Mood:
sadTopic: ecology
GUNNS chose "worst place possible" for controversial billion dollar pulp mill
by Winston S - Indymedia Tuesday January 09, 2007 at 04:19 AM
January 09, 2007 - Atrocious Location: Timber giant Gunns Ltd has chosen the "worst place possible" in Tasmania to build the highly controversial $1.4 billion pulp mill, which it hopes to have up and running by 2010.
Full story here based on diverse sources:
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/01/135825.php
A related press release from another Tasmanian battle front for forests:
Abetz Move to Make Illegal Logging Legal
8th Jan 07
The Howard government's Minster for Forests and Conservation, Eric
Abetz, is moving to deliberately send Australian wildlife to extinction,
Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.
"In the wake of the Federal Court ruling that logging in Tasmania's
Wielangta Forest is illegal because it threatened the rare Tasmanian
wedgetailed eagle, swift parrot and Wielangta stag beetle, Senator Abetz has flogged amendments to extract the teeth from Australia's wildlife protection laws.
"This must involve breaking international law (the Biodiversity
Convention 1992) as well as emasculating Australian law. At the start of an election year in which the environment will be centre stage, the minister's move will outrage voters right across Australia. He is saying that where government agencies break the nation's environment law, the government will change the law, not the agency. It is a case of the outlaws writing the law.
"The Greens will put up a huge fight to protect Australia's wildlife,
and to stop this corruption of proper process. Senator Abetz, as
minister for forest conservation, should be insisting Forestry Tasmania be prosecuted for breaking the law," Senator Brown said.
...........
The release above echoes a comment pre Christmas 06 by this writer here from legislative history in NSW early 1990's:
Wielangta decision fallout has the clear echo of the nsw dynamic in 1992 after application of the Endangered Fauna (Interim Protection) Act 1992 (NSW) ('EFIP')
(which itself was an evolution of the precedent case of Corkill's successful Chaelundi Case using the protected fauna provisions of the chief National Parks & Wildlife Act)
which as the EFIP name states was interim and was folded into the Threatened Species Act (NSW) proper eventually, but not before a cutely named Timber Industy (Interim Protection) Act NSW (1993?) (known as the TIIP Act) was passed to address both the successful blockade in compt 1402 in Coolangubra at Nalbaugh State Forest (with cathedral like brown barrels 400 years old, the biggest and best the SE had to offer) in January 1992 that I was part of using EFIP, and responding to alarm by the logger industry group Forest Products Association.
For instance Colin Dorber put out a release during the 1402 protest something like '6,000 jobs at risk from forest blockade victory'. We were thrilled. Never had 6 tree sitters achieved so much, we thought. But we had no idea the cascading effect for the next 3 years (starting no doubt with the Chaelundi case and of course alot earlier with 1000 plus arrests in the south east in the late 80's and 90's.
You may not read this history anywhere else either. But it's why the release for logging of the 1402 area in the Eden RFA was such a govt and industry calculated insult to the real independent forest conservation movement as opposed to blowins and paid off sellouts of so called green representation amongst the befuddled and the idiotic.
In other words the legislative protection in Chaelundi/NPWA Act then EFIP Act (read Wielangta and EPBC Act today) was repealed quickly which inspired rolling blockades 1992-1995 in nsw and led to the election of the Carr govt in a close election March 1995.
You can see from this short history why I hold Carr's political debt to blockaders and election activists like me and many others 1992-1995 as personal, and unpaid to this day. ......
The clear lesson from this history, suggested by Tas premier Lennon himself, is a repeal of the precedent value of the Wielangta case by Howard government as soon as federal parliament resits.... The steps to take when that inevitable industry pressure ramps up and the repeal very very likely of Wielangta Case decision follows is a matter of great interest too, 10 months to a close federal election.
But history is the guide. Start analysing it and planning based on similar.
Yours truly
Tom McLoughlin, principal ecology action sydney
......................
Extensive entry on Wielangta legal decision in the Federal Court here:
The Wielangta Legal Precedent materials here
by via ecology action Wednesday December 20, 2006 at 08:36 AM
NSW
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/12/134313.php
