On 22nd November 2016, a State/Commonwealth letter was emailed to a few stakeholders (Those who commented on the 3rd RFA 5-year Review.) with an interest in Tasmania’s forests, forestry and the conservation forest, biodiversity and wilderness. The letter describes a gormless, inadequate process of virtually no merit aiming to Extendextend the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement.
This is the first of several renewal attempts for Regional Forest Agreements.
That official letter did not even have the integrity toinformto inform stakeholders of the closing date of the so-called consultation that seeks to renew a 20 year Commonwealth and State agreement with impacts on Australia’s International obligations.
On the State and Commonwealth websites you will however find the closing date for consultation.
“Consultation closes 12.30 pm AEDT, Friday, 23 December 2016.”
It seems the State and Commonwealth Govt. websites were updated very recently.
The Commonwealths is:
http://www.agriculture.gov.au/forestry/policies/rfa/regions/tasmania#ecologically-sustainable-forest-management-reports
The State website is:
http://www.stategrowth.tas.gov.au/forestry/rfa
Then go to the heading: Extending the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement
An extract from the website is below.
“Extending the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement
The Australian and Tasmanian governments have committed to establish a 20 year rolling extension to the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement (RFA). To inform this process, we are seeking your feedback.
Stakeholders have had an initial opportunity to provide feedback (from 17 April to 12 June 2015) about extending the Tasmanian RFA, as part of the third five-yearly review of the RFA. This initial feedback, and the Independent Reviewer’s report to the third five‑yearly review of the Tasmanian RFA, has informed the focus of this additional consultation.
The governments will consider any practical improvements to the Tasmanian RFA, to ensure it remains effective and credible in the long term. While the governments are not negotiating a new RFA, or changing the Agreement’s fundamental objectives, they have identified the following improvements to the RFA framework:
• Streamlined and strengthened review and reporting arrangements – presently the five yearly reviews examine the implementation of the RFA clause-by-clause. The improved review and reporting arrangements will be outcomes focused.
• Improved and contemporary dispute resolution mechanisms – these will give the governments more options for resolving issues about the implementation of the RFA.
• Improved communication and consultation – the governments will hold annual officials level bilateral meetings, in the interim years between five-yearly reviews, to discuss issues relating to the ongoing implementation of the RFA.
• Modernisation of the RFA – where practicable, the governments will update references to superseded legislation and policy.
The Tasmanian RFA is the governments’ policy framework for delivering sustainable forest management in Tasmania. In extending the Tasmanian RFA, the governments will maintain the Agreement’s key objectives:
• certainty of resource access and supply to Tasmania’s forestry industry
• ecologically sustainable forest management and use of Tasmania’s productive forests, and
• a Comprehensive Adequate and Representative reserve system.”
Trouble is there are no “key objectives” in the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement dated the 8th November 1997. This misleads the public and stakeholders, to be kind.
TEA has not been able to find any documentation where: “Governments have committed to establish a 20 year rolling extension to the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement”.
From TEA’s perspective and when one downloads the FOI documents from the Commonwealth site one can see there is very little interest in anything else than getting back into the liquidation of forests. NB Tasmania is the first RFA being renegotiated or rather rolled over.
TEA’s preliminary process concerns are:
The RFA Extension Comment period is a miserable 23 working days in total and of course it is being held at Christmas time. After 19 years of ana pathetic RFA performance there is a measly 23 working days to make comment.
Indeed currently there would be only 11 working days to comment after the last regional feedback session.
The three venues for consultation (Burnie, Huonville and Scottsdale) are hardly convenient for a majority of stakeholders and interested parties, regardless of one’s particular interest. Intrinsically short-sighted!
There is not even a proper background briefing paper to the RFA extension process.
Clearly not all the stakeholders will have been contacted and advised of the process. For example there would be well over 600 RFA private reserve stakeholders out of the 807 in Tasmania who should have been contacted. Those private landowners made a significant commitment to the National Reserve System yet it seems are not regarded as RFA stakeholders – the Government even has their addresses.
TEA admits it is disdainful of the RFA and is aggreivedaggrieved by its miriadmyriad of failures. Anyone with an interest in Tasmania’s forests or in forestry will know that the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement has invariably been unsuccessful, repeatedly and in many respects, often providing outcomes, which are in nobody’s interest.
Talking of failures: The State Forestry Minister, Guy Barnett’s recent foolish proposal to trash a significant amount of National Reserve System informal public reserves in Tasmania is an international disgrace. The current Tasmanian Government under Rebuilding the Forest Industry Act 2014 (RFIA) set aside the 400,000 Ha of the TFA forests (originally to be reserved) at least until 2020. Now the Liberals are reneging – cannot be trusted to even honour their own legislation. In fact the values were determined not by the TFA, (the precursor to the RFIA) but by the Independent Verification Group, (IVG) established by (State and Comm.) Governments. And most importantly about 180,000 Ha is already Informally Reserved as part of the Comprehensive Adequate and Representative (CAR) reserve system under the RFA because it was determined to have significant values for biological diversity, in 1997 and which science determined needed to be reserved as CAR reserves for the National Reserve System.
There should be no automatic rollover of RFAs, nor of rolling RFA periods. Rather and more importantly, there should be a preliminary process to create a new National Forest Policy (NFPS) to replace the almost 25 year old NFPS that properly supports climate change mitigation and our Kyoto Protocol commitment. The Montreal Protocol commitment should also be incorporated.
Indeed TEA considers there are so many problems with the Regional Forest Agreement in Tasmania – including the rorting of the Forest Practices System, the logging and destruction of Threatened Species habitat, the collapse of MIS Plantations, the failure to halt land clearance to name just a few, that there should be a Commission of Inquiry into both the RFA and its associated, outdated, mid 1990s’ style Comprehensive Regional Assessment.
• Jack Lumber in Comments: … No matter what view people have on Tasmania, we must all work together to ensure popularists and snake oil merchants never achieve such influence in any part of Australia.
• Most Tasmanians locked out of Regional Forest Agreement process
• BirdLife Tasmania: Forestry Tasmania’s careless insect spraying threatens to bring forest silence
