LETTER: Pay a fair price

Author: Jill Redwood, Environment East Gippsland, Orbost
The Age, Saturday 24 December 2005.

The logging industry is still squealing about the unfairness of having to pay a fair price for logs from public forests (Business, 22/12). It wants to go back to the good old days when the price of a woodchip log rose from nine to 10 cents a tonne over five years — oh, and the extra one-cent GST. That's a 30-tonne truckload of our native forests for the price of a loaf of bread. Sorry boys, every other business has to pay the true cost for its raw materials. Why is your industry so special?

ARTICLE: Forest group protests over rises in timber, road costs

By Philip Hopkins
The Age (business section)
December 22, 2005

VICTORIA'S peak forestry group has demanded that VicForests scrap its timber prices rises, maintaining they are between three and eight times higher than average increases of the past 17 years.

The Victorian Association of Forest Industries (VAFI) said the 2005-06 price rises exceeded the highest previous increase by between 124-224 per cent.

VAFI chief executive Patricia Caswell said that, based on the accepted pricing formula, timber prices should have fallen by 1.5 per cent.

"We are perplexed how they came to their decision," said Ms Caswell, a former trade union and conservation leader. "If I were still in the trade union movement, I would not have thought it credible."

VicForests, the new government corporation responsible for harvesting and selling Victoria's native forest timber, raised timber charges by 12.4-22.4 per cent from July 1, which included a 2.4 per cent inflation (CPI) adjustment. These charges were subsequently lowered by 1-1.85 per cent in November.

Ms Caswell said the timber charge increases should be withdrawn and affected customers reimbursed. "The situation needs to be rectified urgently," she said, as VAFI and VicForests both wanted a robust and sustainable forest industry.

"It's a politicised decision based on the unfounded notion that native forest timber is underpriced and from pressure from those who think we should not have a native forest industry. The industry must be depoliticised to go forward."

VAFI has also strongly protested to Treasurer John Brumby and Minister for Agriculture Bob Cameron.

In a hard-hitting submission, VAFI said VicForests' approach and price rises:

• Make Victorian sawlogs more expensive than equivalent species and grades in NSW and Tasmania.

• Make Victorian timber products uncompetitive in domestic and international markets for timber of like characteristics.

• Lacked openness and transparency.

Ms Caswell said the timber price rises had been compounded by similar rises for roading charges. Roading charges, introduced in the late 1980s, were normally based on CPI adjustments or not raised at all.

A VicForests spokeswoman said the VicForests board was considering VAFI's submission and would make an announcement shortly."

Link to article

ARTICLE: Logging demise creates a saw point

Mark Poynter
The Age (Business section)
December 21, 2005

The Great Otway National Park is unlikely to live up to promises, writes Mark Poynter.

PREMIER Steve Bracks opened the Great Otway National Park last week, proclaiming it would protect old-growth forests and threatened species, and be a huge step for tourism.

The park was promised before the 2002 state election, primarily to resolve decades of community conflict over logging. Its declaration depended on the forced closure of the small local hardwood timber industry.

Although activists portrayed logging as a dire environmental threat, the industry had access to just 22 per cent of the Otway forests before the Government announced its phased closure in late 2002.

Dispersed coupes totalling 250-300 hectares were logged each year, a tiny fraction of the total 160,000 hectares of forest. This produced about 27,000 cubic metres of sawlogs, a figure a government-commissioned study in 2001 confirmed as sustainable.

The remainder of the Otway forests were in a moderately sized national park, three state parks, state forest special protection zones, some water supply catchments and code of forest practices operational reserves where logging was excluded.

These areas covered the region's old-growth forests and its significant recreational, scenic and ecologically important sites.

Despite the rhetoric, the existing high level of reserved forest made the new national park irrelevant to old-growth protection. And the park is unlikely to significantly improve other already well-protected environmental values.

Anti-logging activists have long claimed that national park expansion would spark an ecotourism bonanza with substantial economic benefits. The Otway Ranges are a well-developed part of the broader Geelong-Otway tourism region. They attracted almost 6 million domestic and international tourists in 2002 who spent more than $1.1 billion. But the region's primary attraction is its coast, where most tourist facilities are located. Visitor statistics for 2002 show that just 4 per cent of tourists visited a rainforest or bushwalked, despite an extensive network of easily accessible walking tracks and picnic facilities that have co-existed with other forest uses, including timber production, for more than 30 years.

According to a 2003 study for the Victorian Environment Assessment Council, the new national park may increase forest visits by up to 30 per cent. It also said national park tourism generates just $30 a visitor a day."

Full text of article

ARTICLE: Neighbours warned to act on illegal logging

Greg Roberts
The Australian, December 19, 2005

AUSTRALIA'S neighbours have been put on notice to crack down on illegal logging in their rainforests or face tight restrictions on timber exports to the nation.

Federal Forestry Minister Ian Macdonald, who will meet officials in Jakarta today to urge tougher action, said illegal logging was widespread in Indonesia, PNG and the Solomon Islands.

"We have to stop the slaughter of rainforests in some of these countries," Senator Macdonald said yesterday. "This illegal trade is a threat to some of the world's most unique and rare forests."

Senator Macdonald said Australia was trying to persuade the nations to agree to international standards requiring logging to be conducted sustainably.

While mindful of the difficulties faced by developing countries in enforcing forestry standards, Senator Macdonald said the Government would legislate if necessary to ban the import of illegally felled timber.

"Local villagers get little or no value or employment from the illegal harvest," Senator Macdonald said. "The failure to manage the resource properly means that the forests, once harvested, are gone forever."

He said Indonesia had shown genuine interest in reforming its industry and he would pursue the matter today with Forestry Minister Malem Sambat Kaban."

Full text of article

LETTERS: Illegal logging rolls on

Published in The Australian, 21 December 2005

FEDERAL Forestry Minister Ian Macdonald is intent on stopping the "slaughter" of rainforests in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands and the illegal trade in timber ("Neighbours warned to act on illegal logging", 19/12). However, such a policy is doomed to failure. Most logging is conducted under the auspices of governments. While codes of practice are in place to minimise collateral damage during logging, they are seldom adhered to. It is too expensive for governments to monitor logging practices in remote locations, and in any case, bribery by large logging companies further reduces its possibility. To actually prove that illegal logging is happening is very difficult for the same reasons. Raw logs from PNG and the Solomons principally exported to China and Asian markets are more likely to be the result of illegal logging than sawn timber. A ban on sawn timber by Australia would likely leave the transgressors unaffected while hurting the legitimate operators.
Dr Colin Hunt
Holland Park West, Qld

I HAD no problem with Ian Macdonald's use of "slaughter" to describe the treatment of "some of the world's most unique and rare forests". But what got me is his concurrent tolerance of Tasmanian logging, which is flattening native forests at a rate proportionally four times as fast as PNG, for chips worth a fraction of the sawn timber being shipped out of PNG, with a similar lack of financial recompense to the hapless people living there. Worse, Tasmania is planning to increase the gargantuan harvest, almost wholly for the benefit of one company. While it's true that the slaughter is largely legal in Tasmania, this means only that the Tasmanian politicians are more brazen about their involvement. If Senator Macdonald is talking about sustainability, Tasmania belongs in the same basket with our northern and Pacific neighbours.
John Hayward
Weegena, Tas

NEWS: Regional Victoria expected to feel DSE job cuts

ABC Online
Wednesday, 14 December 2005

The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) has announced 70 job cuts to its land stewardship and biodiversity group.

The union representing DSE employees, the Community and Public Sector Union, says most of the jobs lost are based in Melbourne.

But the union's Karen Batt says the cuts will have a severe impact on teams working in regional Victoria.

"The impact that it's going to have on regional Victoria is quite severe - if you lose the knowledge and the expertise of the staff in this area, how are we going to have the staff in the field being able to deliver the services that regional Victorians rely on very heavily," she said.

Original article

ARTICLE: Larger Otways park has loggers bushed

By Claire Miller

December 11, 2005

SEVERAL years ago, the Sabine Falls were doomed. The walking track was closed and picnic tables were removed.

The waterfall was designated a star tourist attraction, but the Government had eyes only for the timber surrounding the spectacular 130-metre cascade.

That was when the timber industry swore it would not let the Government give any more ground for conservation. Now the tables are back, the path is repaired and logging is no longer an issue. Once the scene of battles between environmentalists and state foresters, the Sabine and other sites are safe in the new Great Otway National Park.

Old adversaries will rub shoulders today in celebrations at Triplet Falls, where Environment Minister John Thwaites will declare the 100,000 hectare park open. The park incorporates the existing Otway National Park, the Angahook-Lorne, Carlisle and Melba Gully state parks, and another 60,000 hectares of state forest and Crown land.

Logging will continue in the Otway Forest Park, a 40,000 hectare area where dogs and horse riding, and other activities are allowed. But logging will be phased out by 2008, when the licence expires for the last sawmill left in nearby Colac.

Trisha Caswell, chief executive of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries, had regrets. She said the Otways could have been a model for sustainable forestry. "Basically, the Otways are 1939 regrowth, they are gorgeous forests and they relate to all kinds of industries and jobs," she said.

"It is a pity we hadn't struggled through to an accommodation to have the forest and ecological views understood, and have some forestry production because everyone has wood products in every room in their house, and it is better they be sustainably harvested and produced than not."

Simon Birrell, spokesman for the Otway Ranges Environment Network, said logging in the Otways was not sustainable once water, community and other factors were considered.

He said poor stewardship was to blame for logging's demise. "The greatest adversary was the forestry bureaucracy," he said. "They were the staunchest recalcitrants who did not understand what community compromise and liaison was about.

"The loggers were constantly being the meat in the sandwich when the issue was about the Government's administration."

He said the Otways experience had big lessons for forestry elsewhere in Victoria, lessons the Victorian Association of Forestry Industries was learning. "Who is this for?" he said. "It is not really for us … it is a gift for the children of the future. They will have the benefit of it long after we have all been forgotten.""

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/larger-otways-park-has-loggers-bushed/2005/12/10/1134086848140.html

ARTICLE: Chips are down but don’t gamble away future

The Age (article)

Tuesday 6 December 2005

This is an edited version of a speech by shadow minister for primary industries, forestry and tourism Martin Ferguson to a seminar last week.

A sustainable forest industry is crucial to the Australian economy and to help wipe out illegal logging around the world, says Martin Ferguson

Australia's forests are very important in both an environmental and industry resource context. About 10 per cent - 11 million hectares - of Australia's 155 million hectares of native forests is managed for wood production, which is less than 1 per cent harvested in any one year.

The small proportion of forests harvested annually is regenerated so that a perpetual supply of native hardwood and softwood is maintained in this country. Australia is fortunate to have some of the best foresters in the world working to maintain our assets in perpetuity

Rather than being recognised for their contribution to forestry, profession is often criticised by those who think that forests should be left to their own devices.

The withdrawal of foresters, funding and management resources from forests turned over to conservation purposes in recent decades has led to some environmental disasters in this country. I could point to uncontrolled bushfires in a number of areas, and shudder to think of the consequences of runaway fire in the vast Tasmanian wilderness areas.

We are also one of a few countries in the Asia-Pacific region with the land availability and capability to expand sustainable forestry through further plantation development over the coming decades. Demand for forest products is skyrocketing. So the sustainable expansion of Australia's forest industry is very important to meet global demand and contribute to our own economic prosperity

Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister, arguing that the rest of the world is benefiting from PNG's natural forest wealth without shouldering the environmental cost, recently put the proposition that perhaps the developed world should pay for the preservation of rainforests in developing countries.

I would argue that any foreign aid directed in that way should come with reciprocal obligation, and that obligation has to include stamping out unsustainable forestry practices in those countries.

There are claims that illegal logging in Indonesia destroys about 3 million hectares of forests every year. That's about three times Australia’s legitimate harvest each year.

With the world facing significant problems in managing global demand for forest products and maintaining a sustainable forestr resource, I find it difficult to understand the campaign being run by the Greens against Australia's and particularly Tasmania’s forest industry.

The Labor Party knows full well that the key to a better Australia is jobs and economic prosperity for all. Australia and Tasmania's forest industries are part of the key to achieving that.

Tasmanian forestry is conducted in accordance with the Australian Forestry Standard, the development of which was initiated by the Commonwealth Government and based on internationally agreed criteria.

The AFS was developed through a three year process where community, expert scientists and government representatives came together to draft the standard. It holds global mutual recognition under the Endorsement of Forest Certification, which is the largest international sustainability recognition framework for forestry in the world.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation has recognised Forestry Tasmania's AFS-certified forests for exemplary forest management as part of its In Search Of Excellence program. This puts the AFS and Tasmanian forestry in the world's best practice

Let me also say that, at a time when industrial relations and the protection of our most vulnerable workers are top of mind for many of us I am pleased to see the collaborative work of the CFMEU forest division and the industry, includes key ILO (International Labour Organisation) conventions in its provisions.

Labor supports changes in forest industry practices to end clear-felling and restructure the sawmilling industry. The move away from dear-felling to more selective logging practices comes with the need for retraining. The campaign being run by the Greens, however, has nothing to do with the environment or sustainability.

The result of the Greens' actions could well be to scare international customers away from sustainable forest resources in Tasmania to countries where illegal logging in forest products leaves a trail of devastation, but where ignorance is bliss.

This will cost jobs and ecomomic prosperity in Tasmania, and our forest resources will be the poorer. Australia’s deficit in forest products - already a massive $2 billion - will grow, and the products demanded by the global market will still be supplied, but by countries and producers who don't care about sustainable forestry standards and who don't care about trashing Thirld World forests forever.

More of Tasmania's land and forests are protected than anywhere else on earth – four timees the benchmark set by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and 40 per cent of the state.

The realitv is that we have to be part of the solution to the environmental impact of economic growth in our region. Part of that solution is to continue to grow a sustainable Australian and Tasmanian forest industry.

It is estimated that almost 10 per cent of timber products imported to Australia are of suspicious origin. The trade in illegal and unsustainable timber distorts trade, suppresses prices, and causes damage to the environment.

Dubious importing practices are already contribute to job losses in Australia, where local producers are arguably being unfairly undercut.

Our own economic and environmental future is in jeopardy if we don't adopt measures to control importation of illegal and unsustainable timber products and if we fail to set the example world’s best forestry forest industry practices with our trading partners. That’s why the Australian Labor Party supports the development of a worldclass-pulp mill in Tasmania. Our high standards could add around $100 million to the cost of the mill compared to less stringent standards for our competitors in this industry.

Despite the cost impediment, we required the development of Australian manufacturing industries, which we require to operate on a world's best practice basis with respect to environmental and greenhouse emissions, and not drive them offshore to countries with lower standards.

The Federal Labor platform commits a future Labor government to encourage moves away from woodchip exports by promoting greater value-adding and downstream processing.

The Tasmanian pulp mill be an important step in this direction, quadrupling the value of Tasmania's woodchips and going a long way to reduce Australia's, trade deficit in pulp and paper products. It is up to us as a nation to ensure that our imports and exports of forest products are certified to give us confidence about the origin of the products, the legality of their acquisition, and the reputation and forestry standards of the producers.

ARTICLE: Greenie hand on timber goals

Philip Hopkins and Melissa Fyfe
The Age, November 21 2005

A LEADING environmentalist has helped launch a campaign that aims to create a sustainable, long-term future for Victoria's native forest timber industry.

Environmentalist Rob Gell, chairman of Greening Australia, joined the chief executive of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries, Tricia Caswell, in releasing VAFI's 2005 Sustainability Report on Friday.

The report, the first in a series, "represents where the industry is now, what the issues and hot issues are, and how VAFI sees the future", Ms Caswell said.

The association aims to work with the State Government and stakeholders to develop a 40-year plan. "By 2025, the industry will be supplying high-quality hardwood timber and wood fibre from native forests, commercial plantations and farm forestry," the report says.

"We aim to have the most sustainable forest practices recognised worldwide. The industry intends to be a significant provider of ecosystems services from forests that include catchment health, salinity control, water flow management, carbon sequestration, linking and expanding remnant forest vegetation and production forests to enhance biodiversity."

VAFI's Vision 2025 sets out many aims, which include having the highest-quality products, third-party certification, sustainability reporting, resource security, enhanced research and innovation, redressing the $2 billion forest trade deficit, no illegal log imports, value-adding and finding niche markets.

The report notes that 651,300 hectares of native forest, less than 10 per cent of Victoria's 7.9 million hectares of native forest, is available to the timber industry.

Mr Gell, a member of VAFI's community council, said he was comfortable with the direction of Victoria's native forest sector.

The industry's first sustainability report was "a very, very valuable document". "It sets a course, marks an intention and it sticks someone's neck out," he said.

But Gavan McFadzean, Victorian campaigns manager for the Wilderness Society, said VAFI's sustainability report was disappointing. "It contains plenty of the usual rhetoric but no new approaches to creating environmental sustainability in native forests," he said.

"Yet again VAFI has a confused understanding of sustainability. This report is about creating sustainability in wood supply, that is native forests can be logged like plantations on 60-year rotations. This is a world apart from environmental sustainability, the outcome of which is that old growth forests … are not destroyed."

Full text

ARTICLE: Sawmillers fear compo fund shortfall

20/10/2005. ABC News Online

Tasmania's country sawmillers can now apply for government compensation to upgrade their equipment to handle plantation logs.

The $4 million compensation package was promised in the Community Forest Agreement (CFA), along with funding for softwood and hardwood operations.

Stephen Cornish, from the Country Sawmillers' Association, says many owners have indicated they will phase out of the industry, but there may not be enough funds to satisfy everyone who wants to continue.

"We've known for a long time that the resource is changing and is going to change and we know there are some mills that are operating now, simply won't be competitive in five, 10, 15 years' time," he said.

"So it's a matter of evolution I guess that these mills will disappear from the scene.

"The sawmillers I've been speaking to are looking to upgrade or changing their gear.

"You're talking about capital expenditure of equipment that is quite expensive, so the $4 million I suspect won't go very far and will go fairly quickly.""

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200510/s1487037.htm

LETTER: Dingo Creek logging continues

Author: Tony Hastings

Letter submitted to the Age follows:

The logging at Dingo Creek on the Errinundra Plateau continues, destroying old-growth forest, threatened species habitat and rainforest values within a National Heritage sited site, a Rainforest Site of National Significance and
so called “Special Management Zone”.

These values include “Catchment integrity” and “Scientific value,” which are undoubtable being lost due to the logging. Despite being warned in 2001 that this logging was contrary to the Code of Forest Practice and Management Plan, the DSE refuse to modify the logging plans.

Following arrests at the 2001 blockade, 2 botanists testified that rainforest had been logged and the Supreme Court of Victoria ruled that logging contrary to the Code of Practice is illegal. Why is the DSE allowed to show such contempt for environmental laws?

A private landowner who clears forest like this would be prosecuted.

For more information call 0427 534 548

LETTER: Logging blunders unacceptable

Author: Peter Campbell

10 March 2005

Not published

Recent “logging blunders” by The Department of Sustainability and Environment (The Age, 3/10) clearly demonstrate yet again that the Department is not capable of managing their conflict of interest between protecting our forests and logging them too.

It is simply unacceptable that these blunders have led to the destruction of our forest that is supposed to be protected, which is home to threatened species such as the long-footed potoroo. With friends like this, our forest doesn’t need enemies.

In addition, breaches of the so-called “code of forest practices” have been occurring for years without adequate policing by the Department. No substantive action has been taken about breaches that have been detected over the last two decades.

Rather than conducting more audits, Environment Minister John Thwaites needs to taken urgent and immediate action and ensure that the Department is prosecuted for all breaches.

He should also reinstate separate management for our National Parks, old growth forests and water catchments that are simply too precious and important to be ignored by a department that is intent on logging at any cost.

ARTICLE: Logging blunders to be investigated

Some more evidence of incompetence and possible corruption with the innaccurately named "Department of Sustainability and Environment". Logging old growth forests - and National Parks - is clearly not sustainable or good for the environment.

Original article available here.

Excerpt of text from article follows:

Logging blunders to be investigated
By Adam Morton

October 3, 2005

THE Victorian Government will today ask the state's environment watchdog to investigate at least two logging blunders that felled protected trees in national and state parks, putting endangered species at risk.

Environment Minister John Thwaites will instruct the Environment Protection Authority to audit breaches in the Barmah State Forest, near Echuca, and the Errinundra National Park in East Gippsland. The Department of Sustainability and Environment conceded it logged more than half of a protected habitat for the endangered superb parrot in the Barmah, and VicForests felled at least 250 square metres at Errinundra, home to threatened species including the long-footed potoroo.

The minister's intervention came after a coalition of environmentalists led by the Victorian National Parks Association called for the agencies to be prosecuted over four alleged logging breaches.

. . . continues

ARTICLE: Malaysians 'fed up' with Indonesian haze

The Age, breaking news
August 13, 2005 - 2:29PM

Malaysians saw a clear and sunny sky for the first time in days as a hazardous haze dissipated overnight.

But anger mounted against Indonesia for failing to control the man-made forest fires that caused the pollution crisis.

Seven elderly people who died in recent days may have been victims of the haze, which turned into Malaysia's worst ecological emergency in years. However, doctors said it was too early to attribute the deaths to pollution, The New Straits Times newspaper reported.

"Enough is Enough, Indonesia," screamed the headline of a commentary in the Star newspaper by its deputy editor, Wong Chun Wai.

The haze, which appeared on August 2, has been caused by fires on Indonesia's Sumatra island - across a narrow strip of sea from Malaysia.

In Sumatra, farmers, plantation owners and miners clear land during dry weather. It's an annual occurrence and Malaysia has often complained that Indonesia does little to prevent it.

"Let's be clear about this ... Malaysians are fed up with having to put up with this annual problem, and this time many of us think it has gone too far," Wong wrote.
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"Indonesia has to wake up to the fact that the forest fires have become a (regional) problem, full stop. Let's end this annual ritual once and for all with serious enforcement.""

Full text

ARTICLE: Finally, it's just about politics

The Age
By Shaun Carney, October 9, 2004

Illustration: Spooner

The first five weeks of the 2004 election campaign were about policy and personalities. The final week has been about politics - raw, number-crunching, visceral politics.

Mark Latham on Monday made a final lunge, throwing a net over every available Green voter in the hope of compensating for Labor's stubbornly low level of primary support. Two days later, John Howard responded by returning to the political method that had given him a massive majority in his first election victory in 1996: the chiselling-off of conservative blue-collar voters from Labor's base.

In what appears to be a tightly fought contest, both of these tactical manoeuvres will work, shifting votes from one side to the other. But only one can be decisive.

As this week progressed, an air of quiet confidence - but something short of absolute certainty - permeated the Liberal camp. The feeling among a number of people working on the campaign was that the Government had done enough to create doubts about Latham during the first month and that in the final few days the circumstances had been right for a Liberal foray into Labor's heartland.

One Liberal put it this way: "We lured Latham into putting all his eggs into the basket marked 'Greens'. They're not our people, the Greens. They never will be. We sat back and let it happen. Then the PM goes down to Tassie and offers to protect the timber workers' jobs above all else. We get pictures all over the country in the papers and on TV of blokes in overalls cheering the PM.

"I mean, you can't buy that stuff. The message is: if you're a working person and you think greenies are wankers - and lots of blue-collar people think like this, not just in Tasmania but all over the mainland - then John Howard is the only one prepared to do what is necessary to keep you and your family together."

At the same time, the Labor camp got a bad case of the jitters in the 24 hours after Latham announced his Tasmanian forests policy on Monday. The denunciation of the policy and explicit criticism of Latham by the ALP member for Lyons, Dick Adams, briefly stopped Labor's campaign dead.

Those who say politics is boring and predictable should think just how much and how quickly the political scene can change.

Adams' attack on Latham and his subsequent threat to rat on Labor after the election confirmed much of what the Government has been saying all the way through about the Labor leader's unfitness for office. Having one of your own desert the leader only a few days out from polling day is every campaigner's worst nightmare.

Acting in tandem with Adams was the head of the forestry division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, Michael O'Connor, who started actively touting for the Liberal Party even before the Prime Minister released his forests policy.

This is the second time that O'Connor has worked vigorously and publicly to help the Coalition's electoral prospects. In 1995, as one of the organisers of a loggers' blockade of Parliament House, O'Connor seriously weakened the Keating government's authority.

Senior Liberals have since credited O'Connor with inadvertently showing them the way towards their successful strategy in the 1996 election that gave Howard a landslide majority, a strategy that exploited the divisions between Labor's urban, white-collar base and its blue-collar supporters in the outer suburbs and regional areas.

Greens' leader Bob Brown, the Wilderness Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation held back endorsement of Latham's policy until after Howard's announcement, which meant that Labor appeared to swing in the breeze for 48 hours.

Labor's problem all through this campaign - and in fact for its whole time in opposition - has been its apparent inability to lift its primary vote. When Gough Whitlam took office in 1972, Labor secured 49.6 per cent. In 1983, which was Bob Hawke's first victory, it scored 49.5 per cent.

The published and private polling this time suggests that it's refusing to go above 40 per cent. That can be enough for Labor to win - Hawke's last victory in 1990 came on the back of a 39.4 per cent primary vote - but absolutely everything has to go right.

The feeling among Labor campaign workers last weekend was that they had done everything possible to gain the ascendancy over the Government.

Two weeks earlier, Latham had declared the election a referendum on Medicare, a bold boast given that the normal dynamic of election campaigns is that the terms are dictated by the incumbent. Last week, courtesy of Labor's Medicare Gold policy announced at its formal campaign launch, health did become the battleground, so some in charge of the ALP effort felt they had drawn level with the Government.

But it still was not enough. The grand gesture of the forests policy, with $800 million to keep timber workers in jobs and the locking up of old-growth forests, was seen as the way to kick Labor over the line.

Bob Brown's extraordinary endorsement of Labor on Wednesday night, in which he asked his party organisation in 26 extra seats to draw up tickets that gave preferences to Labor, suggested that it could pay off.

But will the pay-off be big enough? This is the question that lies at the heart of today's ballot.

Both sides of politics have seen this coming. That's why the Liberals have fed anti-Green propaganda to the Murdoch press all the way through the campaign, and it's why the Liberal Party distributed anti-Green pamphlets with no obvious Liberal markings to households even in safe seats such as Goldstein in the past few days.

Labor expects the preference flows from Greens voters to be much tighter - perhaps above 90 per cent - because of the forest policy. The Liberals know they have to frighten waverers away from voting Green in the first place because the impulse will be to follow the Greens' pro-Labor ticket.

The other side of the coin is that Howard could have played the situation beautifully, casting himself as the workers' friend at just the right time in the campaign.

Howard's relentless portrayal of himself since Day One of the campaign as the king of low interest rates and the only leader in Australia who understands how to make the economy grow has undoubtedly been effective.

The connection with the Tasmanian logging workers put flesh on the bones of this message. Its potency could well have spread beyond Bass Strait and onto the mainland, shoring up support in a range of marginal Liberal-held seats.

Those who say politics is boring and predictable should think for a moment just how much and how quickly the political scene can change. The public discussion during the Howard Government's third term was dominated by war, terrorism and the American alliance.

None of these issues have figured in any substantial way in the past 42 days. Instead, it's been the home mortgage, hospital trolleys, school buildings, and wilderness areas that most of us will never see.

Happy voting.

Shaun Carney is an associate editor of The Age.

Original article

ARTICLE: Logging fires hit catchments

The Age
Melissa Fyfe, Environment Reporter, May 10, 2004

The State Government has admitted that it lost control of five fires connected to logging operations, most of them in Melbourne's water catchments.

One fire incinerated several boxes that forest animal specialist David Lindenmayer had set up as experimental habitats for the endangered Leadbeater's possum. It is believed possums were not using them at the time.

Two post-logging fires escaped into national park in the O'Shannassy and Maroondah areas - "locked" parts of the city's water catchments. Two other fires in April, also lit to regenerate logged areas, burnt 280 hectares of the Thomson catchment, one of the city's major water sources.

Logging in water catchments is sensitive because it replaces old trees with young trees which, while growing, suck up water that would otherwise flow to dams. Melbourne Water research shows that water yield from logged areas drops 50 per cent by the time the trees are 20 to 30 years old. For this reason, the Department of Sustainability and Environment and Melbourne Water only allow 150 hectares to be logged each year in the Thomson catchment. A fire, which also encourages young trees to grow, also has a water-reducing effect.
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A department spokeswoman said the two fires that escaped into the Yarra Ranges National Park were minor. In the Maroondah catchment, a quarter of a hectare was burnt, and half a hectare in O'Shannassy, she said.

"These escapes occurred during the extreme weather conditions experienced post-Easter," she told The Age. Another controlled burn got away in a special forest experiment, also part of Professor Lindenmayer's work. In a logging area, an island of trees that was supposed to be left for future animal habitat was burnt. But the spokeswoman said: "At Toolangi the regeneration burn did get into the island, but the mountain ash will survive and provide animal habitat in the future."

Professor Lindenmayer is helping research ways that clearfell logging can be changed to leave clumps of forest that will grow old and provide hollows, key habitat for Leadbeater's possum.

"Essentially we have a big problem in the Central Highlands with clearfelling," Professor Lindenmayer said. "It eliminates the structural complexity of the forest ... There needs to be a mixture of old trees and young trees."

Professor Lindenmayer, from the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at the Australian National University, said he did not know how many possum boxes he had lost. The experiment - to see if they would live in boxes in the absence of suitable hollows - had not attracted possums so far.

The Wilderness Society and local conservationists believe that logging should be stopped in Melbourne's water catchments.

Sarah Rees, the Central Highlands Alliance president, said her group had stumbled on the "smouldering secret" in water catchment areas. "The (department) has displayed nothing but nonchalance and disregard for the sensitivity of these surrounding national parks," she said.

Original article

ARTICLE: Pier-to-pub goes swimmingly (except for the loggers)

The Age
January 12 2003
Dan Silkstone

The 23rd annual pier-to-pub swim went ahead with little disruption at Lorne yesterday, despite loggers clogging Geelong Road in a protest against the Bracks Government's decision to phase out logging in the Otways Ranges.

Organisers said they were delighted with a crowd estimated at more than 20,000, which saw a record 4000 competitors attempt the 1.2-kilometre swim.

"There was some disruption but it wasn't that bad," said event spokeswoman Samantha O'Brien. "People went by the back roads or left early. The day has been really successful and we're extremely pleased."

Three convoys of logging trucks left Geelong hourly starting at 8am, clogging lanes on the Geelong and Great Ocean Roads as they crawled toward Lorne at 40 kmh.

A police spokeswoman said last night that no arrests were made and the protest had been peaceful.

The loggers were protesting against the State Government's decision to halt logging in the Otways Ranges by 2008, a key part of the government's re-election strategy.

Organiser Peter Dynes said despite timing the action to coincide with the race it had never been the loggers' intention to stop the event or cause problems for the surf lifesaving club, which runs the race as a fund-raiser.

"I don't think we disrupted the event and we didn't want to do that," he said. "We just wanted to get some attention and tell the public about the situation we are in."

Mr Dynes accused Premier Steve Bracks of misleading loggers about the future of their jobs.

He said that forestry workers and their families were already suffering as logging scaled back before the scheduled finish date. About 150 loggers travelled through Lorne, stopping for a barbecue while the race went ahead. A second planned blockade in the afternoon was cancelled as the protesters took up a collection for the lifesaving club.

For the record, Nick Hinsley won the event in a time of 11.49, the third consecutive occasion he has led all comers in the race to the beach in front of the Lorne Hotel. Naantali Marshall was the first woman home for the fourth consecutive year in 12.16."

Original article

LETTER: Getting it wrong on logging

Mark Poynter, forestry consultant, Alphington
The Age, 04/11/02

As logging is restricted to the less than 15 per cent of Victoria's native forests that are legally available and suitable for timber production, Brian Walters' statement that "our forests are being seriously overlogged" is fundamentally incorrect.

His call for more forests to be protected also demonstrates a lack of understanding of "overlogging", which is the harvesting of these available forests at a rate faster than the optimum required for sustainable production. Recognition that the available forests were being logged too quickly resulted from updated growth information - and was not caused by "an industry that demands more than our forests can provide".

As for Walters' economic arguments, these are flawed by understating the native forest woodchip price by a factor of almost 100, and overstating the "commercial" price for plantation woodchips by about 100 per cent.

Walters should consider the morality of pushing to stop timber production in a minor portion of our forests, while at the same time being part of a society that consumed 21 million cubic metres of log volume last year.

LETTER: Green - or just greenish

Andrew Walker, Lawyers for Forests, Parkville
The Age, 04/11/02

Brian Walters (Opinion 1/11) has hit the nail on the head regarding Environment Minister Sherryl Garbutt's "moratorium" on logging the Goolengook Forest.

While the moratorium is a positive move, Garbutt has indicated the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council will be asked to advise whether other already protected forest can be swapped for Goolengook and logged, if Goolengook is saved. This perpetuates the myth that the government is bound to find replacement forest if forest previously identified as available for logging is subsequently protected under a Regional Forest Agreement - something that is simply not true.

If the Bracks Government is serious about saving Goolengook, and establishing its green credentials, it should examine whether logging of old-growth and high-conservation forest can be phased out. Otherwise it is difficult to see how minister Garbutt's announcement amounts to anything but greenwash.

LETTER: Living with nature – not consuming it

Mick Fendley, director. Victorian National Parks Association
Letter, The Age, 12/1/2002

John Vidal, in an extraordinary piece of sophistry in The Age earlier this month (“Wild lies'', 3/1) set about attacking the establishment of national parks and wilderness areas. He did this behind a cleverly constructed screen of concern for social justice and indigenous rights.

After asserting that there was a ''push' to create ever-expanding wilderness areas (this is arrant nonsense: wild or natural areas all over the world are rare and in rapid retreat) and referring to a plot by the conservation "industry" against indigenous people (the fact that no such 'industry" exists didn't seem to bother the writer; nor did the fact that the vast majority of people working for the conservation of nature are highly respectful and supportive of indigenous cultures). Vidal then launched his main attack: that conservation is ''anti- people”. With foot-stamping petulance he demands to know: ''Who runs flits planet?''

There is a sad alienation in this cry an angry and small voice that feels keenly the expulsion from Eden and will lash out like a vandal at any natural beauty remaining.

Vidal seems to have made the fundamental and primitive error that the only needs of people are consumptive and the only values of the natural world ate the so-called 'use' values (hunting. firewood collection, timber cutting and so forth). He failed entirely to acknowledge that there are whole ranges of values we place on the natural world, many of which do not require direct consumption to give us what we need. Indirect values such as through visitation, vicarious values, bequest values for the next generation and intrinsic values of nature itself are placed on the environment and do not require its destructive consumption.

It is clear Vidal wants us to see nature as a lie, that all natural capital is in fact human capital and thus of ourselves and to be used and exploited as we see fit. This is a far-right-wing development agenda pursued using the clubs of the left.

In Australia, humans have shaped the land for millennia, but the imprint is softer and less obvious than in Europe, where Vidal's article was written. The pulse of wild nature still beats strongly here. Our parks in Victoria and around the world seek to protect and celebrate this, for people and nature. We wish to nurture, but not consume.