Crime, fiction and political intrigue

Gods, heroes and crimes provide us with a spectacle that tantalises our senses and links to our own capacity for fantasy and imagination, this keeps us glued to the screen watching the escapades in such productions as the controversial Underbelly. The cross-over between the real and fictional is interesting because it appears to affirm our need for a constant adrenalin rush to counteract the mediocrity that most people encounter in their daily lives. In reality it might not appear so entertaining.

Here is another story that might translate into a television drama; or perhaps a comedy. It took place a few years ago in the Central Highlands, home of some of Victoria’s most beautiful landscapes and site of the prime Mountain Ash forests and Melbourne’s water catchments.

In the early 1990s some residents of the Central Highlands were still largely cut off from their urban counterparts. There were older folks who had never seen the city: they had not travelled beyond the outer suburbs. The small town communities were insular and until the Shire amalgamations local governments were autocratic.

Nature lovers and environmentalists were not common in these parts they came from outside and they were not particularly welcome. They were regarded as “blow-ins”, having come on an ill wind of new wave environmentalism.

When the Victorian Greens held their first branch meeting in Healesville in 1995 there was already some concern from Melbournians about the devastation of the forests caused by clear felling. Hence, the major issue for the Greens was conserving the biodiversity of the area.

Greens member’s brought with them new knowledge about conservation and a determination to stop the logging in old growth forests and the water catchments. They posed a serious threat to the old guard.

The memory of the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires that killed 49 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes was still fresh in the minds of local residents. And the representatives of the forest industries traded on claims that logged forests were safer. They also claimed that the forest workers were the first at the fire front saving lives and this gave many of the loggers a hero status.

The Greens, they claimed would stop the clear- felling and this would be the cause of future fires. Seemingly, both the major political parties gave their support to the pro-logging fraternity. The Liberals were believed to serve the interests of business and Labor was perceived answerable to the CFMEU. The entry of the Victorian Greens acted as a catalyst to challenge this monopoly but it also raised the angst of some old-timer’s and other pro-logging community.

It was probably fair to say that in the early to mid 1990s the environment movement’s campaigns across the nation were beginning to make some inroads towards exposing the logging industry’s practices as well as the long term consequences for the environment. There were major successes in reclaiming lands for national parks and in protecting the vulnerable creeks and waterways, in revegetating vast areas of eroded land and in the constant monitoring of planning decisions.

Local environment groups in the area gradually grew in members and along with their city counterparts they were able to mobilise against the forest devastation. Then the tide turned. The environment groups were suddenly confronted with a groundswell of fierce opposition from a well organised, well resourced pro-logging lobby, with some groups even operating under the guise of conservation.

The political parties were also in turmoil at this time and many will remember the accusations of branch stacking in the Labor Party. Many skirmishes arose between the ALP environmentalists and those representing the logging interests. There was much to be nervous about: the environment groups had done a good job of scrutinising the forestry code’s violations and bringing them before the authorities.

The network of logging interests was still very powerful in this region but now it had to come up against the bourgeoning outcry from city environmentalists; people who knew their rights and had their own political connections. It was inevitable that the timber industry would find a way of combating the spread of ideas that focused on biodiversity and/or old growth sustainability.

The timber industry: a history of alleged sabotage, corruption and collusion

The year was 1996 and everything seemed to be quiet in the sleepy forest hamlets. Then, on a Saturday morning someone noticed there was a vehicle parked on one of the main streets with the letter “A” stuck to the rear window. Some of the locals could be seen examining the car, trying to fathom what this “A” meant.

Soon there was more than one vehicle displaying this sign and the number grew over time.

Then all was revealed; the small towns were buzzing with rumours of a secret army of spies that had come to destroy the green groups. Of course no one believed it was anything more than a fantasy but they were wrong! It was no fantasy. A more insidious side of the timber industry began to emerge.

The anti-environment army was known as the A-Team (“A” standing for Amcor; the giant Australian paper company). The A-Team vehicles started appearing outside environment meetings. At this stage environmentalists and townsfolk could only speculate on the extent of what was happening. It wasn’t until 2006 that the ABCs Four Corners program revealed documents which clearly indicated how the A-Team was set up to take on the green groups and shape public opinion on logging and wood chipping.

The effectiveness of these clandestine operations (opinion shaping) lasted for more than a decade and still serves to cloud sections of local opinion.

The A-Team began its work by systematically discrediting conservation and environment groups with tactics such as infiltrating events and spying on individuals. The team founder Derek Amos admitted to Four Corners that:

Up until that time the Greens were getting the major newspaper coverage. And they were winning the hearts and minds battle. And it was necessary to take over that ground, and that could only be done by, if you like, discrediting what was being claimed by the Greens.

As the ABC’s Sally Neighbour discovered in 2006, the activities of the A-Team began in 1989 after the State Government announced plans for a pipeline to pump industrial waste into the ocean off Gippsland’s pristine Ninety Mile Beach.

Locals set up a campaign in opposition to the government’s decision. The government were then forced to halt the work and call for a review. The major stakeholder here was Amcor; owner of the Maryvale pulp mill in Gippsland’s Latrobe Valley. The mill needed some means of eliminating the waste from its Latrobe Valley facility. The local protests put Amcor’s plans at risk so they employed Derek Amos as a political consultant to work on changing public opinion.

Amos was a “former state Labor member”. He was employed by the company and by the union the CFMEU. The aim was to offset any ongoing protests by the environment groups as the logging in the forests increased. Those conservationists who remembered the days of Jack Mundey’s “green bans” and a union commitment to protect the environment were left dumbfounded. The CFMEU seemingly did nothing to intervene in these surreptitious arrangements to spy on greens groups, nor did the ALP appear to condemn the practice.

The Maryvale mill flourished until the 1990s when the market was flooded with overseas paper imports. The A-Team lobbied on behalf of Amcor as the company turned its attention to a recycling ploy (green-washing) which eventually found its way into schools.

Amcor spent millions attempting to look clean and respectable; it made all attempts to conceal its alleged sinister activities. According to Four Corners during the 1990s the A-Team succeeded in splitting the local environment groups and isolating them from their city counterparts. In Gippsland the movement appears not to have fully recovered.

According to the ABC program the A-Team succeeded in getting the Keating government to back away from forestry issues and successive governments have followed along this same path. Sixteen Melbourne councils, representing over a million people have voiced their objections to logging in the Water Catchments but the State Government still appears to ignore them.

When the A-Team was disbanded in 2001 the records were meant to be destroyed but instead they found their way into the hands of the Four Corners team to give us a precise look at the way the population at large, and the government in particular have formulated their ideas in respect of logging and woodchips.

Four Corners revealed the extent of the A-Team’s illegal activities and the influence they wielded. These activities including spying, sabotage, the infiltration of political parties; stacking branches as well as damage to Amcor’s competitors.

Local front groups

In 1996 as the Greens Candidate for McEwen I came up against a lobby group calling itself The Forest Protection Society (FPS). It was clearly aimed at confusing the public by appropriating the term “protection” while simultaneously helping to expand the logging in the Central Highlands. The group had organised more than 200 forestry industry workers who attended an information evening in Marysville held by the FPS. The local media revealed the FPS Healesville Branch President to be resident in the area. He had also been a local Councillor (Mountain Views 18th December, 1995).

At the time of the 1996 Federal election the battle over forests was so intense that the Victorian Greens decided to split the ticket, putting Labor preferences at risk. The move almost certainly helped the Liberals into power and upset the Labor stalwarts. However, an environment party that sold out to the perceived rogue logging was just unthinkable.

After the 1996 election the battle for the environment in the Central Highlands seemed to be lost. Then came the drought and Melbourne’s water was put at risk. The Forest Protection Society appeared to dwindle alongside the gathering momentum of Melbourne protesters and another bigger, more efficient group became visible:Timber Communities Australia (TCA) is now the voice of the anti-environmentalist movement and they are very vocal.

In 2004 Greens Senator Bob Brown outlined some of the activities of Timber Communities Australia as well as some of its sources of funding. This is what Senator Brown had to say about the TCA:

When articles on the forests appear in print or go to air, there is an outcry from the forest industry. But what at first appears to be a broad based response to a media story is, in fact, a highly orchestrated campaign by a small cabal long linked by personal history and involvement with the woodchip industry and using an innocuous-sounding organisation called Timber Communities Australia, as a front to give it credibility.

Since its inception in 1987, TCA has been positioned as the voice of the little people caught between the conservation movement, governments and the large woodchip companies. It purports to be the authentic voice of those who are merely seeking to make a living and keep their jobs, to feed their families. Its advertisements feature stereotypes of the hard-working family - craftspeople, bee keepers, people in truck-stop cafes and children in the bush with their grandparents. Its web page says it is a grassroots organisation which “exists to encourage the sensible, balanced multiple use of our forests for the benefit of all Australians”.

The Senator goes on to say:

In fact, it is the brainchild and mouthpiece of NAFI, [the National Association of Forest Industries], headquartered in Canberra, the lobby group of Australia's logging and woodchip corporations. NAFI and Timber Communities Australia share a common headquarters in Canberra and a common executive director …

Senator Brown told the Senate that the financial returns for TCA revealed its lack of grassroots support:

In 2001-02 only 4 per cent, or $43,630, of Timber Communities Australia's income came from its members. Seventy-six per cent, or $730,000 out of $965,498, was from direct industry contributions. In the following year, 2002-03, direct contributions from industry to TCA rose to 86 per cent - $734,154 of the total of $838,977 - and, conversely, member contributions fell by $4,228 to only $39,402.

NAFI's in-kind contributions to Timber Communities Australia, by way of space, salary and administrative assistance, were valued at a further $67,891. In other words, industry contributions pay the wages of … Timber Communities Australia's ubiquitous Tasmanian spokes-person, and eight other staff around Australia.

Senator Brown's speech drew the attention of Queensland Senator and Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation, Ian Macdonald who responded with:

Timber Communities Australia is a magnificent grassroots organisation. It is a group of ordinary Australians - if you can call them that - working in the industry, working in country communities, who are eventually getting their message across about the hypocrisy of the Greens and their very left-wing agenda.

According to the Source Watch Organization, Timber Communities is closely linked to and partly funded by the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania, which is in turn funded by timber industry corporate players, predominantly Gunns.

I am convinced that what we have here is a wonderful framework for a blockbuster television series on corporate wheeling and dealing over the spoils of our national heritage. As summer approaches the logging season begins again and the trucks will be rolling out through the small towns of the Central Highlands.

There is a new generation of activists who have taken up the fight against the devastation of the Victoria’s forests. How much they will achieve remains to be seen. In the meantime, there are a myriad of untold stories, some fantasy, some real; so why not roll out the script-writers and cameras and turn reality into entertainment. It seems to be the trend. Underbelly, eat your heart out! A new blockbuster waits in the wings.