Last month, the United Nation’s World Heritage Committee took less than 10 minutes to reject the Abbott Government’s bid to delist part of a 170,000 hectare, so-called ‘minor’ extension to Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area (the TWWHA) that had been engineered by the former Gillard Government.
In announcing the decision, the Committee described our Government’s attempt to delist a 74,000 hectare portion of the 2013 extension as ‘feeble’ and said that delisting part of a World Heritage Area would have a set a bad precedent for other countries.
However, the decision to reject this delisting proposal has itself set an unfortunate precedent for Australia that it is now OK for politics, personal agendas, and nepotism to override science and due process in determinations of resource use and environmental policy.
• Josh Gordon, The Age: Axe VicForests or chop off the public money The age of entitlement is alive and well in Victoria. At least when it comes to the logging of native forests, a proposition that has become so financially fraught the government is considering getting into the business of firewood collection and chipboard production just to prop it up.
