Less than a week from Tasmania’s state election, thousands of people have marched in Hobart in protest against the logging of native forests, with veteran wilderness campaigner Bob Brown saying “our job is to get rid of the Earth destroyers”.
Parts of the CBD were closed to traffic on Sunday morning because of the large crowd, which marched down Murray Street to the lawns of parliament, demanding an end to the practice.
The ‘March For Forests’ rally, organised by the Bob Brown Foundation, called on the major parties to follow the lead of Western Australia and Victoria – the only two states to end to end the logging of native forests.
Anti-logging campaigner and former federal Greens leader Brown said the protest was the “biggest pre-election crowd” that he had ever seen.
“We expected 500 and got more than 3,000. There is a huge move to get rid of the logging old parties. The swing away from Liberal and Labor will only grow in the coming week,” he said.
“We are Earth, and Earth is us. Our job is to get rid of the Earth destroyers.”
Liberals pledge to ‘unlock’ native forests for timber production
Neither the Liberals nor Labor are on-board with the push to halt timber harvesting for Tasmania’s native forests.
In their policy announced in February, the Tasmanian Liberals said a “re-elected majority Rockliff Liberal government” would “unlock Tasmania’s native forestry ‘wood bank’, providing an up to 10 per cent boost in the annual supply of high-quality sawlog to Tasmanian sawmillers”.
“The Liberals are the strongest supporters of Tasmania’s high-value native forestry industry, backing in Tasmanian sawmillers, contractors, and local jobs,” Liberal Leader Jeremy Rockliff said.
The Tasmanian Liberals said if returned to government they would “make available up to 40,000 hectares” of the native forest “wood bank” and “make available an additional wood basket of up to 158,000 cubic metres of high-quality sawlog to Tasmanian industry”.
In addition to their forest policy, the Tasmanian Liberals, while in government, enacted what have been described as “anti-protest” laws, which in February resulted in 19 Tasmanians receiving indefinite bans from entering any of the state’s public native forestry estate — an area covering 812,000 hectares — after they protested logging activity.
Labor has promised, if elected after the March 23 poll, to launch an independent review into the state’s native and plantation forests available for logging.
It will also stop the current plantation sawlog expression of interest process being conducted by Sustainable Timber Tasmania.
Major parties in ‘race to the bottom’, activist says
Campaign manager for the Wildness Society Alice Hardinge, who spoke at this morning’s rally, described the policies of the two major parties as a “race to the bottom when it comes to environmental politics”.
“What we’re actually seeing in the Liberal government is an increase in native forest logging. Last year alone over 7,000 hectares of native forests were logged in lutruwita/Tasmania,” she said.
“I think the crowd here today shows that the vast majority of people do have a real passion for environmental issues.”
The Tasmanian Greens say if elected they would end native forest logging, commence a transition program for forestry workers to exit the industry, and formally set aside a reserve of 356,000 hectares of forest.
Greens leader Rosalie Woodruff told protesters that “change is possible”.
“The Greens message to you and Tasmania this election is we don’t need to continue the destruction,” she said.
“It is a crime of nature and the Greens will be standing parliament as we always have to make sure we do everything possible to fight it.”
No change in course, Rockliff says
Earlier today, Mr Rockliff told the media his party would not reconsider its policy on native logging.
“We’ve got our position very clear; we back the industry, we back rural and regional jobs,” he said.
“None of my candidates are signing a green front group pledge which is essentially signing away jobs in rural and regional Tasmania.
“It’s an anti-job pledge.”
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