Nipaluna/Hobart

HOBART — Thirty people greeted foreign minister Alexander Downer on May 11 with chants and fliers critiquing Australia foreign policy in Iraq. The lecture hosted by the University of Tasmania was about “diplomacy”. The demonstration was organised by the Hobart Peace Coalition and protesters explained that war is not diplomacy and that the occupation of Iraq must end.

HOBART — The Howard government has promised to spend $200 million on an international fund to halve the rate of deforestation in Indonesia and the Asia Pacific as part of Australia’s contribution to stopping climate change. However the government hasn’t mentioned putting an end to the 20,000 hectares of native forest that are clear-felled and burned each year in Tasmania. Greens leader Bob Brown highlighted this hypocrisy on March 30.

Tasmanian Labor Premier Paul Lennon’s Pulp Mill Assessment Bill, which fast-tracks approval of timber giant Gunns Ltd’s proposed $1.5 billion Tamar Valley pulp mill, was passed by the Legislative Council, the state parliament’s upper house, on March 29. Seven days earlier the bill had been passed by the lower house.

On March 22, some 1500 protesters on Parliament Lawns denounced Tasmanian Labor Premier Paul Lennon’s push to fast-track the building of a $1.5 billion pulp mill in Bell Bay, in northern Tasmania’s Tamar Valley.

Tasmanian logging giant Gunns Ltd announced suddenly on March 14 that it was withdrawing its proposal to build a $2 billion pulp mill at Bell Bay in northern Tasmania from the independent Resource Planning and Development Commission (RPDC) and called on Labor Premier Paul Lennon’s government to legislate to approve the project.

At 8am on February 16, police served writs citing a court injunction from Forestry Tasmania on three Huon Valley Environment Centre (HVEC) office-bearers, according to the February 17 Hobart Mercury. The court order was to stop a “walk-in” planned for the following day in the Weld Valley exclusion zone to highlight the ongoing logging of old-growth forests.

I was very saddened to hear about the death of Neville Curtis at his home in White Beach, Tasmania, on February 15. He was 60 years old.

HOBART — On February 12, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) secured an injunction from the English High Court preventing the British Natural History Museum from conducting any further tests on the remains of 17 deceased Tasmanian Aborigines before a full hearing scheduled for February 22.

Hobart Resistance organiser Mel Barnes took part in the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network brigade to Venezuela in December, to see the revolutionary process for herself. The brigade was timed to coincide with the presidential election in which President Hugo Chavez won another landslide victory as people voted to deepen the Bolivarian revolution.

The Tasmanian government’s Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Children Bill 2006, which set up a $5 million compensation fund, was passed by the upper house of the state parliament on November 28, having been unanimously approved in the lower house seven days earlier.

A youth march will be held in Launceston on January 26, Invasion Day. The march organiser, Nala Mansell, told Green Left Weekly that Aboriginal young people from all over Tasmania will be coming together to say that they won’t be part of the “Australia Day” celebrations.

Woodchipping giant Gunns Ltd’s proposed $1.4 billion pulp mill in northern Tasmania continues to be the subject of controversy. Gunns has expressed impatience over the delays in the assessment process and threatened to axe the project if government approval is not given within six months.