Peter Volker says he likes to deal with the facts, so here's a few that might help him.
Peter Volker contests my statement in my article recently published in The Guardian newspaper about rivers drying up in consequence of plantations, claiming it ''is very much hyperbole''. He then writes: ''Which rivers have dried up?'' I never said rivers ''had dried up'', Peter. That's you verballing me with your facts.
In a recent major article by the eminent Tasmanian journalist Wayne Crawford on the forest debate and science in The Mercury, you may care to read the following:
"… scientific research is pointing more and more strongly to ecological, economic and social disaster if the doze-and-burn replacement of native forests with plantation trees continues at the present rate.
"The respected Hobart geologist and geophysicist Dr David Leaman has warned that a huge deficit has already developed in the amount of water needed in Tasmania, directly because of the clearing of native forests and their replacement with thirstier monoculture plantations. Even if this practice stopped immediately, he says, this annual water deficit would rise to about a million megalitres over the next few years - a water shortage equivalent to two Olympic-size pools per Tasmanian, per year.
"….Dr David Leaman says Tasmania has already reached the first stage of what he terms "desertification" caused by plantation forests soaking up so much from groundwater storages. He names rivers whose catchments he says are drying up or failing to cope as a direct result - the Meredith and Swan Rivers on the East Coast, North Esk and St Patrick, in the Launceston area, Brid, Great Forester and Georges Rivers in the North-East - and points to many instances of farmers whose springs, bores and wells have dried up or where the water level had dramatically fallen, directly because of the competition by plantation forests for the available water."
"Leaman, a Tasmanian Mines Department-trained geologist and geohydrologist and former University of Tasmania teacher, with expertise in groundwater and hydrology engineering, now has a geophysics consultancy. At his own expense and initiative he did Tasmania’s most extensive hydrological assessment, which he finished late last year. Yet he has been having difficulty getting authorities - especially Forestry Tasmania - to take any notice of the findings which he says were so serious they "stunned" him."
"I have watched helpless as Tasmanian Government policy, poor legislation and arrogant industry allied with Government agencies, has robbed people of their water," Leaman said. The Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) - meant to be a 20-year blueprint for Tasmanian forestry - provided no controls on water. The reports by Forestry Tasmania, released last week on alternatives to clearfelling, barely even mentioned water."
Peter Volker works for Forestry Tasmania, which may explain why these facts appear unknown to him.
Peter Volker writes: "I can remember some attacks he [Richard Flanagan] made on some artists over their refusal to join his boycott last year!"
What artists, where, and when, Peter? What you write is not fact, Peter, but a lie, and were I litigous, it is a libellous lie. What I said at the Forest Rally during Ten Days on the Island - which is available as a booklet, As Sun to The Mountain, if you doubt me - was typical of my oft stated position:
"There has been the attempt to split those not taking part in the festival from those participating. But to those of my friends and to others taking part whether as audience or as performers, I say, I wish you well. We must not allow the bastardry of the Bacon government to destroy all that joins us. We must never forget who are the real offenders: this government and those who control it, John Gay and his puppet master, Robin Gray."
And why would I say otherwise, Peter, when they were my friends? I always said it was matter of individual conscience, and whatever position one arrived at, it deserved respect.
Peter Volker writes: "Brian [sic] Green was right to defend the timber industry and communities. Those of us who work in the forest industry have a high level of integrity. If RF [sic] and his friends think we are corrupt, I dare him to name those who he thinks fit this category. Perhaps we could then test his allegations in the courts."
What allegations? Where did I ever say those who work in the timber industry are corrupt, Peter? I know many people in the industry and I get on well with them. They are decent people doing their job. What I have done in the past is report what a veteran forester, Bill Manning, said in his evidence to a Senate committee, that forestry management had been corrupted.
I have also written of how the monopoly that controls forestry in Tasmania, Gunns, has on its board two directors who were found by the Carter Royal Commission of 1991 to have an involvement in the attempted bribery of a parliamentarian by Eddie Rouse, to protect his logging profit.
To say that either of these points is implying those who work in the timber industry are corrupt is a nonsense. I have never suggested it or implied it. It makes as much sense as saying that criticising John Howard’s position on Iraq is the same thing as attacking the Australian people. Of course though, such lies serve convenient political purposes.
It’s like when Bryan Green lied last week to Parliament, saying I had attacked forest workers in my Guardian article. I did not attack forest workers anywhere in that article and I have never attacked forest workers. I attacked Gunns, and its close relationship with the Tasmanian government. I have considerable feeling for those in the forests working under Gunns’ highly exploitative tendering system that sees, for example, log truck drivers working hundred-hour weeks. Peter Volker writes: "Most of us [professional foresters] are employed to provide timber, fibre and other forest products for the community benefit."
But the evidence tells a different story. The annual reports of your employer, Forestry Tasmania, show that over 80% of all logs extracted from native forests go direct to woodchip mills. In addition, as Forestry Tasmania recently admitted, sawlogs are also woodchipped, and have been since 1972. The great bulk of the profit derived from woodchipping goes to one company, Gunns, who proudly boast of being the largest hardwood woodchip exporter in the world. Approximately 85% of Gunns’ profit go out of the state. Of the 15% of the profit that stays in the state, approximately one third goes to John Gay. So this is an industry overwhelmingly about the production not of a variety of forest products, but of one product only, fibre in the form of woodchips, not for the benefit of the community but for the benefit of one company only, Gunns.
As for Peter's spurious high school debating distinctions, such as monocultural plantations containing greater genetic diversity than native forests, because plantation trees are genetically modified, this can only be described as ideological science of the type that gave Lysenko such a good name with Stalin.
I know you won't mind what I have written here Peter, because as you wrote: "Those who make statements which can be proven to be untrue in the public arena should be prepared to wear criticism or correction. Otherwise people will continue to promulgate lies and if there is no counterpoint the community will undoubtedly believe those lies. The same old cliche about throwing mud, I believe."
And I am afraid Peter that I never as you claimed played footy, far less at the Uni Oval. But as someone who deals only in the facts, I am sure you already knew that.
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Sunday, April 25, 2004