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Andrew's government to deliver unemployment double whammy to Gippsland?

By Mark Poynter - posted Monday, 7 November 2016


With Gippsland’s Hazelwood power station set to close in March next year with the immediate loss of 750 jobs, it is astonishing that the Andrews Government appears to be preparing to declare new forested national park/s that could potentially result in the loss of up to a further 2,200 jobs and annual economic activity of $570 million largely in the same region.

Central to this is the so-called ‘Great Forest National Park’ proposal developed by environmental groups and backed by the Greens. Its initial rationale was the protection of the endangered Leadbeater’s Possum from timber harvesting, but in the face of an evolving reality that the possum is thriving rather than facing imminent extinction, the pro-park rhetoric has broadened to include spurious claims about more tourism, and better carbon and water outcomes. If declared, the new park of over 350,000 hectares would virtually kill-off Victoria’s native hardwood industry.

Already, one-third of Victoria’s public native forests are in national parks, and a further one-third is contained in other formal and informal conservation reserve categories. Most of the rest is unsuited to commercial use and so is effectively also acting as a lesser form of conservation reserve. Overall, just 7% of Victoria’s public forest is available and suitable for the most contentious use, timber production.

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Declaring national parks has become politically attractive for State Governments over the past 20-years as a means of showcasing their environmental credentials. However, the original national parks concept of protecting areas with special or unique conservation values has now been largely debased by its regular misappropriation as a populist political tool to evict resource use industries even from areas containing few conservation values. Just two recent examples are the reservations of extensive cypress pine woodlands in central-western NSW, and the Murray Valley river red gum forests/woodlands in both Victoria and NSW. Both areas are amongst the most modified landscapes on the continent and had supported significant timber industries for at least a century.

In Victoria, the politically-expedient misuse of the national parks concept began under Labor’s Bracks Government when it became common-place to announce new national parks during election campaigns prior to any scientific evaluation of conservation values.  Bracks admitted in his 2012 biography that his party had an unofficial policy to ultimately end all timber harvesting in Victoria’s public forests.

That this remains a dominant view within the party was exemplified soon after the election of the Andrews Labor Government when its newly appointed Environment Minister publicly expressed delight that the ‘Great Forest National Park’could now proceed ... before later adding as an afterthought that, of course, this would only be after an appropriate process of consultation and evaluation. This says much about Victorian Labor’s approach to forest policy determinations during and since the Bracks era, whereby evaluation and community consultation has lacked objectivity and genuine consideration of alternative views while exhibiting all the hallmarks of ‘going through the motions’ to meet an already pre-determined outcome.

After a year in office, the Andrews Government established the Forest Industry Taskforce (FIT) in late 2015. This forum of environmental group, union, and timber industry representatives is expected to map a future direction for Victoria’s wood production forests. This is a re-run of the similar process overseen by Tasmania’s Labor-Greens minority government from 2010 – 13 which, after $2 million and two-and-a half-years expended in often fraught negotiations, would in all likelihood have ended in stalemate but for last-minute interventions by the then Federal Labor Government offering hundreds of millions of dollars to the industry to force a politically acceptable ‘agreement’. Within a year, a new State Liberal Government had overturned it.

It isn’t hard to see why such a ‘talk-fest’ is attractive to a government intent on forest policy reform. It shifts the pressure make a decision onto the main protagonists, and while it may be harder to control the outcome, there is always hope that the industry may unexpectedly agree to its own partial or full demise. However, as was found in Tasmania, the downside is that such a mechanism effectively outsources democracy to just two self-interested and polarised stakeholders and thereby denies a voice to the full range of other community stakeholders who use forests; as well as ignoring the input of the scientists and practitioners who actually manage the forests.

In so doing, it elevates the arms-length observations, romantic notions, conspiracy theories, and skewed opinions of environmental activists far above what they deserve.  This creates an inherently unequal negotiation between one side with nothing material to give and nothing to lose (the environmentalists) against another that has a material stake in the outcome and can really only lose (the industry). All that the industry can gain from agreeing to a compromise is a hopeful promise from its opponents to desist from future protest – a hugely optimistic expectation given the Tasmanian experience where four groups, as well as Greens luminaries Bob Brown and Christine Milne, had vowed to keep protesting even if an agreement was reached.

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Understandably, environmental activists like this approach and a recent online statement by the ACF’s FIT delegate suggests it may have been instigated by the Andrews Government at their behest:

We tried this approach to protect Tassie's forests and it worked – until it was derailed by political self-interest. We all learnt invaluable lessons. We’re trying again in Victoria and it seems to be working.

While the dire and complex situation facing Tasmanian forestry in 2010 in the wake of the global financial crisis may have warranted trying such an approach, the situation in Victoria in 2015 was vastly different. Unlike Tasmania, the Victorian industry had already endured cut-backs and rationalisation over the past 15-years and was in a relatively stable place, not withstanding pulpwood market challenges in East Gippsland.

Accordingly, it seems that Victoria’s FIT process has arisen purely because of incessant environmental campaigning to ‘save’ a possum, despite an ongoing process instigated by the previous Liberal Government showing that the possum is actually in pretty good shape. A new survey methodology initiated as part of that process has discovered 218 new possum colonies in just the past 20-months – a rate of detection that dwarfs the former average of just 20 new colonies detected annually over the previous 30-years. Further to this, the use of other active conservation management strategies is proving that there is no need to declare a huge new park to successfully conserve the possum.

That the Victorian Government has continued on with the FIT despite a paucity of significant forest or industry problems has raised concerns that it is intent on declaring new national park/s simply to appease its ideological base. This was exacerbated in June when the Government appointed Melbourne University’s first Professor of Environmentalism, Don Henry, to chair the Taskforce.

Perceptions are everything, and it has not gone unnoticed that Henry has been one of nation’s foremost environmental activists who led the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) from 1998 to 2014. For at least the first decade of his tenure, the ACF had a forests policy which: 1) advocated that:

all remaining native forests and woodlands in Australia be preserved”; that 2) “opposes the logging of native forests and woodlands in Australia, believing that our society is currently incapable of harvesting wood ... in a manner which respects and maintains ecosystems processes”; and 3) called for the “cessation of logging within three years in natural regrowth areas

It is unclear from the ACF website whether or not this policy still applies, but it is notable that the ACF supports the creation of the Great Forests National Park and expects to get it. In a September 2016 statement on its website entitled:

The Great Forest National Park is one step closer’, the ACF’s FIT delegate lauds the progress being made: “Everyone in the taskforce has agreed on the need to create new national parks and reserves, .... We've agreed that the forestry industry needs a secure wood and fibre supply ... and if people’s jobs change they will receive help to make sure it is an orderly and just transition. ... But standing in our way is the fact that logging companies are still clear-felling the tall wet forests ... largely to make Reflex office paper, when plantation and recycled fibre are a perfect alternative. Until we secure further forest protection, flashpoints such as continued logging could easily derail our progress to date

Not withstanding this delegate’s refusal to accept the harsh reality about an ‘easy’ industry transition to plantations, this pronouncement doesn’t give much hope of a meaningful compromise which allows ongoing timber production. Its only concession seems to be that workers should be helped when the industry closes.

In September, the FIT released a ‘Statement of Intent’ which in-part noted that:

the taskforce agreed that the current ‘business-as-usual’ response to the many complex issues facing Victoria’s forests was insufficient. Wood and fibre supply was uncertain, fragile ecosystems were diminishing, and the effects of climate change and natural disasters increased uncertainty”.  Furthermore, the Statement included controversial comments, such as:  “... the Core Group agrees that new parks and conservation reserves, including national parks, are an agreed essential component of Victoria’s conservation future.

This has further heightened concern about where the FIT is headed. It is incredible that a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario whereby 93% of forests are not harvested for timber could be regarded as ‘insufficient’ to allay ecological concerns. In response, the Victorian Association of Forest Industries’taskforce delegate was moved to reassure the forestry sector:

I can assure you that neither myself, nor any industry member of theTaskforce have agreed to the creation of new national parks and reserves at the expense of industry.

This suggests that the FIT may have reached something of an impasse with the industry digging-in and refusing to voluntarily reduce its legislated access to the wood resource. Presumably in anticipation of such an outcome, the Government had already directed its Victorian Environment Assessment Council (VEAC) to conduct a Statewide Assessment of Public Land which released its Draft Proposals Paper last month.  This contained several contentious draft recommendations that seemed to be squarely aimed at creating more national parks.

In mid-October, with the ink barely dry on these draft proposals and mid-way through their public consultation phase, the Government suddenly adopted one of the draft proposals in announcing that it had directed VEAC to undertake a new investigation into the conservation values of State forests. This represents a disturbing subversion of due process seemingly to further a political agenda. Interestingly, the notice of this new investigation sits on the VEAC website alongside a photograph of a Leadbeater’s Possum.

VEAC’s new investigation of State forest values has been conveniently directed to report alongside the completion of the FIT process during February 2017. It is not too hard to imagine where this is headed – if the FIT process doesn’t lead to new national parks, then surely the VEAC process will. Indeed VEAC have never conducted a public land assessment that didn’t result in new parks or reserves.

VEAC lost considerable credibility over its River Red Gum Forests Investigation from 2005-08. It is clearly unable to fully investigate issues objectively from first-principles, but is directed by its political master to fashion ‘investigations’ to create outcomes which provide an aura of academic support for pre-ordained policy directions. This was evident from its determination to dismiss local concerns, including those of three Shire Councils who were part of consortium of 25 community groups which expended voluntary and paid effort valued at $0.5 million in suggesting alternative ways forward and community-acceptable compromises which VEAC simply ignored without explanation.

It seems that the Victorian Government is determined to declare unwanted and unwarranted new national parks although questions remain about where and to what extent they will hit the social and economic bottom line of Victoria’s rural and regional communities.

Lately there has been much hand-wringing amongst the intelligensia as to why so many voters could become sufficiently disillusioned with conventional politics that they could rush to support maverick candidates such as Hanson in Australia and Trump in the US. Those who profess to be bewildered by this phenomenum should visit regional and rural communities rendered powerless by the determination of urban-centric Governments to ignore sensible local concerns to prosecute a political ideology which largely conflates environmental awareness with myths and half-truths promulgated mainly by arms-length activists with limited in-depth understanding of the issues.

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About the Author

Mark Poynter is a professional forester with 40 years experience. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and his book Going Green: Forests, fire, and a flawed conservation culture, was published by Connor Court in July 2018.

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