Employment: the drover's gone from the outback

"I think that the great shame of the administration of the environment is that they have encouraged a division in the community with a simple lie about it being a matter of jobs and that puts the fear of unemployment into people who are just living on an economic edge. And the terrible truth is that they are going to be out of work anyway, because the little mills are all closing. I know, my mates had little mills. They're closing, there's less and less of the forest. We're not bringing plantation on line and we're selling this, it¹s too hard for us to work it, we're selling it to someone for nothing. It¹s not worth doing that with, it¹s not worth grabbing all the last fish in the sea and selling them off for fertilizer and that¹s kind of what we're doing with the trees. And if are that way inclined toward our environment imagine how we¹re inclined towards each other. That¹s why I feel strongly about it because I feel it reflects an attitude towards our common heritage and it¹s something that could easily be remedied.

We even have precedents in the closing down of the whaling industry, we're not even talking about closing down the timber industry, we're still talking about cutting timber for housing, we're talking about closing down the oldgrowth forests, as it has been done elsewhere in Australia, and let¹s get on with a timber industry that is in a state of change. The drover¹s gone from the outback. The man cutting the saw with the bullock is gone and replaced by Mr Stihll¹s chainsaw and trucks and that is now going to a point where there are fewer trucks fewer men working on the job. 75 people were put out of work 2 days ago in Tasmania in the timber industry and they are full on woodchipping. "

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-Some images from the press conference-
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