A lawyer for an environmental group has said that permitting employees of Sustainable Timber Tasmania to simultaneously work as forest practices officers for the regulator was akin to letting lawyers "move from the bar table up to the bench" to rule on the cases they were arguing.
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In an appeal to the Full Bench of the Supreme Court in Hobart on Tuesday, counsel for Blue Derby Wild, Emrys Nekvapil SC said there were a number of "logical errors" in last year's decision by Supreme Court Justice Robert Pearce, who dismissed the activist group's application seeking a halt to logging around the Derby Mountain Bike trails.
Sustainable Timber Tasmania employees Peter Johnstone and Jarrod Burn simultaneously worked as forest practice officers for the Forest Practices Authority - the regulator of the timber industry.
Last year, both Mr Johnstone and Mr Burn, in their roles of forest practices officers, certified plans for logging of two coupes in the Derby area.
Mr Nekvapil said the purposes of the FPA as a regulator would not be improved if legislation was seen to be allowing the regulator to "certify its own economic interests."
"On the contrary ... and this is really the crux of our case, the efficacy of the Act would be improved by these dictates of parliament being carried out by a disinterested regulator," he said.
Mr Nekvapil said that there had never been any chance that Mr Johnstone and Mr Burn would not certify their own plans.
"They prepared the plan for approval, then they approved it, and we say the reality is they did one task, not two," he said.
"By the time they had satisfied themselves that the plan complied and their boss signed off on it, they were never going to change their mind about it, just because they had put a different hat on, and not certify it."
Counsel for the Forest Practices Authority, Paul Turner SC, said the arguments did not paint a realistic portrayal of what Mr Johnstone and Mr Burn were doing.
"What is the point of preparing a plan that is not likely to be certified? The whole point of the exercise it to get it certified," he said.
Blue Derby Wild activist and lead plaintiff, Louise Morris, said the case was about more than just protecting the forests around the Blue Derby Mountain Bike Trails.
"It is about how the Tasmanian native forest logging sector have been regulating themselves for decades," she said.
The court reserved its decision to a later date.
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