On the 7th of February, the Sydney Morning Herald Environmental Reporter – Caitlin Fitzsimmons – ran a story that the Forestry Corporation of NSW (FCNSW) had altered figures in the State Forest Sustainability Report.
The Fitzsimmons article and comments by Hon. Sue Higginson MLC, from the NSW Greens, claim the figures show less timber was harvested than disclosed.
Two key points, however, were not reported, which reveals how much green ideology was at work in the story rather than fact.
The material referenced in the report was incorrectly copied from the wrong column…from a table that contained the correct figures and sent by FCNSW to the NSW Environmental Protection Agency—a simple mistake.
FCNSW’s Sustainability Report and Annual Report were never wrong.Â
However, Ms Fitzsimmons and Ms Higginson asserted otherwise, along with Dailan Pugh, referenced in the SMH article.
The question that needs to be answered is how the material sent to the NSW EPA found its way into the public domain without a check against the published FCNSW Report.
Why didn’t Ms Fiztsimmons, Ms Higginson, or Dailan Pugh see the problem with the so-called revised sustainability report figures and the figures in the FCNSW Annual Report, considering they all claim to have checked them?
The FCNSW Annual Report revealed no issues with the supply of timber, and the Notes to the Annual Report would have had to reveal such issues.Â
These are published audited accounts.
Instead, all the facts point to an ideology at work in the bureaucracy.
