Tony Abbott, your Prime Minister and mine, has called loggers "the ultimate conservationists" at a timber industry dinner in Canberra.
Abbott, who probably refers to himself as "the ultimate thinker" and to Scott Morrison as "the ultimate humanitarian", also recommitted to repealing part of Tasmania's Wilderness World Heritage Area.
The Government has formally asked the World Heritage Committee to delist 74,000 of the 170,000 hectares of Tasmanian forest currently protected as a World Heritage area.
"We don't support, as a Government and as a Coalition, further lock-ups of our forests," Abbott said. "We just don't support it. We have quite enough national parks. We have quite enough locked up forests already. In fact, in an important respect, we have too much locked up forest.
"Why should we lock up as some sort of World Heritage sanctuary country that has been logged, degraded or planted for timber? Getting that 74,000 hectares out of World Heritage Listing, it's still going to leave half of Tasmania protected forever, but that will be an important sign to you, to Tasmanians, to the world, that we support the timber industry."
Abbott told the guests at the dinner that Tasmania's forest workers have a friend in Canberra.
"When I look out tonight at an audience of people who work with timber, who work in forests, I don't see people who are environmental vandals; I see people who are the ultimate conservationists."
The response from the Greens has been swift:
"People are going to be pretty upset that Tony Abbott is mounting this massive assault on the environment," Greens leader Christine Milne told the ABC.
"Tony Abbott has got it so wrong. The logging industry was on its knees in Tasmania because around the world nobody wants to buy timber products that come from old growth forest. There's now a high level of recognition that we need to be protecting the last of our primary forests around the world."
Milne insists that, whatever his intentions, Abbott will "destroy the forest industry, not to mention Tasmania's clean, green and clever brand which is our main asset and that comes from our World Heritage area".
So, yeah. This will end well.
[via ABC]
