Federal governments of all persuasions have historically protected and funded Australia’s forest destruction.

The 2023 Federal Budget offerings for environment and climate change

“If the budget ditched the Stage 3 tax cuts, Australia could save every threatened species – and lots more” “Scientists have estimated about $1.7bn a year is needed to fix Australia’s degraded ecosystems and wild places.” “We can’t settle for a slow jog when the climate crisis calls for a sprint. Climate change is already …

Continue reading

Give your vote more teeth!

The major parties would prefer voters did not know how the voting system works. It can be used to great effect rather than believing that a vote 1 for a smaller party or independent, is a ‘wasted vote’. That’s why it is never taught in schools or provided to the general public as other key …

Continue reading

RFAs need to be terminated

EEG has submitted comments to the farcically late 5 yearly review of RFA (26 Jan 2018). We say they must be terminated. The Regional Forest Agreements cost us $300 million dollars to pretend the forest battle had been solved by ‘balancing all values’. They have failed on almost every environmental promise, but for 20 years …

Continue reading

Greater gliders: fears of ‘catastrophic’ consequences from logging in Victoria

Gliders are listed as threatened by both state and federal governments, but they are not protected by legislation. Logging has begun of trees inhabited by the threatened greater gliders in a forest also inhabited by Victoria’s faunal emblem, the threatened Leadbeater’s possum. Protections for the remaining Leadbeater’s possum population – believed to be fewer than …

Continue reading

Malcolm Turnbull caves in to Tasmanian loggers

Last weekend, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull flew to Launceston for the Tasmanian Liberals’ yearly conference. Accompanied by Premier Will Hodgman, Turnbull’s first stop was the timber yard of logging company Neville-Smith Forest Products, once a part of the now-fallen Gunns logging empire. Twenty years after John Howard signed the first Regional Forest Agreement with Tasmania, …

Continue reading

Heyfield mill: Victorian Government signs agreement to buy Gippsland sawmill

The Victorian Government has struck a deal to keep open Australia’s largest hardwood sawmill, at Heyfield in Victoria’s east, but workers are warning up to 20 contractors could be out of work in weeks. The mill’s operator, Australian Sustainable Hardwoods (ASH), had been locked in a dispute with the Government and state-owned logging company VicForests …

Continue reading