The Forest Wars

Australia’s long-unresolved forest conflict has been the make-or-break factor in federal elections for the last few decades, with both parties often arguing that the four-decade-old forest conflict has no practical solution. They are wrong. Australia’s existing plantations can meet virtually all the nation’s wood needs and replace all native forest woodchipping. Australia can have a large, highly competitive and prosperous forest industry without logging native forests. Since irreconciliable development versus environment interests cannot explain Australia’s ongoing forest conflict, what does? Australia’s forest conflict persists only because government has not let new, economically superior products displace environmentally inferior products in the market. Behind this failure lies silenced plantation processors, failing bureaucracies, government-created extraordinary native-forest-woodchipping profits and destructive union behaviour. Judy Clark documents and examines each in detail, and proposes a new forest policy for Australia, calling on individuals in the power sector – business people and politicians – to commit themselves to breaking down the obstructions.