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Blaike McDougall holds aloft the Sale Cup, after riding favourite Maktoob to victory on Sunday. Sale Turf Club hosted another great event for its major meeting, which had all the usual attractions. SALE CUP DAY PAGES 30-31
Unsupportive timber statement Philip Hopkins
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FOREST industry leader and a former leading federal ALP Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, has blasted former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and green ideologues for their opposition to the native forestry sector and denying the role the sector makes in fighting climate change. Mr Fitzgibbon, the chair of the Australian Forest Product Association, said his passion for the forest industry caused him to spend much of his time fighting extreme environmental activists - people he believes are driven more by ideology than outcomes. "Those who push fiction over facts. Those who misrepresent science and physics to achieve their jobs and valuedestroying objectives," he told a recent Australian and New Zealand Institute of Foresters conference. Mr Fitzgibbon, an MHR for 26 years,
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industry. Not just parts of it, the whole value chain. So too has Forestry Minister Murray Watt and his Opposition counterpart." This included the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, who recently told Parliament of the government's support for the sustainable native forest sector. "One of the things I have never understood ... is why it has been the position of the Greens political party that it’s alright to have logging offshore, in countries with lower levels of regulation, than it is to have in Australia, and I can say that from first-hand experience", Mr Fitzgibbon said. "The question becomes, why is there such a mismatch between our social licence and our political support? The answer is - at the risk of stating the obvious - knowledge or lack of it," Mr Fitzgibbon said.
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know this, that’s why they support our industry," he said. "Of course, the now former Premier of Victoria is not one of them. He shut down his native industry and then turned to Tasmania to secure the hardwood product his communities need and like so much." Mr Fitzgibbon said there was often a strong correlation between the level of an industry’s political capital and the level of community support. "Despite patchy and relatively low levels of community support, forestry enjoys a healthy level of support amongst our political leaders. Sure, state governments in Victoria and Western Australia have closed down their native forest industries, but in Canberra, support is strong. It’s also strong in other states," he said. "Indeed, in the last 12 months both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader have attended AFPA’s dinners to express their support for all of our
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is a former Minister for Defence and a former Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. Mr Fitzgibbon criticised claims that half of Australia’s native forests had been lost due to 'industrial logging'. "That’s right, the industry which we know, has access to less than four per cent of our native forest estate.” "Friends, we know our selective and sophisticated native timber industry is sustainable and those who work in it already have jobs. And we know that while we are working hard with government to expand our plantation estate, it cannot in the foreseeable future, replace the product that comes from our native estate,” Fitzgibbon said. "The statement is not supportive of timber workers, it’s an insult." Mr Fitzgibbon rejected claims that ending native harvesting would be good for climate change and biodiversity, yet the opposite was true. "Thankfully, most political leaders
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