Premier Baillieu please protect our environment rather than trashing it

Open letter to Premier Ted Baillieu.

Dear Premier Baillieu,

Like most Victorians, I’m proud of our environment. I’m proud of our clean air and water, our beautiful National Parks, and the ecosystems and amazing destinations that set our state apart.

Yet since coming into power your government has taken a wrecking ball to our environment, taking our environment and our state backwards by decades. I’m appalled by this behaviour from my government, and I’m calling on you to do better.

Instead of expanding brown coal mining and slashing support for clean energy, you should be investing in clean renewable energy like wind and solar.

Instead of cutting forest protections and trampling the Murray River you should be protecting our special places and returning water to our rivers.

Instead of looking out for your big business mates, you should be supporting households and small businesses to be more energy and water efficient to reduce costs and the impact on our environment.

Please stand up for our environment and for all Victorians.  After all, that’s the job of the Premier of Victoria.

Specifically - please stop logging in Victoria's native forests, including our water catchments.

Please scrap VicForests -the Victorian government should exit the native forest logging business that runs at a serious loss and destroys our native forests, including habitat of endangered species such as Leadbeaters Possum and the Long Footed Potoroo.

Please reverse your regressive legislation that is blocking wind farm development and favouring further investment in polluting fossil fuel power.

Please re-instate a feed in tariff that recognises the true value of solar power and renewable energy.

Please allocated $50m for cycling infrastructure across Victoria, and develop a plan and program to implement it.

Sincerely,

Peter Campbell


External links

• Help stop the relentless and systematic destruction of our environment, Email campaign, Environment Victoria
• Emperor's new policy, The Age, 19 Dec 2012 

The Baillieu government must stop logging Victorian rainforest

Local conservationists have yet again had to take court action and use blockades to stop VicForests, the Victorian Government's logging business, from logging protected rainforest in East Gippsland.

VicForests have form. They were found guilty of breaking the law relating the protection of endangered species in Brown Mountain's forest in the Supreme Court in August 2010.  Over a year later, despite a court order, they are yet to pay the court costs awarded against them to Environment East Gippsland.

In July this year, VicForests started logging forest near Sylvia Creek that is home to Leadbeaters Possum. They were stopped by another court order following legal action initiated by local environment group MyEnvironment.  This court case, scheduled to be heard early next year, is again about VicForests ignoring the laws concerned with protecting endangered species.

The Baillieu government's response to VicForest's illegal and unethical practices is to reward them with 20 year contracts for logging our remaining native forests, indemnify their contracts, allow them to determine the amount of forest they can log and allow them to log forests in reserves, parks and water catchments.

The Baillieu government has also announced an intention to change the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act to that a bureaucrat can exempt VicForests from complying with it, thereby allowing them to log forests that are and should be protected.

There is a whiff of cronyism and corruption about VicForests too.  Graeme Stoney, Premier Ted Baillieu's brother in law, has been recently appointed to the VicForests board by the government.  Stoney has also recently been active behind the scenes coordinating the return of cattle to graze in the Alpine National Park under the bogus pretext of "research into the role of cattle in bushfire mitigation".

The native forest logging industry is in terminal decline. Regional Forests Agreements have failed. The global market for woodchips, the major "product" that comes from out native forests, has collapsed.  Despite accelerating logging, jobs continue to decline.  The industry is largely automated now.

In addition, the wholesale conversion of native forests into plantations by continued logging and burning is simply not sustainable, as scientists such as Professor David Lindenmeyer have stated.

There is enough plantation resource available in Victoria right now to supply our timber and pulp needs.  The Victorian government should get out of the logging business, get rid of VicForests, and support our sustainable plantation-based timber and wood products industries.

Our native forests should be protected for the carbon they store, their biodiversity, their function as water catchments and because they are wonderful places to visit.

Links

• Timber gets long-term commitment, The Age, 14 December 2011
• MEDIA RELEASE: Supreme Court orders stop to logging East Gippsland rainforest, 14 December 2011
• MEDIA RELEASE Legal injunction to stop Victorian rainforest logging, 14 December 2011 
• MEDIA RELEASE: Police move in to evict protest at unlawful logging coupe, 12 December 2011 
• MEDIA RELEASE: Conservationists Halt Logging Across Victoria, 5 December 2011 
• Silvia Creek forest - Greenlivingpedia
• Brown Mountain old growth forest - Greenlivingpedia 
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