Old conflicts are being reignited as the state government heads to Parliament with a bill aimed at unlocking some of Tasmania’s protected forests.
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Resources Minister Guy Barnett announced the Forestry (Unlocking Production Forests) Bill on Thursday, saying he was prepared to “fight tooth and nail, including in the trenches” to get the legislation through the first session of Parliament.
If approved, it would allow the logging of 356,000 hectares of forests that were locked as part of the peace deal. However, Forestry Tasmania would not harvest those contentious areas.
Instead, the government would lease them out to private companies in a bid to protect Forestry Tasmania’s pursuit of Forest Stewardship Council certification.
Labor and the Greens immediately criticised the proposed legislation.
Opposition resources spokesman David Llewellyn said the bill showed the Liberals were breaking a promise to supply Forestry Tasmania with more wood, and weren’t saying how much of the land would actually be available for harvesting.
Greens’ leader Cassy O'Connor said the proposal would open up areas to logging that were not production forests. “They are High Conservation Value forests that were set aside for protection because of their environmental significance under the forest agreement.”
Wilderness Society spokesman Vica Bayley said questions also remained around how the bill would impact Forestry Tasmania’s bid for FSC certification.
“FSC has a policy of association, whereby if a company or land manager is doing FSC-compliant logging on the one hand, but non-FSC-compliant logging on the other, they can’t get certified for the FSC-compliant logging because their credibility gets undermined by the non-FSC-compliant element. A successful policy of association complaint could see Forestry Tasmania stripped of its FSC certification, should it be successful.”
But Mr Barnett said he was confident it would not impact FSC certification because Forestry Tasmania would not manage the land or harvest the trees.