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Tassie's forests: deal or no deal?

By Mark Poynter - posted Thursday, 6 December 2012


There is also speculation that a forced concentration of harvesting activity within the reduced areas of public timber production forests will condemn the industry to another process of 'reform' in as little as 5 to 10 years time. This is a legitimate concern given that it is partly responsible for ongoing ENGO anti-logging campaigns in mainland states despite statewide annual harvesting rates falling to historically low levels in the wake of similar national parks expansions at the expense of traditional timber production forests.

There are also doubts associated with some of the proposed benefits linked to the passing of the TFA legislation, such as the re-opening of the Triabunna woodchip mill. Recent reports suggest that re-opening the mill would require $ millions in government subsidies because the export woodchip market is the worst it has ever been. In addition, the mill's new owners and its manager, former Wilderness Society head, Alec Marr, have previously insisted that if re-opened, the mill would only accept FSC-certified wood. Rather conveniently, Tasmania's State forests are not FSC-certified suggesting that the mill's re-opening would provide no benefit to the native forests sector.

Similarly, the TFA's committment to pursue FSC-certification in the remaining wood production forests seems to be unduly hopeful given that FSC has only ever certified a few selective harvesting operations in Australia and has rejected clearfelling despite it being the most appropriate technique for harvesting Tasmania's most productive wet forests. The extent to which ENGOs have already created an errant market perception of FSC as the only indicator of environmentally-acceptable timber production will be problematic for the future of the industry unless ENGOs force FSC Australia to relax its standards to allow Forestry Tasmania to be certified. There is nothing in the TFA that guarantees that this will happen and even if it does, it would presumably take several years to achieve.

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Despite all these reservations, it is understandable that elements of the industry are supportive of the TFA as it offers at least the possibility of a way forward. In particular, Ta Ann Tasmania, now the largest timber company in the state, faces the threat of being either closed-down by its Malaysian parent company or by CFMEU industrial action if the TFA is not legislated. While it arguably has little option but to support the TFA, in recent days it upped the ante by declaring an intention to build a third mill in the state if the TFA legislation is passed while reminding the Upper House that it would close its existing mills and leave if the legislation is rejected. This raises legitimate questions about one company attempting to dictate the outcome of public policy.

Others industry entities, such as the Tasmanian Forest Contractors Association, are understandably sick of being in the frontline of the conflict and desperate to grasp at any possible resolution.

Other commentators pushing the 'give peace a chance' line are making the point that it is simply untenable to go back to the 'forest wars' by rejecting the TFA. While this view presumes that the 'forest wars' will die if the TFA is legislated – which is by no means certain – it also ignores the departure of Gunns which means that the level of harvesting, even if the TFA is rejected, will be only around a half of what it was before the 'forest peace' negotiations began. This should be seen as a pretty good outcome for those opposed to timber production, but is admittedly unlikely to be acceptable to ENGOs now that they have an expectation of it coming with 500,000 hectares of new national parks.

Clearly, the Tasmanian Upper House has a tremendously difficult task in determing whether or not the TFA legislation is passed. However, irrespective of this, the 'elephant in the room' which seems to have been rarely considered is the process by which the TFA has been developed and its wider implications for public policy determinations.

The passing of the TFA legislation would effectively vindicate ENGO tactics that have targetted shareholders, investors, markets, and consumers to financially weaken an industry on the basis of ideology rather than real environmental concerns. The acknowledged benchmarks for serious forest-based environmental problems are poor or absent public land planning and regulation, poor or non-existent industry regulation, corruption, and political instability. Tasmania has none of these problems and in fact already had about two-thirds of its public native forests protected in conservation reserves prior to the 'peace talks' – an enviable position that developing countries struggling to control rampant illegal logging and deforestation can only dream of.

Contrary to the reality, ENGO activists have continually portrayed Tasmania as being akin to a Third World country harboring an environmental catastrophe driven by supposedly unconstrained forest exploitation. This deceitful portrayal has played a substantial role in precipating the timber industry's financial struggles which have forced it to sue for 'forest peace' under an extortion-like atmosphere where it has been effectively forced to bargain with ENGOs in return for them desisting from unfairly destroying its reputation.

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This is hardly the basis for rational and balanced determinations of public policy and reinforces a perception that pressure to alter policies can be forced by manufacturing populist hystrionics that bear only a passing resemblance to the reality.

In this case, the response to this pressure of setting up an industry and ENGO committee, effectively shifted policy responsibility out of the hands of experienced government scientists, land managers and regulators and onto the shoulders of unelected and unaccountable representatives of just two narrow vested interests. Effectively, it mandated part-time medical doctors and expert bushwalkers representing ENGOs, to determine key environmental and land management policies on the basis of whims and wish lists that are notoriously averse to notions of proportionality and perspective, and are largely ignorant of critical influences such as fire.

It also sidelined the greater bulk of stakeholders amongst the Tasmanian community who stand to be affected by national park expansion, and seems set to substantially reduce the state's future wealth generation capacity. Of particular concern is that a full socio-economic assessment of the impact of the policy is scheduled after the legislation passes rather than before as has always been the case in previous forest policy determinations, such as the Regional Forest Agreements.

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About the Author

Mark Poynter is a professional forester with 40 years experience. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and his book Going Green: Forests, fire, and a flawed conservation culture, was published by Connor Court in July 2018.

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