NO WINS IN ENDLESS BLUE
“WE won!” exclaimed Resources Minister Guy Barnett after the decision in what was billed as the Great Forests Case on Wednesday. It is clear that in this government’s eyes at least, what is good for the forestry industry is good for Tasmania. But what did we win?
Conflict over the logging of Tasmania’s native forests is an age-old Tasmanian pastime with the warring parties becoming more deeply entrenched over time.
This is more than just a fight over endangered parrots or export woodchips. The Regional Forest Agreements being litigated at great expense in the Federal Court date back to the Howard era. Some may remember a triumphal campaign announcement to a hall of wildly cheering workers in Launceston in 2004. Jobs was the theme then too, in the days when there were about 6400 directly employed in the industry statewide — and were perhaps 2000 swift parrots left in Tasmania’s forests. Guy Barnett was a senator back in those days, Bob Brown led the Australian Greens. John Howard is long gone from the stage, but nearly two decades on, the fight still rages between many of the same actors, their passion undiminished, their belief in the righteousness of their cause undimmed. There was a brief glimmer of hope in the dying days of the Labor-Green government when everyone sat down and agreed to a peace deal, which was promptly torn up by the incoming Liberals.
There are those in this debate who will not budge on conviction and ideology, and for whom conflict is a source of ongoing support from true believers. But for many Tasmanians, this is a puzzle that should have been solved a long time ago. How is it possible this state still does not have a sustainable timber industry and the jobs it provides and can protect environmental values at the same time? Has endless conflict, rather than co-operation, brought us closer to this optimal result?
Two-thirds of the state’s forestry jobs have disappeared while this fight has waxed and waned and so have nine-tenths of the swift parrots. These parrots are listed as being critically endangered. Along the way timber giant Gunns collapsed, the battles over the pulp mill and the Florentine and World Heritage extensions are receding into faint memory. After years and years of fighting, what progress has been made?
This conflict will continue, the defining problem is not resolved. Dr Brown says an appeal is being considered. Mr Barnett has shown he has no taste for detente. Is there an outcome more emblematic of the Tasmanian inability to find common ground than spending two decades fighting a battle between conservation and forestry and ending up with poorer outcomes for both? When the last timber worker bids farewell to the last swift parrot, who then will dare to exclaim: “We won”?