Senator Christine Milne on Tiwi Islands

Just before 1pm today, Northern Territory time, Senator Christine Milne spoke about the Tiwi Islands in the Australian Senate. The speech questioned to the breaching of environmental conditions, financial improprieties and arrangements for the project and the landclearing of native vegetation.

This was contrasted with the Howard Government’s position of landclearing in the tropics, where they have allocated 200 million to reduce landclearing. 

More to come…

Woodchip plantation breached environmental conditions: report

 A Northern Territory Government report has described “widespread and systematic” breaches of biodiversity conditions by Great Southern Plantations on the Tiwi Islands. The ABC’s Background Briefing has obtained a confidential Territory Government assessment of the Tiwi Islands woodchip plantation. The document says there has been a poor level of compliance with federal biodiversity conditions. It states “the lack of action is clearly to the advantage of the forestry company”. Professor Steve Garnet from Charles Darwin University says only some of the required environmental surveys have been completed.

A timber plantation on Melville Island. (ABC: Wendy Carlisle) 

“We’ve asked them why they haven’t been done but they haven’t given a reason for not doing them,” he said. Great Southern Plantation’s spokesman David Ikin says no rainforest has been chopped down. “It’s converting eucalypt open forest woodland to jobs for Indigenous Australians,” he said. Mr Ikin declined to comment on a Commonwealth investigation into allegations that buffer zones have been cleared. from the abc…

Timber, tax and the Tiwis

Below are links to Wendy Carlisle’s breaking story on ABC’s background briefingAustralia has promised $200 million to Southeast Asia to stop deforestation, but on the rich Tiwi Islands priceless and irreplaceable native forests are cut down and burnt to grow plantation timber for wood chips for Japan. It’s really a tax minimisation scheme and Tiwi forests could be worth more to the locals in carbon trading. Reporter: Wendy Carlisle.

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from the ABC…