealing with machinery and log trucks traversing the little road and bridge. The community hopes that Mr Gutwein has greater capacity to grasp the financial liability of this decision and can show more compassion to the people of Lapoinya than his predecessor.

Direct action resumed yesterday with a very special occasion. For her 80th birthday, Val Warner, a resident of the Ottways in Victoria, asked that her children send her to Lapoinya, Tasmania to join the community peaceful protests. Of course they complied, and yesterday afternoon she entered the coupe with her daughters Fiona and Sarah and shut down operations for the afternoon.This was Val’s first visit to Tasmania and she commented “I know it’s regrowth but it’s just so beautiful” All protesters wore high-visibility vests to improve safety of the action and to ensure that they could be seen by workers.

The Friends of Lapoinya Action Group invite the public to an art exhibition being launched tomorrow night (Friday 19th February) at Artscape Wynyard, 45 Jackson St at 6.00pm. This exhibition will run until the 4th of March. FLAG are also running a “Stop Clearfelling Tasmania” rally this Saturday the 20th February at Parliament Lawns in Hobart from 12 Noon with other community groups that are fighting clearfelling operations in their regions from Bruny Island and the Mutual Valley near Derby.

• Stewart Hoyt, Convenor for Forests of Lapoinya Action Group (FLAG). There is Still Time to Save Lapoinya

Stop Clear-felling Native Forests Rally on the Parliament Lawns Saturday 21 February 2016 12 Noon

The resignation and retirement of Minister for Resources Mr Paul Harriss offers an opportunity for the Government to re-engage with its Community in Lapoinya over the clear-felling activities of its government business, Forestry Tasmania.

The disastrous decisions of the outgoing Minister as regards the 49-hectare local Lapoinya Forest and the impact it has had on community, taxpayers, habitat and international forestry accreditation can be repaired.

There is still time to “Save Lapoinya” and thereby save international forestry accreditation initiatives.

We invite the Premier and his appointed newly Minister Peter Gutwein to meet with members of the Forests of Lapoinya Action Group to renew dialogue as regards the issue.

While clear felling persists in the Lapoinya Forest, FLAG maintains its commitment to support protest action in the disputed Coupe in Lapoinya as the number of “move on” notices, fines and arrests approaches 100.

Yesterday, an 80 year old woman and her daughter and a young man entered the Coupe to tell everyone to go home, and they did!

It was her birthday and she wanted to do something that was important to her.

Amazing.

• Jenny Weber, Campaign Manager, Bob Brown Foundation ( http://www.bobbrown.org.au/ ).

Lapoinya community members have been organising peaceful protests to oppose clear-felling.

At stake at Lapoinya is a vital habitat of the world’s largest freshwater crayfish, listed as threatened with extinction by the State and Federal Governments and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The Tasmanian Government’s own official advice is that bush should be protected from logging to help this amazing creature survive in clear water streams like Lapoinya.

At the Bob Brown Foundation we have been lending our support to the community of Lapoinya in their fight.

We are hosting three film nights with the local community group, Forest of Lapoinya Action Group, in Hobart, Launceston and Wynyard:

Included in the films will be a short film made with Todd Walsh, Freshwater Crayfish expert, and a longer film made by the community of Lapoinya about their forests and the campaign efforts to protest the logging of this wildlife habitat.

Hobart
Venue: State Cinema North Hobart
Date: Thursday February 25
Time: 6pm
Tickets: $20 waged $15 unwaged

Launceston
Venue: Pilgrim Uniting Church
Date: Saturday February 27
Time: 6pm
Tickets: $10 on the door

Wynyard
Venue: The Wynyard Theatre, The Wharf Hotel
Date: Sunday February 28
Time: 6pm
Tickets: $5 on the door

*Pic: Nicholas Higgins …

MONDAY, TUESDAY February 15, 16 …

Letter from Lapoinya #5

Protesting has been placed on the back-burner at Lapoinya due to increased threat of fires in the area in the last few days. People visiting the community have been billeted locally and have been helping to fireproof homes and properties. Status has been downgraded from Watch and Act today by the Tas Fire Service. Protests will recommence once the fire threat is considered to be under control by the TFS. People who are intending to visit Lapoinya and join the peaceful protests are asked to please check the FLAG facebook page for developments before arriving in Lapoinya.

Forestry operations have continued in coupe FD053a with some police supervision. As our state continues to burn on many fronts, it’s time to ask what the forest industry’s methodology contributes to the drying out of our island. Healthy forests are more fire resistant, that means a forest with its biodiversity intact, where the many different levels of vegetation are present and where natural processes can occur. A forest full of ferns, moss, fungi, understory and midstory plants, as well as diverse species of trees is both a water storage and water filtering system. Every time a forest is clearfelled the capacity for that forest to store water is depleted. On top of that, vast numbers of new young trees, thirsty young trees, all draining the soil and surrounds of its water and you get standing tinder, infernos in waiting. Add to that high-intensity burning, chemical fires lit with liquid incendiary and you have an industry that is costing us more than our taxpayer dollars, it could be costing us our health and safety both now and into the future.

THE WEEKEND February 13, 14 …

Letter from Lapoinya #4

Thursday saw a larger than usual contingent of police at Lapoinya. Police accompanied FT workers and contractors into the coupe at the start of the day and accompanied them out at the end of the day. Is Forestry Tasmania paying for this police escort? Of course not, we are.

FLAG wrote to FT to raise issues about safety in the coupe and attached video footage including machines moving towards and very close past a protestor for their consideration. Forestry Tasmania reacted with a Media Release claiming the protestors were participating in dangerous and unsafe behaviour. FLAG responded with a Media release and included the said footage for the sake of transparency.

A peaceful community action happened in the morning and four people were escorted out of the coupe.

On Friday a peaceful community action occurred in the morning and two people were escorted out, work stopped only when Police arrived.

Peaceful community training took place in the afternoon and others monitored and filmed the logging operations.

A fully loaded log truck from coupe Lapoinya was documented crossing the single lane wooden bridge on Lapoinya road contrary to the goodwill agreement made between Forestry Tasmania and the local community. Forestry Tas. had implied to concerned community members that the trucks would take an alternative route as the bridge is inadequate for industrial usage and is the local school bus route. Who pays for the reconstruction and roadworks once Forestry Tasmania has left? Who pays for the extra grading? Will it be ratepayers? Will it be the Tasmanian taxpayers?

After only one week of log truck movements Lapoinya road required grading and was also watered, despite the water restrictions in place around the state, due to increased dust and road damage by the log trucks. The costs just keep on mounting and the little coupe that was always going to lose money for FT, now loses more money for everyone.

BREAKING: Sunday 14th February – Due to a watch and act fire alert issued to Lapoinya, all protesters staying in the vicinity were evacuated to a safe area on Sunday evening. Protesters are urged to wait until the all clear is given by the Tas Fire Service before heading to Lapoinya this week.

Logging has not ceased due to fire hazards.

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 11 …

Forestry Tasmania
Forest Operations Hobart and
Murchison District Office

10 February 2016
To Whom It May Concern,
Re: Safe Operating Procedures in FD053a Lapoinya

It is with concern that I contact you regarding activities of contractual operators in Coupe FD 053a Lapoinya over the last two days. During a direct action by protesters in the Coupe yesterday, video footage was taken which may be of concern to you in light of the duty of care of persons on a working site for which Forestry Tasmania has present, responsible and dedicated supervising staff.

We provide you and no others the footage for your evaluation. This is in light of early on conversations of assurance between Craig Butt and myself that the contractors to be involved in the clear fell operation in FD053a were to be the best of operators.

Protester experiences with Forestry Tasmania’s roading crew were exemplary as they were polite, circumspect, responsible, peaceful and safe. The reports we now hear and see of some harvest contractors calling out denigrating, disrespectful and unnecessary comment, advancing their machinery towards protesters in full view and operating too closely in full view of FT supervisors are actions we view as alarming.

As protest action is ongoing and will continue, we need to define the actions of operators of machinery that are expected, acceptable and codified in Forestry Tasmania’s safe work practices and risk management procedures in clear-felling operations.

Therefore we request the following risk management information from you urgently:

• Who is responsible for alerting a machine operator to stop activity?

• Are all machine operators under visual supervision by Forestry Tasmania staff?

• What are the proscribed distances or proscribed procedures regards machinery operation should a protester be sighted in the work area by Forestry Tasmania staff.

• What are the standard operating procedures given to Machine operators in the Coupe should they sight a protester moving toward them in the workplace.

Please find attached some short video footage as taken from a number of vantage points for your evaluation.

This is an urgent request, and we may be contacted below as follows:

Stewart Hoyt
Lapoinya 7325

WEDNESDAY, February 10 …

Wednesday saw no peaceful community action in the Lapoinya coupe. Pictures speak a thousand words, take a look at this youtube video and see why a community of forest guardian’s and respectful peaceful protesters decided to delay actions until guarantees could be given that forestry workers and contractors would adhere to Work, Health and Safety regulations.

Police did however spend the entire eleven hour day in the company of the contract workers at the taxpayer’s expense.

The Wilderness Society continues to provide the Lapoinya community and forest visitors training in Peaceful Community Protest, Non Violent Direct Action Training.

Watch the VIDEO HERE: https://youtu.be/sCL3Wx58whU

TUESDAY, February 9 …

On Monday night new arrivals received their “Peaceful Community Protest” training. All participants learned about the basic principles of peaceful protest including why non-violence is quintessentially important, consensus decision making, and all agreed to abide by the following agreements …

1. We will not use violence – either physical or verbal

2. We will not bring or use alcohol or illegal drugs

3. We will not sabotage or in any way touch equipment or machinery

4. We will not place ourselves or anyone else, including fellow protesters, police and workers in obvious danger and will endeavour to ensure the safety of all involved.

Before dawn this morning three protesters entered the coupe.

The first was found and escorted out by police at around 9.00am while two others remained unsighted by police for several hours before being moved on.

They had an interesting tale to tell.

The two protesters described a commando like figure hiding in the bush.

Initially they thought it was a fellow protester that had taken hiding to “the next level” as he was in what one described as a “gilly suit” (camouflage gear).

Eventually they realised that it was a forest worker that had been seen working in the coupe the previous day.

Unfortunately for him, his deep voiced instruction to “get back down there” was respectfully ignored by the giggling protesters. We can only hope his Ramboesque dream was fulfilled on this sunny day in Lapoinya.

A second group of three protesters entered the coupe in the afternoon, sending the work crew home early, letting peace descend once again on this contested little forest.

No protesters were arrested or received fines in actions today.

MONDAY, February 8 …

Letter from Lapoinya (Mon 8th Feb)

The peace of the forest is broken; instead of bird song the whine of the harvester screams its death song in the Lapoinya forest.

The stream, one of the last sixteen on earth where the world’s largest freshwater crustacean – Astacopsis Gouldi breeds, is battered and bridged.

The buffer zones are already breached, and oil leaks into one of the last habitats on earth for this majestic creature.

Yet the community fights on.

Every single day they are up before dawn, bearing witness to every tree that is felled, every well loved hollow that is crushed.

A retired doctor, a nurse, a local builder and a psychiatric nurse have all been arrested from this community. Despite the assurances of a disingenuous government that “mum and dad” protesters would not be targeted – they have been.

Everyone looks tired, including the longsuffering police, whose skills it must be said would be put to better use protecting our society from actual criminals. You know – rapists, killers and perpetrators of violent assault.

In Tasmania right now, these crimes can incur lesser penalties than standing peacefully in the forest of your childhood and saying “no”.

For any work to be completed, forestry workers must be babysat by police, at the expense of the taxpayer. Police do not babysit our paramedics that face volatile situations every day, but forestry gets special treatment; subsidies, comfort money, exemption from laws that apply to everyone else and police protection from community elders and concerned citizens. In the words of local arrestee, nurse Jessica Hoyt “It’s wrong, it’s just wrong.”

Monday morning three protesters entered the coupe FD053A and revealed themselves to Forestry workers, who proceeded to call the police to remove them and a game of cat and mouse ensued.

Work was sporadically delayed until around 11.00am, at which time the last of the three was found by police and escorted out.

Once the police had left for the afternoon, two more protesters entered the coupe, police were once again called and came to rescue the beleaguered workers from a 70 year old local community member who was standing there peacefully.

Meanwhile another protester curtailed the efforts of workers, but was not found by police before leaving the coupe. No protesters were arrested or received fines in actions today.

• PB in Comments: The hapless ENGO signatories to the Tasmania Forest Agreement backed the wrong horse enabling the Malaysian timber mafia to entrench forest destruction and extract $26 million in Commonwealth compensation on the pretext of forfeiting nearly half of its timber supply – supply which it never took due to declining markets and supply which can only be achieved by overcutting Tasmania’s public forest at less than the cost of production (thanks to contracts signed when Rolley was previously Managing Director at Forestry Tasmania). Ta Ann Executive Director Evan Rolley has previously said Ta Ann’s overseas customers will not buy timber products manufactured from contentious forests ( HERE ). “We’ll do everything possible to convince people in the political process that customers are king, customers require wood from non-contentious forest.” On the basis of that statement Ta Ann should be forcibly telling Forestry Tasmania to cancel all logging operations at Lapoinya.

• Nicholas Higgins in Comments: To Richard Colbeck MR: When you remove a process of review by the public, and allow a company to ride roughshod over communities, for NO economic gain, for NO social benefit and for NO environmental benefit, then you leave no option EXCEPT to protest in any way that is available, regardless of the law. … You can stop this by telling Harriss to pull his head in, stop the clearfelling and start selective logging. Then it will all go away. Until then, you will have to keep on sending the police in. When this coupe is done, there will be another and then another. We WILL NOT STOP. Tasmanian Native Forests are too precious to sacrifice at the alter of Paul Harriss’ ego. I await more legislation from the bullies in government to try and stop us. …

• Fiona White in Comments: I have walked through this forest many times before Forestry Tas put up their signs telling me I can’t. The government has declared protesters risk arrest, a $10,000 fine or months of imprisonment. I am willing to risk all that to save this forest. The archaic practice of clear felling needs to stop in native forests. To reduce a forest to smouldering stumps is a crime. To kill or displace the native animals is a crime. To risk Tasmanian Devils and the Giant Freshwater Crayfish is a crime. All to fulfill the peeler contract to Malaysion owned company Ta Ann. It is the people that stand up for what is right that are being treated as criminals. This government disgusts me.

• Mike Bolan in Comments: This dreadful situation is yet another example of the lack of power available to citizens and the infinite access to power and our money available to anyone who can influence government. What is needed is a change in the way that citizens protest so that governments can be more responsive to community outrage. Such a change may be more likely to be achieved if the conflict were understood to be created by governments working against the interests of their citizens, rather than governments fighting anti-development ‘greenies’. With that in mind some further observations might be useful. It is noteworthy that while green NGOs like the Wilderness Society may have support and ideas to offer, their involvement creates a real risk of a genuine ‘community initiative’ being converted into an ‘environmental initiative’. That perception then feeds the conflict fantasies of the forestry industry and government, and stimulates simplified stereotypes in the media that presumably appeal to readers’ preconceptions …

• Karl Stevens in Comments: Just got back from the West Coast and Lapoinya. A constant plume of smoke rises into the upper atmosphere from the Balfour-Mawbanna region and out to Bass Strait following the Western Side of Sisters Hills. Visibility on the Bass Highway at Port Latta was an estimated 400 metres. As dairy farms in the Smithton area run out of water, log trucks shuttle around like yellow cabs in New York City. Nobody is in charge of this ecological catastrophe but the ute-driving beer swillers reckon it’s the only way the economy can stay on its feet. Fading ‘Roads to Recovery’ signs from last decade remind us that keeping the economy ticking over has been occupying the government for a long time. In the vacant gaze of the fluoro shirt army the thought that ‘the more land cleared, the hotter and drier it gets’ is finally taking hold. People are not as stupid as the Federal members would have us believe. Lapoinya. The campsite is like the United Nations with people from many countries united to save the planet. A cop wanders around in the heat trying to return a US passport dropped in the logging zone. No way is this veteran going to give his hard-earned to Paul Harriss and his Borneo Goons. He can be of more assistance elsewhere.

• Simon Warriner in Comments: Jack, mate. Your resorting to “the rule of law” is like watching a man pissing into the face of a tropical cyclone. If the “rule of law” had any force in this state John Gay and all his ilk would be doing their exercise in a small yard restrained by barbed wire atop the fences. The police would be investigating the fraud and extortion I took to them, and the land swap FT did would have been the subject of a judical inquiry to see where the other side of the swap ended up. Oh, and our local council would be doing something to prevent my fellow residents from doing being run over by fuckwits who drive log trucks. And in that case I will make an exception to my in-principle objection to workplace invasion as a protest tactic. That is one workplace I am very likely to invade if another one runs over another vehicle belonging to my family. Don’t get me wrong, I have some serious problems with invading a workplace, but they fade rapidly to insignificance when compared to the likes of you bleating about the rule of law.

• Peter Bright in Comments: … Defiance of illegitimate laws maliciously invented for dishonourable purposes is a social duty, and I admire those few courageous souls making a stand in the least offensive manner necessary to restore order. … My comment at #35 explained that a myrmidon is someone, ordinarily regarded as human but who, for the sake of money, allows himself to be used, regardless of the merits of a matter or the vital principles therein, to become a paid robot, a zombie, a programmable puppet of injustice. In view of so many really splendid comments above, particularly those attributed to Randall Doyle, I now perceive most Liberal MPs, state and federal, to be myrmidons of corporatism – unfortunately with some Tasmanian forest workers acting similarly. This state’s forest workers will say “But we have to earn a living somehow” which reminds me of German soldiers with the same attitude …

• Jim In Comments: ” … There was much more to this troubling situation than I had expected. In fact, the arrest of Brown, arguably the most iconic figure in the history of the Australian environmental movement, was a secondary matter in my mind compared to a more dangerous one — that there was the new potential that one of Australia’s most renowned and revered public servants could be fined $10,000 and/or imprisoned up to four years. What? I immediately dug into this story. What I discovered convinced me that democracy and dissent are in grave danger in Tasmania. The Orwellian named legislation, The Workplaces Bill, was nothing more than legislative Trojan Horse to eliminate democracy and dissent on the island. It was designed to intimidate people into silence. The combination of corporate interests and their obedient legislative lapdogs in the Tasmanian Parliament have created a monstrous law that fundamentally alters the course of civil affairs. …”