Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, Last week I had the great honour of visiting some of the spectacular forests and wonderful communities in north-east Tasmania. Communities around Nile, Deddington, Musselboro, Burns Creek, Blessington and Upper Blessington. The Liberals have plans to log and burn the forests in those areas that have previously been slated for protection and that communities understood were permanently protected already. They are the backgrounds, they are the playgrounds of these communities and they are deeply loved by the people who we spoke to. We visited Ben Lomond National Park and experienced those spectacular delegatensis, viminalis, the obliqua forests that sit like a mantle over that great forest, that great mountain’s foothills. As you come up there you see those incredible awe-inspiring dolerite columns that circle that fantastic peak, The forests there are under threat all around the flank of Ben Lomond National Park.
From the east, the south and the west, Forestry Tasmania is looking to go in and harvest. To clear-fell and log places that are the home to species like the green and gold frog, the white morph; the grey goshawk, the spotted-tail quoll, the Tassie devil, the masked owl, wedgies, sea eagles; it is such an incredible place. It is a stronghold for the forest to kangaroo.
It is also Ben Lomond, the snowy winter playground of people in the north-east and it is a mecca for bushwalkers, for rock climbers, for people all over Tasmania and far beyond. It is really incredible, unimaginable really, that any caring, sensible, future-thinking government would look to log the habitat right to the boundary of such a treasured National Park, leaving it sitting like an island in a wilderness of destruction.
Jeremy Rockliff keeps showing communities across Tasmania, especially now in the north-east, that he is drunk with power and deaf to what people in the communities are really saying about the places that they love.
We also visited the southern slopes of Mount Barrow, which is a complex, steep landscape deeply loved by the locals we spoke to. The southern part of Mount Barrow has similar flora and fauna to Ben Lomond, but it also has other cool and unique species like the alpine appleberry and the Skemp snail. It is another special corner of Tasmania that the Liberals would happily smash and burn right up to the scree slope on the base of the south side of Mount Barrow. It is an absolute criminal act to even imagine doing something like that.
The evening we were there we met with community members in Upper Blessington. Some of them had generations of relationships with these places. A number of people spoke openly in the community group about the deep trauma they still have from the forest battles of the past. It was obvious that these traumas were not far below the surface. They came from experiencing the wilful, needless and careless destruction of forests by rogue corporation Gunns Limited. The people we spoke to were farmers, they were not against forestry per se, but they were against what they had seen over decades, just the destruction, the pointless destruction of beautiful forests and the gross misuse of the power of Gunns Limited, and now, what is being proposed by the government.
We heard from people who live along the Nile River, which is finally running clear, they say, after logging has stopped. That beautiful river is smack bang in the in the middle of lot 145, the FPPF (future potential production forest) lot that is on the chopping block, one of the five that the Liberals plan to go into. It is the home of Uncle Jim Everett/Puralia Meenamatta. He has talked about the importance of protecting Country and the Greens are standing with him, and all the people from the northeast, to fight to protect these forests. It is a betrayal to consider ‑
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