By Lisa Macdonald
The illusions of many environmentalists, including some key leaders of the peak environment groups, that the Liberal and National parties' pre-election rhetoric indicated a greener, environmentally more conscious and responsive Coalition must have been shattered by the federal government's decision last week on woodchipping.
Bowing to the demands of the timber corporations, the Coalition announced that quotas on woodchip exports would be increased. Although this has been reported in the big business media as a 1 million tonne increase, all of which is supposed to come from sawmill waste and forestry trimmings, in reality it will be more like 2 million tonnes and will result in many more forests being destroyed.
Until the announcement, woodchips taken from the 11.3 million hectares of privately owned forest in Australia had to be included within the 5.2 million tonne total export quota. Now the Coalition will allow unlimited extra exports from private forests. This means that the 1 million tonnes of woodchips currently extracted from private forests can be transferred to the quota-exempt category, allowing companies to extract a further million tonnes from public forests, on top of the extra million supposed to be taken from sawmill waste and trimmings.
As if this gift to the timber corporations wasn't enough, the government has also further entrenched "resource security" for the industry. For some time, the timber companies have been pushing for the introduction of two-year, rather than annual, woodchip export licences. As of next year, the government has given them three-year licences. Since anti-woodchipping campaigners have traditionally used the licence renewal period as a focus for mobilising public opposition to forest destruction, this move also removes an annual thorn in the government's side.
Government threats
Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown has vowed to find a way to have the Coalition's open slather on the forests blocked in the Senate. In response, the government is taking advantage of the former Labor government's failure to legislate to permanently protect the forests, by threatening that the Senate's failure to pass the increased quotas would mean that all controls over woodchipping would be removed.
This attempt at environmental blackmail has become a favourite tactic for the Coalition. In fact, in the area of environmental protection and repair, the Coalition's whole policy is based on blackmailing the public to accept trading one public resource off against another.
On May 20, minister for the environment Senator Robert Hill said that the government would ensure that the Senate was not even able to debate the promised $1 billion Natural Heritage Trust Fund (NHTF) bill for environmental programs until after it had approved the sale of one-third of Telstra.
Then, on July 8, Hill announced that the government was reviewing plans to allocate the first $80 million towards the NHTF in the August 20 budget because of the opposition in the Senate to the sale of Telstra. Information leaked from the cabinet's razor gang on the same day revealed that it is considering spending cuts of up to 30% on existing environmental programs.
Saying 'no' to threats
It is no surprise that the government is escalating its blackmail campaign. On some levels, it seems to be working. Public opposition to the sale of Telstra is on the decline, from 61% at election time to just under 50% today, according to the polls.
Just as significantly, most environment peak bodies — the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Wilderness Society, the Wildlife Preservation Society and the World Wide Fund for Nature — also appear to be succumbing. Not only have they been internally divided and publicly reticent in their condemnation of Telstra privatisation to fund the environment, but they have so far refused to build concerted campaigns against any of the other Coalition attacks on the environment (e.g. expanded uranium mining, Century Zinc's mine in Cape York).
In contrast, the Australian Greens' opposition to the sale of Telstra has become more entrenched as the government unveils more of its anti-environment agenda. Brown told Green Left that, even apart from the ill-conceived linking of environment programs to the sale of Telstra, privatisation makes no sense from an economic or social point of view. "It will result in a deterioration in the opportunity for innovation and in service provision, especially for remote areas and for low-income users.
"Despite government assurances that they will legislate to protect disadvantaged users, such a bill can be changed anywhere down the line, so there's no guarantee that they won't reduce services to the poor and people in remote areas and give free service provision to businesses."
Brown argues that a once-off sale of a public asset, probably at below its real value, is simply bad financial management. The resulting loss of government revenue from privatising a service that brings in a billion dollars a year, he argues, will mean that public spending will have to be cut back further and, down the track, taxes increased. "Those taxes will hit people in middle and low income brackets hardest", he said.
Both the Australian Democrats and the Australian Greens argue that alternative sources of revenue for a large number of urgently needed environment programs are available.
On May 9, for example, the Democrats gave notice of a bill that would keep Telstra in public ownership and require that 7% of its pre-tax profits be directed into the NHTF for the next five years. According to Democrat leader Senator Cheryl Kernot, this would cover all of the Coalition's promised environmental programs and still leave another $1 billion to be spent.
Brown supports this option but also proposes recouping unpaid taxes from the "mega-rich". "There is $850 million in lost revenue to the Treasury because some 80 to 100 people bringing in over $30 million per year [each] are not paying their due taxes", he told Green Left. "That would provide far more money than selling one third of Telstra."
Posing such alternatives not only renders powerless the Coalition's environmental blackmail, but also begins to address the criticism made by many environmentalists that the promised $1 billion, even if it is forthcoming, is inadequate to ameliorate the major environmental disasters in this country.
Labor's legacy
Political blackmail is a well-worn tactic of pro-big business governments. Convincing the majority of people to accept environmental destruction, privatisation, reduced rights and living standards is not easy when there is no rational reason for these attacks. Obtaining acceptance of one attack by threatening something worse if people don't comply is one of the few effective tactics available to capitalist governments, which need the vote of the majority to stay in office, but actually represent and serve the needs of a profit-hungry minority.
Environmental blackmail was successfully employed by the federal Labor government for many years. As each election loomed and environmentalists became increasingly disillusioned with ALP policy and practice, the party pulled out the old threat: if you punish us at the polls for our sins against the environment, you will only get worse from the Coalition.
Coral Wynter, environment spokesperson for the Democratic Socialists, points out, "It is a law of politics in this society that as progressive forces give up more and more ground, the confidence of the forces of reaction will grow and their attacks escalate.
"Had the leadership of the environment movement refused to be blackmailed and asserted its political independence so that protecting the environment rather than getting the ALP re-elected was its first priority", Wynter argues, "the movement would have been in a far stronger position to defend the environment today — regardless of which of the two big business parties held office. The movement's capitulation to Labor's attacks paved the way for an even more devastating offensive by the Coalition."
Even in opposition, the ALP is being let off the hook by the movement. From Brown's point of view, "The ALP is being bypassed in this debate. Everyone says that it's up to the Democrats and the Greens to block the sale of Telstra in the Senate, but in fact it's very much up to the ALP. If the Labor Party and Democrats stay firm, the government cannot get the sale through."