AXING THE PUBLIC INTEREST ; WHY THE REGIONAL FOREST AGREEMENTS BILL
SHOULD BE OPPOSED
Senator Bob Brown
Australian Greens, February 1999
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It is really the demands of the overseas pulp and paper companies that are ruling the show. Yes, I
know you do not like to hear this, but we have got to call a spade a spade, and I do not think this
committee should be giving precedence to the profit margins of overseas pulp and paper
companies at the expense of the Australian environment. It is a deceptive gain. There is clearly
some collusion between the woodchip industry and the government, and I just wonder why we
keep rolling out the red carpet and licking the Asian pulp and paper companies in order to do this.
This whole RFA process is really a devil in a dinner suit, and I think people who are actually
looking at this and are going to make the decision to continue this RFA bill—it is just corrupt. It
just has to be swindlers and mercenaries; that's all I can say. It is a sham. It has got to be
slammed through quick smart. You wonder why that is happening as well. And when you look at
who fills the coffers of the political parties who are really making these decisions, well, you have
to wonder also what other secret deals and incestuous links there are. (Evidence, Jill Redwood,
prize-winning environmentalist)
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This Bill and the Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) which it understraps are based on eight
demonstrably wrong assertions. These are –
- RFAs will create jobs
- RFAs will bring peace in our time to the forests
- RFAs usher in ecologically sustainable logging
- RFAs mean security for conservation
- RFAs serve Aboriginal interests
- RFAs are visionary
- RFAs have no prudent or feasible alternative
- RFAs are in the public interest
1. Jobs have been lost where RFAs have been implemented
Evidence to the Committee showed Australia's volume of wood production (including from plantations)
increasing over the last decade, while thousands of jobs have been lost.
Since Prime Minister Howard signed the Tasmanian RFA in November 1997, at least 240 industry
workers have lost their jobs. The Burnie pulp mill was closed and AMCOR, instead of using Tasmanian
woodchips, has begun importing its wood fibre from Indonesia. The ships bringing in Indonesian
woodchip pulp berth alongside the ships exporting Tasmanian native forest woodchips and plantation
logs (that is, jobs) to Japan.
Millions of tonnes of sawlog-quality wood which are needed to assure downstream processing for
Australia's future in job-rich industries such as furniture-making, boat-building , housing and crafts, have
been exported, and continue to be exported, as woodchips.
Australia's largest woodchip installation, North's mill at Hampshire south of Burnie, employs 10 operators
to supervise its computers. Against the wishes of Burnie City Council, North (the biggest woodchipping
multinational in the southern hemisphere) is installing a third woodchip mountain on the Burnie docks. The
second mountain is fine rainforest woodchips -- an export sanctioned by the RFA but which Australia
had banned until this decade.
…there are some people making some very large and lucrative profits out of the
woodchip industry. Whilst the RFA has been negotiated in Tasmania, it was a sawmill
driven industry with woodchips as a residue by-product. It is not longer the case.
Tasmania is now a woodchip driven industry with some sawlog as a by-product.
(Evidence, Mike Grey, CFMEU).
In Western Australia, jarrah is being exported as woodchips to Saudi Arabia for use as charcoal in a
silicone smelter. In the case of the marri forest, arguably the most beautiful timber, out of 457 000 cubic
metres 99 percent ended up as woodchips, 0.4 percent structural timber and 0.04 percent value-added
sawntimber (Evidence, Peter Robertson, WA Forest Alliance).
The RFAs have ignored plantations and focused almost exclusively on the job-shedding native forest
industry, 60% of which is turned into woodchips for export.
The RFAs make no requirement of anyone to create downstream processing or jobs in Australia.
2. Far from peace in the forests, the RFAs have been followed by demonstrations and bitter
opposition
Business consultant, Mr Chris Tipler, representing the Otway Ranges Environment Network in Victoria,
was asked whether the Regional Forest Agreements will produce peace in our forests in our time. He
replied --
I can respond in relation to the Otways. All I can say, based on very direct experience is
that, if a RFA is put in place in the western region which resembles the sorts of RFAs
that we have now in other areas, then you will simply see open war.
This sentiment was echoed by every environmental group before the Committee. Forest protests are
occurring in all states where RFAs have been implemented or are being drawn up. Hundreds of citizens
have been arrested. The RFAs are giving rise to bitter ongoing community hostility because they
implement the logging companies' wishes, against the popular Australian aspiration to protect natural
forests. All opinion polls show that a majority of Australians oppose woodchipping of the nation's
remaining wild forests. The most recent polls in Western Australia show this majority increasing.
That the Committee, having advertised its inquiry just three days before Christmas with a closing date of
22 January 1999, nevertheless received 371 submissions, overwhelmingly opposed to the Bill, is further
evidence of the strength of community frustration and anger.
Even on its own terms, the Bill fails to deliver the `certainty' sought by industry. Legal advice to the
Committee failed to rule out the real potential for challenges from logging, mining or environmental
interests on the grounds that the Bill breaches section 99 of the Constitution by giving a preference to
corporations trading in one state over another (Evidence, Mr Corr, Mr Brazil; written advice from the
Australian Government Solicitor dated 12 February and 24 February 1999).
Instead of solving Australia's long-running dispute over the wild forests, the RFAs will compound and
prolong it.
3. Far from ecologically sustainable forestry, RFAs allow for unreasonably destructive logging
practices
Against graphically contrary evidence, no industry witness was able to show the committee that RFA
logging is ecologically sustainable. With a single exception, no industry witness, including Tasmania's
Deputy Premier Paul Lennon, could define either a 'natural forest ecosystem' or the word 'sustainable'.
Yet ecological sustainability is a basic claim made by the Prime Minister, Premiers and woodchip industry
advocates for the RFAs. Evidence to the committee shows these claims to be fraudulent.
Photographic evidence showed Tasmanian forests, which should otherwise be nominated and protected
for their World Heritage values, being cut down, burnt by aerial incendiaries leaving no living leaf or limb,
and then baited with 1080 poison to kill stray marsupials from adjacent remainder forests.
Those who claim these processes to be ecologically sustainable are deliberately co-opting language to
deceive the public. This Committee ought not be emulating that deception.
4. RFAs have not given security for conservation
The evidence before this Committee demonstrated clear failure of the Commonwealth to protect even the
forests the Prime Minister assured Australians would be safe when he signed the several RFAs so far
agreed.
In Tasmania, the National Forest Policy targets for protecting very tall forests and rare forests were not
met by the RFAs. Tens of thousands of hectares of old growth forest are being cleared for plantations,
also contrary to the National Forest Policy Statement and to any notion of `sustainability'.
In Victoria's East Gippsland, Central Highlands and Otway Ranges, logging is proceeding at rates far in
excess of the 'sustainable yield' legislated by the Victorian government and inferred by the RFA
(Evidence, Otway Ranges Environment Network). In the Central Highlands, the RFA has been signed,
logging is proceeding apace, but the mapping of myrtle beech and southern sassafras forests, mixed with
eucalypts (cool temperate mixed forest) will not be done before the year 2000 – the whole ecosystem is
missing from the reserve system (Evidence, Alan McMahon).
The WA Environment Protection Authority has catalogued how the Department of Conservation and
Land Management is breaching or failing to comply with a whole series of ministerial conditions set under
the Environment Protection Act. Jarrah is being over-logged by 100 percent (Evidence, Peter
Robertson).
In both East Gippsland and Tasmania thousands of hectares of forests designated as protected have
either been logged or transferred from fully protected status to logging or mining zones.
Extensive parts of the Heritage River protected area along the Goolengook River (East Gippsland) were
logged after Mr Howard signed the RFA in February 1997. The Supreme Court of Victoria found the
action unlawful. The Kennett Government legislated to remove, retrospectively, the logged area and
further parts of these protected Goolengook forests from protection so that they can be logged.
Hundreds of hectares of high conservation value forests in the Great Western Tiers of Tasmania have,
since the Prime Minister signed the RFA, been re-allocated to woodchipping.
The Committee was not afforded any evidence that the Prime Minister or other Commonwealth Ministers
were consulted about the states' reallocation of forests from conservation to logging, let alone evidence
that there was any opposition from Canberra.
On the other hand, in no case has an area set aside for logging been reassigned for protection. There is,
of course, no mechanism in this legislation to compensate for the loss of environmental amenity. Nor is
there any substantial assurance that this process of infringement of RFAs against the conservation interest
will not continue: there is no limit to it.
5. RFAs are short-sighted
The RFAs foreclose on the future. Worldwide, there is great concern about the rapid erosion of the
planet's environmental amenity. In the 1990s thousands of eminent scientists and economists, including
scores of Nobel Laureates, have warned that strong government action is needed if life on Earth,
including the human experience, is to be assured. The preservation of remaining wild forests is a primary
concern.
In all Australia's RFA areas, this Bill over-rides or abolishes Commonwealth laws essential for the nation
to meet those concerns. At the behest of the woodchip corporations, it straitjackets the national
government's ability to protect forests in the public interest.
The Bill removes Commonwealth powers for the protection of forest environments, the listing of world
heritage forests and the protection of national estate forests for the next 20 years.
The Committee was given no assessment of opportunity lost, for either economic, employment or
environmental values, through logging of Australia's wild forests.
One example encompassing all of these factors is the global greenhouse effect. Australia has been heavily
criticised for its reticence to reduce greenhouse gas pollution in line with other nations.
An emerging ecological option in this global dilemma is trading in carbon credits. The Committee was
given timely warning that the perception that tree-planting is the best measure is wrong. The amount of
carbon stored in a forest is roughly proportional to the square of the average diameter of its trees. So old
growth forests are at a premium. In fact, the government's own figures show that less than one percent of
Australia's wood based carbon is in plantations, over 99 percent is in native forests. Yet despite an
estimated starting value of $20-$50 per tonne for forest carbon store, these forests are being sold to
woodchippers now for an average $13-$14 per tonne in Tasmania, and as little as nine cents per tonne in
East Gippsland.
Under the Bill the Commonwealth's action to preserve tall forests as an immensely valuable and tradeable
carbon-store commodity is hog-tied. Such action is likely and will involve billions of dollars penalty
through compensation to a handful of woodchip and logging corporations. Yet, those corporations have
not paid one red cent for the forests.
6. RFAs ignore Indigenous interests
Our interests have just been totally ignored. There will be no tangible outcomes to
our community, whether it is employment, social, economic or whatever—even
spiritual at this stage. We go to our land now and it is almost a mourning process.
You go to your land and you see the destruction which has occurred. Rather than it
being a cultural activity that you are going out to protect, to see, to do certain
cultural things, in fact you find yourself going up to the land to basically cry—that
is the truth of the matter—because of the destruction and the raping of the land
which is going on in Tasmania day by day. I hope this committee can somehow
take stock of what is going on behind the scenes at Kooparoona Niara. I think if
you really have the opportunity to get out to the land and see the destruction of the
land, you might have a clearer understanding. (Evidence, Darlene Mansell,
Deloraine Aboriginal Cultural Association. Ms Mansell was arrested in 1998 for
peacefully protesting against woodchipping of forests in Kooparoona Niara (the Great
Western Tiers)).
Indigenous people's submissions highlighted a lack of consultation with them.
Representatives from Western Australia and Tasmania criticised this legislation which ensures
compensation for logging interests if forests targeted for logging are to be protected in the future. They
expressed dismay that, on the other hand, there is no provision for compensation to Indigenous people,
let alone the right to intercede against forest mismanagement. The Commonwealth is abandoning its duty
to protect Indigenous interests.
The RFAs, in essence, give the land rights to the woodchippers.
7. The RFAs have prudent and feasible alternatives
The committee was shown that Australia has sufficient plantations to provide all of its wood needs for
domestic processing, including woodchips.
Plantations, together with recycling, already account for 75% of wood and fibre input to the Australian
wood products industry. In other words, our wood and wood products industry is not a native forest
based industry any more; it is a plantation industry.
Remarkably, plantations were all but ignored by the RFA process – not one Western Australian RFA
option presented for community consultation included the plantation resource; the Eden (NSW) options
presented for public consultation ignored the softwood plantation estate. In Tasmania the entire softwood
plantation sawntimber industry was omitted from the RFA options presented to the public – that includes
Tasmania's two largest sawmills! (Evidence, Ms Judith Clark, ANU).
The Ministers responsible for the legislation should have prepared an environmental impact statement
listing all prudent and feasible alternatives. They failed to do so. This omission is negligent if not illegal
(Evidence, Ms Liz Ingham).
8. The Bill is against the public interest
Evidence to the Committee from both sides revealed a compensatory bias to the loggers which is directly
contrary to the Australian public interest.
The Commonwealth will be obliged to pay compensation to logging and mining corporations for any
forests protected in future and the states will be required by law to undertake the legal action on behalf of
the corporations to obtain that compensation.
There is no compensation provision for tourist operators or other small business interests, for Indigenous
peoples, for local government or communities, for deleterious impacts on the quantity or quality of water
coming out of catchments, for neighbours (such as organic farmers affected by chemicals from adjacent
plantations) or for sawmill workers put out of a job by illegal downgrading of sawlogs to woodchips.
Furthermore, the Bill gives the nine as yet unfinished RFAs legal force, sight unseen. There is no
requirement that RFAs be made public although the Bill gives them the force of law. There is no
requirement that the States abide by their own laws; if they breach an RFA, as Tasmania and Victoria
have already done by failing to meet conservation commitments, the Commonwealth has no effective
sanction.
This Bill is so biased to industry, as against the wider public interest, it is hard to believe that the
woodchip and mining corporations have not had a major hand in devising it, against the public interest,
from the outset. (Political donations by woodchip companies in 1997/98 are listed in attachment 1.)
Recommendations
That an honest appraisal of both sides of the evidence before the Committee — not just the loggers'
self-interest – be made.
That the Prime Minister and his government accept responsibility for the nation's forest and wildlife
heritage, not shed it.
That the donations of the logging industry to the Coalition and Labor Party be treated as having influence.
That the Australian nation's clear desire to save its remnant wild forests from further destruction be
granted.
That the `prudent and feasible' alternative of a world class plantation-based industry be adopted.
That this Bill be opposed.
Senator Bob Brown
Australian Greens Senator for Tasmania
Thursday, 25 February 1999