Veteran environmental campaigner Bob Brown is gearing up to fight the Liberal Party’s proposal to open up 40,000 hectares of native forest for logging with a “giant rally for the forests.”
The party unveiled their plan on Thursday to, if re-elected, begin logging on 27 plots of land designated as potential production forest in 2014, spread across the state’s north-east and north-west.
Brown says Jeremy Rockliff’s “scandalous” proposal has sparked a confrontation with environmentalists that they will not back down from.
“The Liberals’ commitment to destroy 40,000 hectares of Tasmania’s wild and scenic forests, set aside for conservation under the Tasmanian Forest Agreement, may see me, for one, spending time in jail for peacefully defending those forests and their wildlife,” he said.
“I expect there will be hundreds more arrested for defending the forests despite the Liberals’ draconian anti-protests laws and Tasmania will be plunged into a dark age of global condemnation for destroying this natural heritage.”
Brown claims most of the forests will be turned into woodchips that will get exported straight out to China and Taiwan and questioned whether $58 million of taxpayer money paid to the industry in 2013 would be refunded.
“This is 2024. Flattening and incinerating our forests and exporting most of the extracted logs as woodchips for products much of which will end up in rubbish tips in the northern hemisphere, is bizarre and culpable behaviour by the Liberals,” he said.
“Prime Minister Albanese should intervene and save the forests or, at least, get back the $58 million of taxpayers’ money spent to protect the forests.”
The forestry industry itself has also expressed disappointment with the Liberal plan, with the Tasmanian Forest Products Association (TFPA) saying their industry is being “used as a political football”.
“The Liberals have been government for a decade and could have solved our wood supply issue at any time. But instead, they have decided to make it an election issue,” TFPA Chief Executive Officer Nick Steel said.
“The TFPA has been talking to the government for a long time about active management of FPPF land and what has been released today is nothing like our plan.”
“The TFPA believes in total land use management. Not all the FPPF land is suitable for production forestry.”
He said he wanted to see a thorough examination of the land with input from forestry, Aboriginal and environmental groups.
“We look forward to working with the next elected government on how we can grow forestry and actively manage this land,” Steel said.
