Tasmania is famous for its beauty, its natural resources, and Bob Brown, the state’s long-time champion of environmental activism. But decades later, what are the impacts of the multi-million-dollar corporation that bears his name?
As salmon farming attracts the attention of federal politicians, the media, and the public during this election cycle, I would like to reflect on the many environmental causes used as bargaining chips in our home states.
Bob Brown began his crusade in the late 1970s by lobbying against Hydro Tasmania. He used a Labor prime minister’s re-election campaign to shut down further hydro development in Tasmania.
This was unnecessary as history shows us that if we had continued to develop hydropower in a balanced way, Tasmania would be a battery to the nation, and all Tasmanians would be better off.
Ironically, at this same time, Bob Brown was lobbying hard against hydropower; he advocated for the development of coal-powered power stations in the Fingal Valley to replace it!
As a business owner for over 50 years, I am no stranger to the need to evolve and adapt to survive.
I had a front-row seat watching Bob Brown pick and choose what environmental causes would gain the most attention, sometimes warranted and sometimes without consideration of the flow-on effect, resulting in other environmental issues.
The forest industry of 2025 is so far removed from 1985.
Admittedly, like most Commonwealth countries, our forest industry had practices in the 1980s that needed to change.
Bob Brown’s persistence forced the forest industry to take a hard look at itself and change its way of doing things, and rightly so.
Today, more than 50% of Tasmania is part of the formal reserve estate, and old-growth forests are protected.
However, what is criminal is that in this climate emergency, protestors and their supporters still want and use all the products we sustainably use from our renewable forests. But instead of producing them from our backyard, they are so entitled and privileged that they think nothing of offshoring it to neighbouring countries that do not have such stringent environmental laws and then think nothing of the additional carbon emissions from shipping the products to Australia.
From my perspective, Bob Brown has, either by accident, ignorance, or design, used people’s limited understanding of managed forests, promoting Trump-esque rhetoric that preys on conflict rather than collaboration. A visit to the Bob Brown Foundation website highlights misinformation, including fake and photoshopped images, meant to play on emotions to drive donations. Go and look at the World Wildlife Foundation fact sheet.
Deforestation in Australia is due to agriculture, mining, and infrastructure. Forestry is deforestation-free in Australia, which is now home to the world’s second-largest reforestation rate.
However, protesters today have used politicians, departments, and people to prey on their lack of knowledge and guilt.
Our cities are being flooded with misinformation.
What concerns me most is the lack of understanding of all of the changes, innovations, and investments made by Tasmanian-owned forestry companies, farmers, and the industry in the long-term, sustainable future of the Tasmanian forest industry.
Instead, all the protests have achieved is shipping out of jobs and value-added processes out of the state and creating a reliance on importing the same products from overseas, which is not beneficial for our future generations.
In a world impacted by climate change, we need to stop the steady flow of misinformation from destroying our state’s future and mentally destroying the good people this remarkable industry employs. Some of our forests should never be harvested, but there are designated working forests that produce the products we all use every day.
I want a future where people understand that managing and growing designated working forests is required to produce our only truly renewable building resource – which can continuously store carbon.
While managing and utilising this sustainable renewable resource, we are helping our wildlife survive and protecting our forests from wildfires.
We should do much more downstream processing, create more jobs, earn more export dollars, and have a more balanced economy to make us more self-sufficient and independent.
We must have balance and need to work together. As the pandemic showed us, our economy cannot rely heavily on overseas countries.
Background
From pioneering the installation of on-vehicle weighing systems in Australia in 1976 to continuing to revolutionise the forest log transport industry with innovative design and technology, Elphinstone Engineering is a passionate supporter of the sustainable forest industry.
Elphinstone Engineering employs 54 people and has been in operation for 50 years. It manufactures weighing systems for all transport and industrial weighing, log haulage trailers, a range of power pole trailers, Antarctic transport sleds, and other components.
As a creator of primary jobs here in Australia, many Elphinstone Engineering products are also exported to other countries; Elphinstone Engineering is a local business whose taxes contribute to funding the ongoing services for our communities.
Please note: Wood Central does not take an editorial stance on the Australian forest debate. It will, however, from time to time publish content that it believes is in the public interest, which it will fact-check before posting. Wood Central is a broad church and welcomes contributions from stakeholders that are for and against native forestry.
