Baillieu’s bitter swill

The government’s announcement that it will spend $1.8M to survey for endangered wildlife in Eastern Victoria is like throwing a teaspoon of sugar into a cauldron of bitter swill.

Environment East Gippsland says that this shines the spotlight on the environmental hypocrisy of the Baillieu government.

“The government might be offering $1.8M to look for endangered wildlife but it continues to prop up the logging of its forested habitat to the tune of over $50M a year”. (see VicForests’ Annual Report) said Jill Redwood from Environment East Gippsland.

“Mr Baillieu is going to send biologists out to look for endangered wildlife, while at the same time he is weakening the current environmental laws so that critical habitat can be legally clearfell logged”.

“Recently, most of the Special Protection Zones that had been in place since the 1990s were handed to the logging industry”, said Jill Redwood. “These now de-listed Protection Zones were to preserve the known habitat of the same rare animals they will be looking for. They are in fact being clearfelled right now without any wildlife surveys having been carried out in them”.

“This Baillieu/National Party government is shameless about its plans to gut the environment and the laws that have protected it. Everyone in this state should be outraged”.

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