Fighting power, vested interests

WOODCHIP WARS

SIMON Bevilacqua’s incisive and thoughtful overview on the forest wars (“Woodchip wars,” Mercury, February 13) was in stark contrast to Nick Steele’s tired old commentary on the Regional Forest Agreement (Talking Point, February 13) proving the very point that Simon was making.

Having just read a new book on the fight against slavery in Britain in the early 19th century, I was struck by the parallels with the situation on the forests here today in Tasmania.

The slave trade had been abolished but the British economy continued to thrive on the profits of what was then known as “the interest”. The plantations in the West Indies provided lucrative returns for a handful of businessmen and they roped in the media and powerful politicians, arguing that they provided jobs and profits as well as coffee, sugar and tobacco for consumers. They even invoked the Bible much as in the 1990s, the Forest Protection Society justified logging on the grounds that Jesus was a carpenter who worked with wood.

As for the politicians, several Hobart streets are named after leading supporters of slavery and “the interest” like the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, and the Secretary of State, Earl Bathurst, let alone the Duke of Wellington.

In the end of course, public opinion prevailed against “the interest” just as one day, the logging of oldgrowth forests will come to an end, but the battle against powerful vested interests is never an easy one. That is why the historical overview provided by Simon Bevilacqua is such a valuable one. Peter D. Jones Lindisfarne

KEEPING THEM HONEST

SIMON Bevilacqua’s open and frank article highlights the reality that in fact a journo’s life is not always a happy one. However Simon should feel proud of his achievements in burrowing out and reporting the facts, both in the past and in today’s re-emerging forestry debacle.

The reading public needs free and honest journalism to expose the real issues of the day and to help us understand and work through the eternal political spin.

So keep up the good work, Simon and others of your ilk, we need your investigative journalism and your brave reporting, to attain and maintain some level of government transparency and to help us keep the bastards honest. Chris Needham

Kingston

THE VALUE OF PLACE

THERE are lots of angry truckies out there with chips on their shoulders, because of green protests. They should try calculating the number of chips they end up delivering to Chinese workers doing the kind of jobs they won’t be retrained to do themselves. The government should pay out truckies with taxpayer funds. The government has always believed our timber-toting truckies are owed a living. Chinese woodchip consumers put the value of money before the value of place. We need to put the value of place before the value of money.

IMPRESSED

Michael McCall Primrose Sands

I WAS impressed by another brilliant contribution by Simon Bevilacqua summarising the history of the woodchip wars in Tasmania. It is disappointing that the present state Liberal government broke the truce that the former Labor federal government had done between the forest industry and the anti-logging people resulting in more cutting of precious oldgrowth forests. I agree with Simon that “until the woodchip wars there was always room in Tasmania for a small, hi-tech plantation sector based on downstream, and for a small, nimble operation based on selective logging of premium-price specialty timber in native forests for highquality craftsmanship”.

NOURISHING THE SOUL

Ike Naqvi Tinderbox

IN Proverbs it says “Death and Life are in the power of the tongue.” The Mercury of February 13 has two articles which reflect this statement. Simon Bevilacqua’s experience of abuse when pro-forestry supporters abused and cursed him when the evidence he presented as a journalist contradicted their claims that clearfelling of oldgrowth forests is good. While Sharon Dutton’s and Jules Carroll’s article on Valentine’s Day shows expressing gratitude strengthens a loving relationship.

When opening our mouth, let us first contemplate another verse from Proverbs: “Your own soul is nourished when you are kind but you destroy yourself when you are cruel. “

TRUMPIAN CLAIMS

Antony Ault Rose Bay

READER John Walsh (Letters, February 12) makes some truly Trumpian claims in his letter. To claim that “mixed wet native forests are seldom, if ever, replaced with drier even-aged pulpwood plantations” is incorrect.

I invite Mr Walsh to visit the many hundreds of hectares of wet forest replaced by plantation in the area I grew up in at Meunna on the North-West Coast.

It takes up to 100 years to replace the carbon lost in these forests after logging. Disturbance of these forests also increases fire risk.

Mr Walsh would be well advised to read the findings released by the Bushfire Recovery Project. An analysis of over 50 peer-reviewed studies by more than 100 scientists found that native forest logging increases the severity at which forests burn, particularly between 10 and 40 years after logging. Paul O’Halloran

Turners Beach