ALP still paralyzed over forests

The Greens Gippsland East Candidate, Jill Redwood has said today’s forest policy announcement by the ALP is business as usual dressed in drag.

“It’s nothing to be overjoyed about. Announcing a meeting process, that won’t meet until after the election is very underwhelming. We’d much prefer to hear a firm date as to when the inevitable transition into plantations will occur”, said Jill Redwood. “A firm industry plan with exit packages is what is needed. The Greens and the majority of the public have been opposed to the destruction of public forests through industrial scale logging for decades.”

“There’s nothing new in this announcement at all. We don’t need another committee; we don’t need another VicForests look‐alike commercial logging monopoly; we don’t need a government entity that is constantly in conflict with itself – profit vs environment.”

“What we urgently need is a different culture within the government and its forester dominated environment department. It took four years to see the Labor government’s 2006 promises acted upon and even that was 70% spin.

“The Greens are pleased to see the government commit to carrying out threatened species surveys before they plan to clearfell native forests, but this was forced on them by the recent Supreme Court case. It remains to be seen if this will happen in all forests and across all seasons. Proper and credible assessments would require this”, said Ms Redwood.

Samantha Dunn, Greens candidate for Eastern Victoria said it’s virtually business as usual."We will still see our forests logged while these talks go on, loosing precious carbon stores and biodiversity, this announcement today fails to meet expectations that logging of our high conservation forests will cease.”

“The Greens in parliament will keep working until old growth forests, high conservation value forests and town water catchments are given protection, and then work to shift the dwindling native forest logging industry into the security of the plantation sector.

For comment: Jill Redwood 5154 1045 / Samantha Dunn 0429 292 904 or samantha.dunn@vic.greens.org.au