Chip, chip, chipping at our future

Peter Henning ponders why the clearfell, burn and woodchip export disaster continues to haunt Tasmania

DIVISIONS within Tasmanian society run wider and deeper about forestry issues than any other public policy area, and that has been the case for several decades.

The latest policy proposals by the Hodgman Government, had they passed the Legislative Council, would have done nothing to resolve any of those divisions, and nor were they intended to do so.

Forestry policy in Tasmania has long been determined by perceptions of partisan political advantage, including the flow of money into parties’ election campaigns, rather than any concern about the public interest or sustainability of the industry.

Perhaps this is the main reason why Tasmanian forestry policy for more than 20 years continues the same mistakes again and again, resulting not surprisingly in the same adverse outcomes wherever you care to look — economically, socially and environmentally.

The latest “plan” by the Hodgman Government, which would have allowed logging in 356,000ha of forests two years before the expiry of a moratorium, has been narrowly rejected by MLCs, perhaps recalling with a cold shudder that such a folly would be taking place on the 10th anniversary of the notorious 2007 Pulp Mill Assessment Act, passed by a legislature almost totally subservient to Gunns’ commercial interests.

But let’s face it, we are but talking about delaying the end of the moratorium by just two years, which means in effect nothing’s changed since 2007, or since 1997 for that matter.

Between 1997 and 2007 it has been estimated that at least $600 million of public funds were spent on keeping the forestry industry going.

Since 2007 hundreds of millions more have been wasted in failed managed investment schemes, leaving small investors stranded.

Forestry Tasmania has been propped up for years on end, despite government promises to make it stand on its own feet.

Who can forget the backlog, no pun, of log trucks taking loads of logs to the Triabunna chipper? Many of these contractors were paid a pittance, and were then paid from the public purse to leave the industry when Gunns and MIS schemes fell over, but then came back again.

In the middle of the rush to clearfell and plant nitens in tax-avoidance dreamschemes, Gunns had little difficulty in convincing Alice in the Wonderland of isolation from the global realities of pulp that even the issue of Forest Stewardship Council certification was not worth consideration.

If all of this touches on economic costs, a massive carousel spinning funds into clearfelling oldgrowth for more than a generation, and replacing it with nitens plantations, as if forestry was an essential public service like health or education, those costs are the tip of much more extensive damage, a lot of it permanent and irreparable.

One such cost can be easily demonstrated by reference to the backlash of vindictive and vitriolic ad hominem attacks made on anyone who has dared to criticise or even question forestry industry policies and practices, one longstanding tactic employed by joint industry-politicalcorporate trolls, some of them operating for years under the protective cover of anonymity.

The social divisions created by personal attacks have been deliberately fostered by the ALP and the Liberal Party, with high profile critics of Tasmanian forestry policy like Richard Flanagan and Rebecca Gibney being told they were not welcome in Tasmania. The same parties also welcomed Gunns’ strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPP suits.

This tradition of deliberate personal attack, intimidation and ostracism is thoroughly ingrained and systemic, as all those who write about forestry issues have come to know, but some of this stuff is appalling.

In effect the forestry issue has highlighted the massive dislocation between political careerists under a range of banners — Labor, liberal, Green and independent — and most Tasmanians.

The trashing of native forests, including all species, for woodchips, has been at the centre of Lab-Lib forestry “management” for years, while the alternative notion of Plantation Isle has been the self-defeating compromise the Greens and environmental non-government organisations have adopted.

Meanwhile, there has been a never-ending revolving door between parliament and Forestry Tasmania, as if one was an extension of the other. Then there is the flow of public money into corporate pockets, which can be likened to a laundering operation, whereby government “grants” come back, in part, in the form of political “donations”.

Gross incompetence is one way to describe the direction the forestry industry has taken for the past 20 years. But now the Hodgman Government tries to prescribe more of the same because the only way Forestry Tasmania can meet its contractual obligations for sawlogs is by opening up new areas of native forests.

It all could have been so different if political careerists were not so lacking in courage in the face of corporate power. Back in 2006 most of them refused to meet with Professor Eduardo Jaramillo, a Chilean scientist who linked effluent from the Valdivian pulp mill with the destruction of wildlife, agriculture and fishing enterprises. It was a gross dereliction of professional responsibility by Tasmanian politicians, but indicative of their lack of interest in representing their constituents.

The fascinating thing about

The latest policy proposals by the Hodgman Government, had they passed the Legislative Council, would have done nothing to resolve any of the divisions, and nor were they intended to do so.

Tasmanian forestry is the more it repeats failures of the past the more jobs are lost, the more subsidies are continued, the more damage is done to the environment and the more rural Tasmania remains trapped in a dead end.

What is there to show for decades of industrial forestry mining of the landscape, and for the short-term rotations of monocultural plantations, and for the massive quantities of woodchips exported — including unknown amounts of clear-felled specialty timber?

Many Tasmanians seem inured to the widespread deleterious effects of industrial forestry practices, even though they have to pay millions annually to feed it, and nothing is more indicative of that than their willingness to allow massive forestry sterilisation hot burns to pour smoke into their lungs at the end of autumn every year.

Maybe they see it as an official signal that all is right with the perpetuation of the follies of the past. And maybe, just maybe, the vote by the Legislative Council will not just be a signal that they are sticking to a moratorium which will end in 2019, but that it is time to look at new directions, those more in touch with real sustainability, not just cynical sloganeering.

Peter Henning is a Tasmanian author and historian who lives just out of Launceston.