TIMBER workers who attended a public address by Federal Greens Senator Bob Brown in Bermagui last Friday night have said they came away surprised by the total lack of real world policy initiatives from the Greens political leader.
According to Vince Phillips, who represented the Eden branch of Timber Communities Australia at the meeting, having sold himself to the meeting as the only honest politician in the Federal Parliament, Sen Brown had basically no answers when asked what he would do about key issues such as global consumption or recent massive fire damage from lightning strikes across Australia’s icon National Parks.
Mr Phillips said that 15 timber workers had attended the meeting as representatives of the 1200 people whose employment and $1 million weekly wages bill
is based on native
forest timber operations between Nowra and Bairnsdale, had come away believing that Sen Brown knew “little of the facts behind his various claims”.
Mr Phillips claimed Sen Brown’s view that Australia could provide all of its timber related needs from existing plantations was destroyed by the fact that “we are importing around $3 billion worth of wood and paper products annually and the Greens are
actively opposing new production facilities in Australia”.
Sen Brown’s view that biomass energy was unacceptable “flies in the face of global trends in Green energy production,” according to Gary Squires of Orbost.
Mr Squires claimed that biomass energy was currently the most effective form of full-time alternative power at a global scale securing massive investment overseas.
Alan Richards of Bairnsdale said he had attended the meeting expecting to hear some well-founded reasons why his multi-million dollar sawmilling investment had to close.
But instead, he claimed he had heard about coal and the fact that the Australian Conserva-
tion Foundation, the Wilderness Society and the World Wildlife Fund were being out lobbied by the National Association of Forest Industries which operated on a budget five per cent the size of the three conservation lobby groups.
The timber workers said Sen Brown’s view that the major parties in Australia had done nothing about forest conservation was “just another step in the green misinformation trail that has destroyed the credibility of the Greens on forest issues with Australian Governments who had in place one of the top
three forest conservation regimes on the planet”.
In particular reference to Sen Brown’s claim that plantations could provide Australia’s wood needs, Mr Phillips said that “apart from our $2 billion trade deficit in wood products, the 2006 National Plantation In-ventory shows that 65 per cent of Australia’s’ plantation resource is in private ownership”.
“The government can’t dictate the end use of such private resources,” he said.
“In 2006 90 per cent of the hardwood plantations established was aimed at either pulpwood production.
“FAO data also shows between 64-73 per cent of the world’s wood production is from native forests.
“Australia has about one-third wood production from native forests, Sweden has 25 per cent of its electricity generated from native forests harvesting residues and aims to increase this to 50 per cent.”
Mr Phillips said “if we listen to ill-informed green lobbyists, Australia risks being totally out of step with global trends towards power generation as woody biomass could be an integral part of the climate change solution”.
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