Progress everywhere but in the forests

DAVID Bartlett likes to argue that Tasmania is midway through a “great renaissance” and the Labor Premier has some justification.

The island has turned around its basket-case economic reputation and is likelier to be leading than trailing the nation in key indicators such as growth and jobs.

Socially, the last state to decriminalise homosexuality leads the nation in providing legal recognition to same-sex couples. And a steady flow of sea and tree changers, as well as migrants, has injected fresh diversity.

The state enjoys advantages increasingly in demand globally, including renewable energy sources and relatively good rainfall and water supplies. Fast-speed internet is being rolled out (albeit at great taxpayer expense), while industries producing quality food, wine and tourism continue to grow and attract accolades.

These changes serve to bring into sharper relief the one thing that has stubbornly changed little through the decades: the debate over Tasmania’s old-growth forests. People who have left Tasmania and returned after a decade or so, as many do, are struck by the sameness of the debate.

In the past 20 years conservationists have made big gains and the forest industry, through retooling and value-adding, has changed. Deals such as the 1997 Regional Forest Agreement and 2005 Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement have brought benefits for all interests.

However, the debate over the remaining contentious forests appears little changed. In the warmer months, the conflict plays out in city-based protest rallies and in direct action within the forests, just as it did decades ago.

Police commanders on tight budgets are forced to divert officers from fighting crime to trying to keep the peace in forest coupes, while overstretched courts are further strained by a parade of protesters on trespass charges. Forest contractors, often small family businesses with large overheads and insecure income, are collateral damage as protests hold up operations for weeks on end.

The issue of just how much of the state’s old-growth and other highly valued native forests should be protected and how much logged has influenced elections, ruined and sustained political careers, deeply divided the community and spawned an industry in bumper stickers. Nor is it just a clash of ideas; occasional acts of physical violence are reported on both sides, while stories run wild of pets poisoned, shots fired and buildings torched.

Many Tasmanians believe this division and rancour prevents the state from reaching its full potential. Anecdotally, many more are sick and tired of the debate, and would dearly love to move on.

As another summer of protest approaches, however, some are daring to dream of a resolution to 30 years of division. The University of Tasmania and Environment Tasmania, an environment umbrella group, this week organised a public forum to ask academics whether a resolution was possible and, if so, what it might look like.

Organiser Phill Pullinger, a doctor and conservationist, hopes history will show it as the first step towards finding common ground and an eventual solution to the conflict over forestry. “There is a deep divide that runs through the Tasmanian community and this conflict entrenches and worsens every year,” says Pullinger, director of Environment Tasmania.

“We see it as destructive not only for the environment but for the community as a whole. There is a desire right across the community to find a solution.”

However, even finding a starting point for any dialogue is elusive. The timber industry sees any attempt to find a solution as code for more “forest lock-ups”. Pullinger concedes protection of further areas of rainforest, old-growth and “high conservation value forest” would be a prerequisite.

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Politicians from all sides in Tasmania have become addicted to division as a means of motivating their core constituencies. Greens use language such as “climate change criminals”, while Labor Resources Minister David Llewellyn last year branded anti-woodchip protesters who disrupted the Gunns Ltd Triabunna mill as “terrorists”.

One of the speakers at the university forum, management consultant Gerard Castles believes observations on the South African reconciliation process by American psychologist Don Beck could be applied to Tasmania.

“Beck . . . said in South Africa — or read Tasmania — you could see people being at every position from irreconcilable adversaries, the flamethrowers, all the way to the people who are only a hair’s breath apart,” Castles says. “Beck said the middle was where the change came from but they would be attacked by their own if they moved to the middle ground. ”

Castles deals with change within companies as part of his day job and was a member of the community leadership group set up to guide former premier Jim Bacon’s Tasmania Together, a process that tried to unify the community around agreed goals.

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