Up until March 14th, the RFAs were merely an agreement, not legally binding documents. Labor and Liberals worked like best mates to railroad this legislation through in an early morning Canberra sitting. Its passage was met by a huge cheer from both parties. It successfully allows the Feds to wash their hands of any responsibility …
Will you still love me tomorrow? In the morning after the $300M Regional Forest Agreements party, Australia’s woodchippers answer with a resounding “no”. Never a generous suitor, the woodchipping industry has now all but deserted Australia’s political parties. The Forest Products Association (FPA) has even dumped Fred Nile! With twenty years of woodchipping safely in …
Judge Ross on the vigilante rioters of Goolengook In late February 2000, 50 loggers from Orbost and its regions attacked campers at the Goolengook forest protest. They assaulted nine people and did $30,000 of property damage in a terrifying midnight attack. Ten of the loggers, who were originally charged with the serious crime of Riot …
After the success of Japans scientific whaling, WAs scientific ringtail possum logging (see p.6) and Victorias scientific potoroo logging, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service is planning to drop poison baits in the Byadbo and Pilot Wilderness Areas in the Kosciuszko National Park to see if it kills the known Quoll colony there, while targeting …
Two out of three East Gippsland residents want an end to old growth logging.This was the sentiment expressed when an opinion poll was carried out in April after the Goolengook camp was raided and the forests logged. East Gippsland has traditionally been a very conservative region. Politicians have cultivated and pandered to this image for …
The Department of Natural Resources and Environment (NRE) set up a sham called the RFA Reference Groups. These groups were to help implement those bedraggled embarrassments concocted as Regional Forest Agreements. There were three community groups set up; in the Otways, East Gippsland and the Wombat forest. Jill Redwood (me) from EEG nominated for and …
Once upon a time, people thought that the logging industry was the big economic winner for a place called East Gippsland. Without it, the people were told, families would be starving in the gutters. The reality nowadays – at most, only 2.9% of the regions employment relies on logging.1 Those employed in the logging industry …
There are plans for a new 30 megawatt power station in the Latrobe Valley, to be fuelled by wood. International banking group Babcock and Brown and Californian-based National Power Australasia Incorporated are proposing the project which would need 280,000 tonnes of wood per year. They are offering 25 year contracts to suppliers. Their spokesman is …
Did you know that the Commonwealth Bank has a 17% share-holding in Gunns? Gunns is the largest woodchipper of hardwood forests in the world, destroying Tasmanias old growth at a rate of knots. So the Commonwealth Bank is effectively responsible for about one sixth of the export woodchipping, clearfelling, burning, poisoning and old growth logging …
In a six week frenzy of destruction, during March and April, four coupes totaling 90 hectares of Goolengooks best forest were clearfelled. It is estimated to have cost the police and NRE up to $2 million to carry out the operation. The royalty gained from the destruction of these timeless forests was a piddling $100,000. …
