Bureaucrats try to block Forest Embassy

CANBERRA — Forest Embassy organisers are angered that the National Capital Planning Authority (NCPA) has refused permission for the Forest Embassy to camp from November 4 to 8 on the lawns of Parliament House.

"The irony of the situation is that a small protest with a couple of banners would be acceptable to the NCPA, while a large protest such as ours, representing the enormous extent of community concern and involving thousands of people across the country and all major conservation groups, has been fobbed off to an area near Lake Burley Griffin that is out of sight and therefore out of mind", said Lucy Horodny, spokesperson for the Forest Embassy.

"The rational of the NCPR", Horodny continued, "is that the event is too big, with too many people, over too many days and that the number of tents it would put up would be unacceptable".

The director of the NCPA, David Wright, told the organisers that they were "victims of their own success". Wright expressed his concern that the "risk of damage to trees" on and around Parliament House was too great to allow the Forest Embassy to camp there.

The irony is obvious. Trees on the lush lawns of Parliament House are better protected then those in our ancient forests. "What is at stake here", Horodny said, "is justice for the forests, justice for individuals to fight for those forests and justice for the right to do so without being continually hindered".

The organisers of the Forest Embassy feel that public support for forest protection is high. "In recent months individual have put their lives on the line as never before, with dozens of hunger strikes and hundreds of arrests in NSW. Successive governments have been reluctant to make the hard decisions required to save forests and put the timber industry on a secure base in plantations", said Horodny.

The Forest Embassy represents a culmination of activities around Australia bring together forest campaigners from West Australia to Tasmania. Up to 98% of logging in NSW, Tasmania, Western Australia and Victoria is for woodchipping. The federal and state governments have failed to uphold their own moratorium clause from the National Forests Policy on the logging of rainforests, old-growth forests and wilderness areas. Instead they have been issuing new logging licences and are increasing the quotas for timber extraction.

"Countless forest areas vanish each year to the hungry pulp and paper mills of the northern hemisphere. Australia does not have to be logging our wild forests when we are increasingly able to supply our needs from recycling and plantations", said Horodny.

"Forest protection is clearly an election issue", she continued, "and the ALP cannot expect to gain preferences from greens when their record on forest conservation is so appalling. If the ALP wants to stay in power it simply cannot rely on the lesser of two evils bet."

The Forest Embassy will go for five days and will include rallies, protests, entertainment, workshops, educational displays and discussions. Speakers will include David Bellamy, Bob Brown, Christine Milne and Jackie French.

The Forest Embassy can be contacted on (06) 249 6491.

From GLW issue 165