Thursday, June 11, 2009

Bob Brown pays $240,000 to Forestry Tasmania

Public donations will enable Greens leader Bob Brown to pay off a big legal debt that threatened to cost him his Senate seat.

Senator Brown owes Forestry Tasmania $240,000 after a failed legal bid to stop logging in the Wielangta forest in Tasmania's southeast.

If he failed to pay the bill by the end of the month and was declared bankrupt, he would have been disqualified from the Upper House.

Senator Brown said he had been overwhelmed by the response to his public appeal for help earlier this week and will now be able to get back into the black.

He said over 1000 people had made donations to his cause, mostly small amounts between $10 and $100.

However, there was one $10,000 donation he knew about and he also sold one of his artworks for $20,000 to help fund the legal battle.

"It really just shows how strongly people are concerned about the forests and the wildlife in them," Senator Brown said.

"A lot of them are saying they're not Green voters but they didn't like the way that Forestry Tasmania were threatening my seat in the Senate."

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