Don’t return to the forest wars

Most Tasmanians are happy with the forestry peace deal, but now that is at risk, writes Leanne Minshull

THE forestry peace deal was painstakingly negotiated over years, following decades of division. It included independent verification of conservation and commercial values of forests and required concessions from both sides.

Conservationists were promised the protection of 504,000 hectares of high conservation forests including icons such as the Styx and Upper Florentine.

In return, a struggling industry was assured an end to markets campaigns overseas and the possibility of gaining forest stewardship certification.

Neither side was 100 per cent happy with the outcome, nevertheless, the intensity of both native forest logging decreased and so did the protests, which pleased most people.

Now that peace is at risk of being broken. The logging industry has announced that, from next year, it wants parts of the 357,000 hectares of forest that were scheduled to be protected under the forest peace deal to be reopened for logging, including areas on the Tasman Peninsula and around national parks including Ben Lomond and Douglas Apsley.

The Australia Institute wanted to know what Tasmanians think about this issue, so on October 22 we polled 1136 people across the state to ask their opinion. It seems a majority of Tasmanians want to keep the peace.

We asked: The logging industry has announced that, from next year, it wants parts of the 357,000 hectares of forest that were scheduled to be protected under the forest peace deal to be reopened for logging. This includes areas on the Tasman Peninsula and around national parks such as Ben Lomond and Douglas Apsley among others.

Of the following, what do you think the logging industry should do? Three in five Tasmanians (61 per cent) think the logging industry should stick the forestry peace deal, while one quarter (25 per cent) thought the logging industry should break it. A further 14 per cent weren’t sure.

These results would surprise few. Who in their right mind wants a return to the forestry conflicts of the past?

However, of all the issues polled on in Tasmania over the years, no results have been as hotly debated as questions on the logging industry and the conservation of old growth forests. Most results have shown Tasmanians prefer the conservation of our unique, globally significant forests to logging them. Yet there is pushback from commentators, politicians and industry each and every time, claiming the results were wrong or the questions were skewed.

But you don’t have to take our word for it. The logging industry itself wanted to better understand how it was viewed by the public. The Forest and Wood Products of Australia undertook research with the University of Canberra in 2018 to better understand the industry’s social licence. The report was not initially released to the public, but parts of it were leaked and appeared in several news reports. A lot of that report is now available on the University of Canberra website. The AFPA survey found that native forest logging was considered unacceptable by 65 per cent of rural/regional and 70 per cent of urban residents across Australia, and acceptable by 17 per cent of rural and 10 per cent of urban residents.

Within Tasmania, the report found that, “In general, Tasmanians perceive the forest industry as having fewer positive effects than the farming and tourism industries, and more negative effects.”

If the forest industry’s own polling finds such high levels of opposition to native forest logging, then it’s little wonder that 61 per cent of Tasmanian’s want to see the forest peace deal maintained. This AFPA research also showed that despite the high levels of controversy attached to logging publicly owned native forest, the practice constituted a low percentage of economic return from the industry as a whole. According to industry figures, the direct value of output from the Tasmanian forest industry for 2015-2016 was $712 million. Of this figure $563 million (about 80 per cent) were from activities dependent on plantations, while only $150 million from sales generated by the native forest industry. Australia is one of the last developed economies that has a state-subsidised and run logging industry. Over the past 10 years, our state-run logging company, subsidised by taxpayers, has lost an average of $56 million per year. This is a staggering figure when compared to commercially successful private industries like tourism, which brings

hundreds of millions of dollars into Tasmania. In my opinion, the state-sponsored logging industry is an economic and ecological relic. In other words, it’s a bum deal for taxpayers and our wilderness.

But I think we’d be mad to let the industry break the forestry peace deal, and a majority of Tasmanians agree.