Australia’s largest manufacturing and construction union has slammed the Tasmanian premier for playing ‘wedge’ politics over native forestry.
It is now criticising the Tasmanian Premier for “dishing up a political election strategy that serves nobody but the Liberal Party, Bob Brown, and the Greens.”
The CFMEU Manufacturing National Secretary, Mr Michael O’Connor, said Premier Jeremy Rockliff’s ‘Wood Bank’ plan is a “reckless approach that risks thousands of Tasmanian timber workers.”
“Timber workers, their families and communities will see this announcement for what it is: An irresponsible gambit which risks their livelihoods,” Mr O’Connor said.
Yesterday, Premier Rockliff pledged to open up a 40,000-hectare logging zone for commercial forestry, which would “provide a 10 per cent boost in the annual supply of high-quality sawlog to Tasmanian saw millers.”
Premier Rockliff said the government was the “strongest supporter of Tasmania’s high-value native forestry industry” and was “backing in Tasmanian sawmillers, contractors, and local jobs”.
The 40,000 hectares are part of a highly contested 356,000 hectares area protected by the 2012 industry-conservation group “peace deal” or Tasmanian Forest Agreement – which the previous Labor Government enshrined into legislation.
In 2014, the incumbent Liberal government ended this agreement and instead designated the area “Future Potential Production Forest” or FPPF.
However, the decision to double down on native forestry has sparked campaigns against Tasmania’s timber industry, with conservation groups vowing to coordinate a level of protest not seen for over a decade.
This includes Leonardo DiCaprio, a director of WWF USA and Greencross International, who yesterday reiterated his call to his 62 million-plus social media for the Albanese Government to end logging in Tasmanian native forests.
Under the plan, which the incumbent Liberal Government will take to the March 23 poll, Premier Rockliff will reject a push by the industry to give 85% of the FPPF to traditional owners “because it takes the sting out of expanding logging areas.”
That proposal, backed by former Forestry Australia President Bob Gordon, could address a shortage of specialty timbers and involve Aboriginal people in land management.
This rejection has led the Tasmanian Forest Products Association, the state body representing the forestry industry, to communicate its disappointment, with the State Government using the industry as a political football for electoral means.
“While the industry is advocating an approach which provides both resource and market security, the Liberals are trying to inflame tensions to paper over their disunity and ten years of incompetence and mismanagement,” Mr O’Connor said.
Wood Central reports that the Tasmanian Opposition is divided over native forestry, with factions of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) wedging the Albanese Government and QLD, NSW, Victoria, SA and WA State Governments over the issue.
