Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Get Up!: Tasmanian Forests Win

This morning the World Heritage Committee emphatically rejected Prime Minister Tony Abbott's submission to have Tasmania's ancient forests stripped of their protection status and opened to logging!


It took the 21 delegate World Heritage Committee less than 7 minutes to unanimously reject the Abbott Government proposal, stating that:

"The justification presented to the reduction are, to say the least, feeble. Accepting this delisting today would be setting an unacceptable precedent...we cannot also disregard the positions voiced in this issue by the Australian Senate, by nature conservation associations and I would dare say, most of all, by Indigenous communities."

The conservative attack on our forests was underhanded and deceitful. Although Abbott's submission to the World Heritage Committee was contradicted by the Department of Environment, other right-wing forces tried every decietful trick in the book. A fake environment group misleadingly called Australian Environment Foundation which was founded by the Institute for Public Affairs even entered the international negotiations with the intention of confusing the Committee and pretending to represent the environment movement. 

But luckily, the story didn't end there.

Our movement stood up and fought hard to defend the forests - and a genuine, massive, heartfelt public response is something the conservatives just can't fake, which is why GetUp members continue to make a difference.


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