Editorial:
Crucial time for forests

We have now arrived at a crucial historical point in the protection of 
our native forests. As such it is important to grasp the real underlying 
causes of the threat posed to the environment i.e. the economic rationalist 
policies which determine all the strategies and decisions of the Howard 
Government.

The Government's Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) Bill provides for the 
scrapping of export controls on old growth and native forest timber and the 
lifting of Commonwealth statutory environmental and heritage obligations.

This push to remove the few remaining restraints on logging companies is 
also reflected in the Government's Environment Protection and Biodiversity 
Conservation legislation which exempts forestry from federal environmental 
laws.

The RFAs Bill — RFAs are entered into between the Commonwealth and States 
and Territories — in every way looks after the interests of big business.

For example, the RFAs Bill makes the Commonwealth liable for compensating 
logging and mining companies if the Bill protects the environment in a 
designated RFA area where they want to log or mine. In other words, the 
Howard Government is subsidising the loggers and mining companies.

In some instances timber workers are pointing the finger at 
environmentalists, and in fact anyone who states their opposition to the 
logging of native forests, saying that they are the cause of job losses and 
threats to jobs in the industry.

In Western Australia in particular timber workers, egged on by their union, 
the Australian Workers' Union, have attacked conservationists for their 
stand against the unrestrained activities of the logging companies.

This is a mistaken approach. It perpetuates the company-generated myth that 
the environmental movement destroys jobs and plays into the hands of the 
companies.

When have the logging companies ever had the interests of workers at heart? 
The companies are using the jobs threat as a front to protect their 
profits. They are the cause of the long history of job cuts and growing 
unemployment in the industry.

There are many ghost towns dotting the Australian bushland that are 
testament to the communities abandoned by logging companies when they had 
finished taking all the trees. Between 1965 and 1985 wood production 
increased by 40 per cent while jobs in the industry were cut by 40 per 
cent.

Blaming those who oppose logging for job losses is like blaming 
environmentalists for the decline in whale numbers because of their 
opposition to whaling.

Long term jobs for timber workers will not be created by the destruction of 
Australia's old growth and native forests. The timber companies should have 
invested — or been made to invest — in the development of forest 
plantations at least 15 years ago. There should also have been the 
necessary infrastructure put in place for the manufacture of timber 
products here in Australia. Instead, thousands of tonnes of woodchips are 
exported to Japan each year.

Because of this failure to invest and plan for the future the logging 
companies now want the unfettered right to cut down the remaining forests. 
These forests will never rejuvenate to their former state. In the process 
threatened species and the system's unique biodiversity will disappear 
forever.

There is also the new technology: bulldozers and heavy equipment and new 
sawmilling methods have increased the speed at which trees are cut, 
transported and processed.

The priority must be the cessation of all logging in old growth forests 
now. Timber workers and their unions should turn the heat of their anger on 
the Howard Government and the logging companies, the real causes of 
unemployment. 

Like tens of thousands of their fellow workers, timber workers are now 
faced with the consequences of policies which result in job losses in one 
industry after the other.