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GRAHAM DAVIS, REPORTER: Deep in the Tasmanian forests, a new species of green activist has joined the long-running battle to save the state's majestic native trees ... minuscule [in] size in relation to this.
ERIKA FORD, SHAREHOLDER ACTIVIST: Absolutely. The first moment we found this we stood in absolute awe. We've measured it at 16.8m circumference, and this is probably around 450-500 years old.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Up to 500 years old?
ERIKA FORD: Yep.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Erika Ford's favourite weapon isn't the sit-in, but her stockbroker, using her shares in Australia's biggest logging company to press for better forestry practices.
ERIKA FORD: This was due not even to end up as paper. They were going to fill it with explosives, detonate the whole tree and burn the lot.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Ford's first corporate foray was against the Jabiluka uranium mine in the Northern Territory. Now her sights are turned on Gunns, the hugely profitable Tasmanian monopoly converting vast areas of native forests into tax-effective plantations.
ERIKA FORD: They're saying on one hand, "Oh, yes, this is something that we should be protecting that's very special." But in practical terms they're doing bugger all.
These are still on the map to be clear-felled ...
GRAHAM DAVIS: Already Ford's holding in Gunns has produced more than just a handsome financial dividend, sparing a brace of trees as tall as lighthouses.
ERIKA FORD: Well, I love to make money, I really do, but not at any cost.
GRAHAM DAVIS: To many Tasmanians, what's at issue in this debate isn't new — the wisdom of the state staking its future on a billion-dollar industry employing just 8000 people. But what will startle many mainlanders is the scale of it all — just how much of the state's native forests has been cleared for plantations — more than 60,000ha in the past five years alone, much of it old growth dating back long before white settlement. Some of it is turned into saw mill timber to make everything from flooring to furniture, even kitchen cupboards. But, alarmingly, in the eyes of many, the vast bulk winds up as woodchip — more than 90 percent, in fact. Thousands of tonnes an hour shredded into little pieces 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and shipped offshore to make paper for our computers and photocopiers and all the news that's fit to print. What sort of volume are you doing?
JOHN GAY, MANAGING DIRETOR, GUNNS LTD: The machinery at the moment is running at about 900 tonnes per hour.
GRAHAM DAVIS: For the man whose company makes the most money out of this trade, John Gay wants to make one thing clear right from the start.
JOHN GAY: Well, this is the bit that a small minority of people don't like, but it is what makes the engine of the whole industry work.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Without this, would you have a viable timber business in Tasmania?
JOHN GAY: No, and neither would anybody else.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And to those who don't like seeing Australian forests heading off on ships abroad, the head of Gunns' retort is "Don't blame me, blame the Greens". The blocking of the Wesley Vale paper mill still rankles 14 years on.
EVAN ROLLEY, MANAGING DIRECTOR, FORESTRY TASMANIA: Isn't it an irony that it was the Greens who opposed the one single project that would have turned that into local paper ...
GRAHAM DAVIS: Evan Rolley is head of Forestry Tasmania, manager of the state's native forests and Gunn's biggest customer.
EVAN ROLLEY: This is another — people have been telling us for years "We don't want you in native forests, we want you in plantations". So we start plantations. "Oh, we don't like plantations". I mean, you wanna have the paper that you do the interview with, you wanna read the Sydney Morning Herald but you don't want anyone to cut down a tree or plant a plantation. I mean, it's just not possible.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But this is not a story about whether the forests should be logged, nor about the scale of the woodchip trade, however hotly contested those issues might be. Our mission is to try to make sense of the wildly conflicting claims and counterclaims that attend one basic question — is what happens here both responsible and sustainable? Because whether you're for or against forestry in Tasmania, all of the parties have signed on to codes of practice to ensure that the state's trees remain a renewable resource. As government and industry would have it, Tasmanian forestry is [the] world's best practice.
PAUL LENNON, MINISTER, MINERAL ENERGY AND RESOURCES: Let's compare ourselves with our competitors, the Indonesians, the South Americans, the Americans, the Canadians. When you check us out and look at our practices compared with them, then we come up very well.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Well, we'd want to, wouldn't we? I mean, in Indonesia they're ripping ?
PAUL LENNON: Of course we would.
GRAHAM DAVIS: ? these forests out.
PAUL LENNON: But they're our competitors.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But talk to the other side and it's another story altogether. What passes for best practice is Third World best, at best.
SENATOR BOB BROWN, LEADER, AUSTRALIAN GREENS: It's unconscionable that it's happening and it's not just happening here or there. Next when I fly over this state — I look down every time — and I see clear-fell area after clear-fell area where this is happening. They'll do anything to make a quid. They don't care about this state. They don't care about good management. They're in it for a buck and they should be taken on and I'll meet them in an independent inquiry any day.
GRAHAM DAVIS: As the clear-felling goes on, it's difficult to separate the wood from the trees in this debate — the truth obscured by a forest of conflicting legislation, bureaucratic double speak and mud-slinging from both sides. What is clear is that the nation has entrusted this precious resource to a state that allows loggers to regulate themselves. And, as we'll see, what passes for regulation here is essentially no regulation at all. What's emerged here at Reedy Marsh in recent weeks raises serious questions, not only about the conduct of Gunns, but about the whole system of forestry regulation in Tasmania, a system controlled by the state's Forest Practices Board. As the board's head, Graham Wilkinson, tells it, nothing that occurred reflects deficiencies in the system overall.
GRAHAM WILKINSON, CHIEF FOREST PRACTICES OFFICER: I am aware of that case. It's one of these minority of cases that we have where there has been on the surface a very major breakdown in the system.
GRAHAM DAVIS: A major breakdown?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Well, there was a major error. A plan was prepared and was lodged that was not a correct plan.
GRAHAM DAVIS: It was a plan submitted by two forest practices officers employed by Gunns to send the bulldozers in here, to fell these native trees at Reedy Marsh and establish a plantation. The problem is they're rare and endangered forest communities; Gunns had been told so by the board's botanist. But its two officers didn't mention them in the application to log. For environmentalists, it confirms what they've long suspected — the entire system governing forest practice in Tasmania is a sham.
ALISTAIR GRAHAM, TASMANIAN CONSERVATION TRUST: I think, from our point of view, what we would describe as the smoking gun we've been looking for a long time ... We've been hearing anecdotal stories for years now that there is a systematic practice of failing to map forest types which are rare and endangered, because it just complicates decision-making in the forest practices system.
GRAHAM DAVIS: We're on the site Gunns wanted to log with local activist Andrew Ricketts — the man who blew the whistle on what was happening here.
ANDREW RICKETTS, REEDY MARSH CONSERVATION GROUP: If you had self-regulation on the highways and you were driving down the road at 120km/h, would you pull yourself over and stop and write yourself out a ticket?
GRAHAM DAVIS: No.
ANDREW RICKETTS: No, you wouldn't. And we expect this system to work.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Andrew Ricketts points out an endangered forest community of shrubby ovata viminalis, varieties of eucalypt. Nearly 90 percent has been cleared since white settlement. Most of what's left is on private land like this.
ANDREW RICKETTS: In this region it is about 87 percent depleted.
GRAHAM DAVIS: It's true, isn't it, that you placed a moratorium on logging any shrubby ovata viminalis? Is that correct?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: That's correct.
GRAHAM DAVIS: An absolute moratorium?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Yes.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Do you know whether these two forest practices officers of Gunns knew that?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Those officers would have been told there was a moratorium in place.
GRAHAM DAVIS: They would have been?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Yep.
GRAHAM DAVIS: So why are these trees within the parameters of this coupe, as it's called — the area delineated for logging? And why is there no mention of this endangered forest community on the document Gunns prepared here?
JOHN GAY: No, I can't explain that.
GRAHAM DAVIS: You can't explain it?
JOHN GAY: No, I can't.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Have you ?
JOHN GAY: I don't know anything about it.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But perhaps the system provides the best explanation. Anyone wanting to log in Tasmania has to fill out a Forest Practices Plan. But, incredibly, under self-regulation, an employee of the company wanting to log cannot only draw up the plan, but certify it, and then ensure that the logging complies with the rules, the Forest Practices Code.
A Gunns employee working on a Gunns coupe where Gunns wants to log draws up the plan, certifies it and that's it?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: That is the responsibility put on industry to operate within the rules.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But I put it to you, sir, that that's not self-regulation, that's no regulation.
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Well, I mean, I don't know how you could come to that conclusion. That is a system that is transparent. It is auditable, and we can report on performance.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But the fact is only 15 percent of these plans are ever audited, and most of those audits take place after the logging is completed. How can you tell if rare and endangered species have been removed from a site, if all that's left are the stumps?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Well, um, that comes down to the knowledge we have of where these species are. We have very good databases.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Well, after this, they're gone. There's nothing there!
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Well, they're still on a database, Graham.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Doesn't this give rise to the suspicion that Gunns is playing fast and loose with the rules?
JOHN GAY: No, I don't think it does. Don't exaggerate. It is unreasonable for you to say that. We haven't been doing that and we don't intend to.
GRAHAM DAVIS: How can you say that when you say you haven't investigated it?
JOHN GAY: Because it hasn't been put to my desk yet.
GRAHAM DAVIS: One thing seems certain — Gunns had every reason to want to log at Reedy Marsh. These trees, say the experts, a sure sign of fertile soil. Can you understand why this gives rise to suspicion about what went on in this particular instance?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: If you believe in conspiracy theory, then you may draw that conclusion. I think some people may have their doubts about it but, I mean, the board will thoroughly investigate this.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But it will be a thorough investigation by a regulator who's already made up his mind what happened.
GRAHAM WILKINSON: I'm got a serious problem with this plan. Nobody likes to find a major error in their system even if it's ? you know ? a one percent chance, you try to get those out of the system but I'm sure in my mind that this is just down to human error.
GRAHAM DAVIS: There are other glaring omissions from the plan for this coupe. The Gunns employees failed to identify 40ha of this rare forest community, inland amygdalina.
ANDREW RICKETTS: It's very high conservation value in this region.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Why, indeed, does the cover sheet of this plan cover only three of the seven plant communities on this coupe?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: I know this officer. He is a very genuine, committed person. His work has been exemplary. Up until now, I would have absolutely no cause to suspect that he was lying. I mean, he wouldn't do it. This is the regulator speaking, so small wonder that over at Gunns this is all dismissed as a "minor technical problem" and no cause for alarm.
JOHN GAY: Well, I'm sure that the damage will not be great and I'm sure it won't damage this company's credibility.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Right. You seem so sure of that without knowing the details that surely even that raises questions?
JOHN GAY: I'm sure that if there was a serious issue at Reedy Marsh, my people would have told me about it. There'll always be breaches of every code by people. I don't think your industry's 100 percent clean either.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Of course, the head of Gunns is right. It's not a serious issue for the company in the present regulatory environment.
In part two, how the Forest Practices Board crushed one of its officers who tried to enforce standards in the industry.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Is it true, as we've been told, that you gave details of allegations of breaches of the Practices Code to the Ombudsman and Attorney-General in the past 12 months?
BILL MANNING: Yes, but I can't talk to you about any of that.
GRAHAM DAVIS: In forestry circles it's called the perfect burn, the pall, like the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion that sometimes rises over Tasmania when logging residue is set alight. It happens after a forest is felled and the chosen logs are extracted, the flames clearing coupes for the sowing of plantation seedlings. It's burnt with napalm, isn't it?
EVAN ROLLEY: Well, that's very dramatic, isn't it? That's hugely dramatic. That is the safest way to use a liquefied diesel gel ? is the safest way that's been found to light and get ignition.
GRAHAM DAVIS: The head of Forestry Tasmania displaying the kind of defensiveness that permeates the industry here. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with using napalm. I was pointing out that you are using napalm.
EVAN ROLLEY: No, it's a delightful pejorative term ...
GRAHAM DAVIS: Evan Rolley is right to feel embattled, for his own organisation, like Gunns, is also under fire for bending the rules to breaking point. Until recently, this was native forest at Weld Hill and State Forest to boot, owned collectively by all of us, a Tasmanian public resource but part of the national estate as well. The logging contractors have done their work. What's left is, by any measure, a shocking indictment of clear-felling.
FRANK STRIE: If you look just down there now, it's complete devastation. It's a disgrace in an economical sense and ecological sense. It's Third World practice and it shouldn't be done.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Frank Strie is a German-born forester who was once part of this system. He left because he saw far too much of this.
FRANK STRIE: Look at this here. There are tree ferns and sassafras, blackwood and myrtle just wasted.
GRAHAM DAVIS: You say an acceptable level of residue after logging a native forest is five tonnes of wood per hectare. That's right, isn't it? That's in your literature.
EVAN ROLLEY: We say that, if a contractor has been harvesting, and he leaves any more than five tonnes of commercial product — so either saw logs or pulp logs or veneer logs — than the contractor has to go back and remove that commercial material.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Right, well, you better send somebody up there because there's a lot more than five tonnes of wood per hectare up there.
EVAN ROLLEY: Yeah, but is it commercial?
GRAHAM DAVIS: Well, it looked pretty commercial to us and we had our master forester with us and he reckons it's commercial.
EVAN ROLLEY: Well, if he does and there's someone who wishes to buy it, then it will be purchased.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But then we come to this stream, where the residue has simply been bulldozed in, a breach of the Forest Practices Code if ever Frank Strie has seen one.
Frank, this is a stream flowing through this particular coupe. I mean, it's still flowing, but through that! Was that meant to happen?
FRANK STRIE: That should have never happened — where you have an actively strong-flowing stream to have all the debris in the stream. Because what will happen is this will be an inferno running through this water course and life will be extinguished.
GRAHAM DAVIS: It clearly says in the code (that) "harvesting slash," that is the residue, "will not be pushed into streamside reserves". Now, up there it's been pushed into the streams themselves.
EVAN ROLLEY: Well, if it has and if there is evidence that it has ?
GRAHAM DAVIS: We filmed it.
EVAN ROLLEY: Fine. Then make that film available to the Forest Practices Board and if the contractor has breached the code, the contractor will be fined and the contractor will have to go back and remove that debris.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But this is a Forestry Tasmania operation. Doesn't it share the responsibility for what's happened here?
EVAN ROLLEY: Are you seriously suggesting that a forestry staff member has instructed a contractor to breach the code?
GRAHAM DAVIS: I'm not seriously suggesting it, but I tell you your critics are.
EVAN ROLLEY: Well, if they are, let them produce the evidence for that because I know of no-one who wakes up every morning and goes out to work in this industry who sets about to cause damage — none of them.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Well, someone did and there's yet another investigation under way by the Forest Practices Board.
GRAHAM WILKINSON: I'm disappointed with the result because I believe that area could have been logged without the environmental impact.
GRAHAM DAVIS: So what are you going to do about it?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Well, the board will be taking action when the investigation is completed with respect to that matter.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Again, though, signs of a foregone conclusion.
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Now, in situations such as the Weld, quite often we found that the rules haven't been broken, but a better result could have been achieved and that's where we focus our effort. How do we improve the guidelines? How do we improve the operation performance? It's always a balance.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Environmentalists say they've grown accustomed to the balance tipping in the favour of the offender, but in the meantime, have a new cause célèbre. His name is Bill Manning and Tasmanians will hear a lot more about him in the coming days.
Hello, are you Bill Manning?
BILL MANNING, FORMER FOREST PRACTICES AUDITOR: Yeah.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Were you an inspector with the Forest Practices Board?
BILL MANNING: Why?
GRAHAM DAVIS: I'm Graham Davis from the Sunday program at Channel Nine. Is it true, as we've been told, that you gave details of allegations of breaches of the Practices Code to the ombudsman and to the Attorney-General in the last 12 months?
BILL MANNING: Yes, but I can't talk to you about any of that.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Why not?
BILL MANNING: I just can't talk about it, I can't.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Bill Manning used to be an inspector and auditor for the Forest Practices Board, until they took his license away. He's still a public servant and barred by Tasmanian law from talking to the media. But what Sunday has gleaned about his story casts even more doubt on the credibility of the forest regulatory system.
ALISTAIR GRAHAM: He's been around for a very long time, very well known, certainly trustworthy and reliable. I just think he was certainly regarded by the system as zealous, which was undoubtedly true. Most people would think he was just trying to do his job.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But to his boss, Graham Wilkinson, Bill Manning was something else — heavy-handed and inclined to exceed his brief.
GRAHAM WILKINSON: He was an enforcement officer at one stage of his career. He had been moved into the area of auditing and was not required to undertake enforcement work. That was the responsibility of other officers.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Why did you get so upset about what he was doing, which was essentially identifying breaches and telling people not to do it?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: It was the way he did it.
GRAHAM DAVIS: It was precisely this kind of breach on another Forestry Tasmania operation that brought matters to a head three years ago. Sunday has obtained correspondence Manning gave the Government last year about what happened when he issued formal complaints that logging debris had been pushed into streams. He ordered that it be removed, warning, "Failure to comply with this notice could result in a daily penalty." Graham Wilkinson intervened, telling Manning his notice was, "A most heavy-handed and inappropriate way to deal with a perceived problem. I therefore instruct you very clearly that you will not issue Section 41 notices of complaint."
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Well, I think I may have used the words heavy-handed. He was ? he was ignoring the responsibilities of other officers.
GRAHAM DAVIS: You accused Manning of undermining the process of self-regulation, is that right?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Well, what I was saying is that we have a system where we have forest practices officers out there trying to do their job, and we are there to help them do their job. We are not about to move in and have one officer take over responsibility from another officer.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But I guess from what we can gather, he was concerned that the responsibilities on the ground weren't being met.
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Ah, well, if that was his concern, he would report that in the audit and that report would go to the board and it would be published in our annual report, as they were.
GRAHAM DAVIS: But Bill Manning wanted immediate responses to breaches like this, telling Wilkinson he'd only been trying "to resolve what Forest Practices Officers see as bad practice and failure to comply with the Code". He'd said, "You will oversee the complete breakdown of self-regulation unless you act quickly to turn things around." Eight days later, Manning received this letter from Ken Felton, the board's then-chairman. "The board has formally revoked your delegation to lay complaints." Presumably you advised him to do that ? correct?
GRAHAM WILKINSON: Well, that was the decision made by the board on my recommendation.
SENATOR BOB BROWN: It's appalling. Here we have a senior officer, the auditor of Forest Practices, doing his job and effectively being put out of action because of it.
GRAHAM DAVIS: National Greens leader Bob Brown wanting Manning's case investigated.
SENATOR BOB BROWN: I think it must be a judicial inquiry, so it has to be in the order of a royal commission, so that there's power to subpoena people and documents, but also to protect people.
GRAHAM DAVIS: The call by environmentalists for a royal commission into the whole forest industry in Tasmania is long-standing. Their concerns, not just about the regulatory framework, but the impact on such things as water quality and native species. Many here accuse the movement of exaggerating, but it's not just the Greens who get upset.
DON STEERS: Regulation! What regulation? There isn't any.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Don Steers grew up in the bush and once used to snare native wildlife for meat and skins. When that was banned, he turned to state-sanctioned killing, laying a poison called 1080 on forestry coupes.
DON STEERS: I'm just from an old bush family and, fair dinkum, no wonder conservationists and people get upset in this state. They're fully justified and I don't blame them.
GRAHAM DAVIS: When plantation seedlings are laid, the forestry industry protects them from browsing animals by poisoning them with carrots laced with 1080. It was Don Steers' job to lay those carrots and then return to retrieve the dead animals. This amateur video obtained by Sunday is not for the squeamish. The industry insists the animals die quickly. The evidence shows otherwise.
DON STEERS: I can't look you honestly in the face and say that it kills every animal outright, because it doesn't.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Don wasn't allowed to carry a gun, but faced with a dying animal, did what he could.
DON STEERS: I'd have to bash it to death or I'd get me pocket knife out and it might sound harsh, and I had to cut its throat, and that's fair dinkum. That's the God's honest truth. It was just bloody disgusting as far as I was concerned.
GRAHAM DAVIS: And what about the extent of the kill? What sort of figures did you see?
DON STEERS: Hundreds in some cases. Hundreds. Hundreds of dead animals.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Including some protected species, wombats and ring-tailed possums.
DON STEERS: I love ring-tailed possum and to see them, like, there was one block I was on there would have been half a dozen plus, a whole family group obviously under this blackwood. There was a little grove of blackwood trees, only about three or four ? they were all dead.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Again, for many people — and not just the Greens — it's the scale of what's happening in Tasmania that's at issue, not whether logging should or shouldn't take place. Only the most ardent conservationist would want to place 8000 jobs at risk. Yet, if there are rules, they should be adhered to, even if there's no consensus on forestry, more of a balance should be struck. The chasm of perception here is obvious when you go to see logging's Mr Big. What's good for the forestry business in Tasmania is always good for the rest.
How do you feel about protected species dying for your business?
JOHN GAY: Well, there's too many of them and we need to keep them at a reasonable level.
GRAHAM DAVIS: You're saying there's too many wombats and ring-tailed possums?
JOHN GAY: Yes, most certainly.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Why are they protected then? Why are they classed as endangered?
JOHN GAY: Well, because the numbers are getting too great and the ring-tailed possum is a very small proportion of this. It's usually the brush possums that are poisoned, not ring-tails.
GRAHAM DAVIS: Well, how can you say that, though, when you concede that this thing kills everything?
JOHN GAY: Well, that everything that goes there to eat, but I believe it is an acceptable practice.
GRAHAM DAVIS: It is acceptable practice to knock off all the wildlife in the surrounding areas, so that you can put your tree seedlings in?
JOHN GAY: Yes.