Australian Environment Foundation Chairman Don Burke will be attending the Great Aussie Breakfast at Federation Square in Melbourne on Wednesday October 4th as a guest of the Victorian Farmers Federation. The breakfast runs from 7 - 10am .
The first AEF Conference & AGM held over the weekend of 23rd and 24th September was a huge success. Most of the papers are now available online: http://www.aefweb.info/display/conference2006.html including the paper by forester Mark Poynter mentioned at a recent blog post.
Giving an environmental award to timber company Gunns Ltd has proven a bit controversial with the Wilderness Society objecting, see http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php/weblog/comments/breathtaking-hypocrisy/
Planning has already started for the 2007 AEF conference to be held in Melbourne during spring.
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I'm a Director of the AEF.
1edb79f8cc5c Hi
1d1217a220b3 Keep up this great resource
G'Day Neil the 4 Corners program on the A team , could be described as inspirational. Where I am we are already on day light saving so we were lucky enough to get the program one hour ahead.
I am still trying to figure it out as I recall it being advertised originally as looking at the 'dirty tricks' of loggers and greenies but apart from the dead animals in the fridge, and asking a community member to drink treated sewerage, when in fact it was not treated, the greens and/or socialist left of the ALP seem to have got off lightly, and it concentrated on people getting to know their 'enemy' and being part of the ALP's democratic process.
If it was about infiltration of the ALP the 4 Corners team missed this gem that was a letter to the editor during the last Tasmanian election relating to a former journalist that worked for an ALP member and quickly became a spokesperson against a canal style housing development on Hobart's eastern shore and stood for the Greens at the Election:
Dear Editor,
I was surprised to learn that for three years Cassy O’Connor had been a secret Green member while working in the Labor Federal office of Duncan Kerr. Does that make Ms O’Connor a double agent?
Why isn’t Ms O’Connor standing in Franklin?
Perhaps too many people in Franklin know what happened in Save Ralphs Bay Inc. I was the founding secretary. The takeover of the group was swift and ruthless and I found myself threatened with legal action for daring to tell the truth about it. That action has never been pursued or withdrawn. I still wait. The legal papers could arrive any day. Its been twenty months now. I stand by the truth.
I am concerned for the fate of the Greens. The political run of a double-agent could make people wonder. It is one thing to openly change camps, but to be a secret Green for three years while working in a Federal Labor office is shadowy.
The Ralphs Bay thing makes sense now. It was all about power."
But then again Four Corners was propbably just trying to get up an anti forestry story in the lead up to the Victorian election!
I was beginning to think your life depended it Cinders. Your passionate defence of Gunns running down this thread from the beginning is what caught my eye in the first place. It’s equalled only by your use of anti ABC, Green or Wilderness Society rhetoric. Now you may be surprised but I can take or leave the lot of them including Gunns. There are times though when I may attempt to use all of them in my private campaigns aimed at our silly governments and their agents. I mind where our money goes.
Cinders; all media is an art. I fist learned about fridge tricks used in photography from a media man who ran adult ed classes in his spare time after hours. The extra skulduggery used by the TV people working for your government way back sure left an impression with a wide range of people while I was still battling to save some good wood that is probably at the bottom of a big dam right now. Somebody took some big fish from the trout hatchery and hooked them nice and fresh on rod and reel for national news at the brand new Lake Pedder. But that was after my young contact at the Sun stuffed up an editorial assignment in Tasmania during rough weather and got his photographer to get a front page pic at the Melbourne zoo on their way home from Essendon. That’s called sticking your neck out at the wrong time. I recall another aircraft that never landed. Some low budget “street theatre” can go horribly wrong.
To wrap up; I recommend you consider making an old fashioned “stringy bark” bag unless you can say how Gunns will make us some fresh brown paper. BTW the land area farmed for our packaging needs depends greatly on the factory owner’s attitude to recycling.
Salvage and recovery at every level of production was once my bread and butter.
And thanks for the polite exchange.
G'day Cinders,
Did you see the 4-corners program on the A-team?
Inspirational!
Neil
For Taz's information he will be pleased that I am not getting wound up nor am I a Gunns industry spokesperson, but I couldn't resist Taz's "dorothy dix" like question so soon after the 4 Corners gem of keeping dead animals in the freezer as a way the greens can make it "real" for the public.
Elsewhere on this blog, is a discussion on the use of thin plastic bags and their alternatives, calico from cotton, paper from our trees or the "green" bag from Polypropylene factories in China, India and Pakistan.
The biq question is which shopping bag will be the most environmentally friendy or is it which shopping bag will you choose, or lastly should we go to the left field and use hemp and if the answer is yes how much native vegetation should we wipe out to grow this hemp.
Whoooa there Cinders; don’t get so wound up over an environment award discussion, it’s bad for your long term reputation as a Gunns industries campaigner. Keeping your eye firmly fixed on the big picture is a subtle art in the end with all these little distractions. BTW my ref re 10 kg of 1080 poison still being used came straight out of that report and I was aware the latest RFA negotiations involved banning 1080 in state forests.
As I said it was another chance Gunns lost in the leadership stakes and being a good environment citizen. Small things matter in terms of public acceptance with ongoing issues like a new pulp mill. My father once showed me how to sneak up to then fall down on a crouching big wild buck rabbit in that same country. Dinner is assured only by good coordination of all our facilties.
I also noted the compliance to ISO 14001 in the AFS report. It may be of interest to someone here that I put my reputation as a technical officer and my government agency on the line on behalf of another industry during the process that built the JASANZ mutual recognition agreement. I almost lost my job over the arguments in the lead up to who was authorised to conduct the monitoring of standards and compliance etc for all industry under the new agreement. This whole affair certainly had other international implications for Australia. Astute readers will recall I write a lot about my interest in NATA and our history in the development of any peer review process applicable to a country’s internal monitoring and world trade.
Make what you like of this statement; reading between the lines is a craft too.
Gavin Bugg.
Taz seems that he can’t help himself, instead of reporting that the major finding of the Audit report was compliance to the AFS he goes to the section listing four areas for possible improvement.
None of which is his pet subject on the use of 1080 to control browsing damage by specific species of wallaby and possum. Animals that are in ‘plague’ proportions and have major impact on forestry and farming in this state.
His figure on the use of 1080 also seems to be out of date. The Tasmanian Forest and Forest Industry Council reports that 1080 is used in agriculture in Australia and overseas for the control of native and exotic animals. The Tasmanian forest industry used 5.5kg of 1080 in 2003, New Zealand, used 2 tonnes. See http://www.ffic.com.au/useofchemicals.html
Taz might not be aware that the reduction in use of 1080 was part of the Tasmanian Community Forestry Agreement and that $4 million has been put up to fast track an alternative (see http://www.mffc.gov.au/releases/2006/06030aj.html ). So by the time the pulp mill is built there might be other ways to prevent browsing damage that eats into the profit of the tree grower (rather than the processor).
Forestry Tasmania has already banned 1080 on public forest.
Of course all this came about because the Federal Liberal party 2004 Tasmanian forest plolicy contained the Statement:
“The sight of native animals dying from 1080 poisoning is unacceptable to Australians.”
However if you think about it, the only time this sight was seen by most Australians in 2004 was on the biased and inaccurate 4 Corners “Lords of the Forests” shown in February 2004 and in green pamphlets/videos. Yet the ABC has admitted recently that the footage shown was taken not in 2004, not even 2003 but in 2000. The ABC did not receive independent verification that the animals shown were in fact poisoned by 1080, despite the footage being part of a complaint fully investigated by the relevant Government authority in 2000.
From Four Corners last Monday we learnt how it is common practice by greens to keep dead animals to trot out for a gullible media or general public. The transcript goes
SALLY NEIGHBOUR: They also revealed some of the greenies' own tricks - like planning a graphic photo display about the effects of logging, using dead possums from a collection the forest campaigner kept in his freezer.
Do you remember that discussion?
GERALDINE RYAN, FORMER VOLUNTEER, ENVIRONMENT VICTORIA: I remember that was more than once. That he...he used to collect, if a possum was a road kill or an animal was a road kill, would collect them and keep them in the fridge. It was just again...to make it, sort of, real to the public.
SALLY NEIGHBOUR: What, animals out of the forest campaigner's freezer?
GERALDINE RYAN: Yes.
From a quick search of recent Victoria media, Geraldine is currently a spokesperson for the Wilderness Society.
So perhaps it is time for advertising techniques and the use of images, either false or out of context, to be removed from the environmental debate and we use an evidence based approach using science to verify that evidence.
Cinders: There is some interesting reading on that link.
We notice in the AFS Summary Audit Report April 6006 –
http://www.gunns.com.au/downloads/GunnsAFSreportApr2006.pdf
3.4 Observations and Opportunities for Improvements, four predictable items for Gunns consideration. You can’t say I’m the only one nit picking. Although I can’t find the email as I write my comments were similar.
One of my comments related to their continued use of the poison 1080 for “pest” control.
Now I reckon any company proposing to build a billion dollar pulp mill can do without the stuff, about 10 kg/y according to their statement on the www.
This attitude to Tasmanian wildlife is what makes Gunns themselves a fair target for everybody interested in conservation. The meanness of such a control program overrides any benefit the company gains early in its plantation growth. The fact that farmers also do it is a very poor excuse indeed for lack of leadership all round on the issue.
I say this after a lot of personal contact with people engaged in primary industry throughout Tasmania over many years.