Media release – Wilderness Society (Tasmania), 29 November 2022
The Sustainable Timber Tasmania Rolls Again At Last Minute, Raising More Questions Than Answers
In another legal case that sought to shine a public Right-To-Know light into murky logging operations, Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT) has again asked to settle at the last minute instead of going to court.
“This is another win for the public’s Right To Know about logging operations in state forests but it raises more questions than answers,” said Tom Allen for the Wilderness Society (Tasmania).
“This is also a win for community members around Surges Bay and Dover, who oppose this local forest destruction.
“When STT, the Tasmanian Government-owned logging agency, releases the documents that the Court has instructed it to, we will look at them closely and consider our options.
“However, it remains unclear if STT’s logging operations are lawful, why STT is still refusing to release many, possibly hundreds, of logging plans requested by the community and why these are now no longer automatically made public as they used to be.
“It’s also unclear – in fact, it’s impossible – for people to know if paper, packaging, furniture or timber they purchase is made from wood that comes from this forest destruction or not.
“The big picture is that the Tasmanian Government continuing to log native forests means that public money will continue to hemorrhage, logging CO2 emissions continue to rise and precious forests and habitat continues to be needlessly destroyed, despite the existence of better ways to produce wood products,” said Mr Allen.
Susanne Chandler
December 1, 2022 at 17:39
Hidden agendas are so opposite to the way we want to live.
Secrecy undermines the values our society lives by, namely honesty, integrity and trustworthiness. All this denying of information is ghastly, as is denying the right to peaceful protest.
Doge
December 1, 2022 at 19:09
Except that logging plans are publicly available .. they’re just not listed in the same way. You can still make RTIs for them.
Also, why would they release all the plans at once? Surely one couldn’t hope to go through all 900 and more for no real reason?
Also, there are better ways of producing wood products? What’s the alternative?
Doge
December 1, 2022 at 19:40
So much for fighting against hidden agendas and secrecy when I post a perfectly factual point about logging plans being public still, and then my comment gets deleted.
Stifling polite public debate is not healthy!
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Doge,
Your Comments have not been deleted. We’d rather amend a contribution than delete it. Our numerous changes to content are mainly grammatical. Bad stuff and nonsense automatically go into our Spam folder.
Your Comment of the 16th November was promptly published here – https://tasmaniantimes.com/2022/11/stt-backs-down-on-tws-request-for-logging-plan/
Scroll right down to see it.
— Moderator
Chris Baker
December 1, 2022 at 19:56
Logging plans are publicly available, but they’ve been removed, apparently due to hosting issues.