Given the central importance of forest issues in recent politics it is surprising that Watson's (1990) and Dargavel's (1995) are the only book length works published on the subject. Important unpublished work has been undertaken by Dargavel, Economou, Legg, Taplin, Tighe (see Bibliography). Hopefully this dissertation will add to the list.

Over the past 25 years Australia's native forests have been bitterly contested. The political struggle over forests and wilderness has supported the growth and shape of an environmental social movement. Forest and widerness issues, not the most ecologically important trouble spots, have defined the nature of contemporary environmental politics in this country. These issues also are spatially separated from the personal and economic interests of urban populations who have supported the environment movement's forest campaigns.

The basis of this conflict is fundamentally opposed value positions, rooted in anthropocentric verses ecocentric attitudes to environmental resources and to what `nature' is. The conflicting agendas can be summarised as `preservationism' verses `resourcism'. The environment movement has demanded the preservation of forests on the basis of the intrinsic and existence rights of `nature'. The goal of the movement's politics has been to de-industrialise the forests and place a new regime of human non-interference over them. Powerful forces behind wood extraction have fought the environment movement's agenda and sought to re-legitimise their position in the forests.

These forces have strategically engaged in a power struggle over which particular discourse on `nature' will be imposed on the forests. The resultant environmental politics became a major problematic for government resulting in inquiries, new bureaucracy, knowledge production and official discourse on the forests. Forests have been added to the domain of governmentality. Outcomes have been based on the mutation in discourse where governments have divided the forests into distinct areas allocated to preservation (a national reserve system) and resourcism (commercial logging zones).

This dissertation had three broad research objectives. First, it developed a general theoretical framework to study environment conflicts. Forest conflicts are seen as predominantly part of a new politics, driven by a new class (the intellectually trained employed in state human services) which is an outcome of structural change in advanced industrial societies. This new class force has politicised `nature' in an oppositional politics generating a new social movement able to translate radical environmental philosophy into concrete political demands. Its political engagement has not been without elements of incorporation into mainstream politics. One important finding is the extent of the environment movement's involvement in official knowledge production and interventionist policing and administration of the forests. Forest conflict is a contest over power. Theoretically a contested concept, conventional theories study power as a capacity in concrete sets of decisions, non-decisions, and the shaping of consciousness, with attention on the actors involved. While the former is useful, the alternative approach of Michel Foucault has been adopted in this dissertation. It sees power operating through discourses and the apparatus of governmentality, to facilitate certain things and deny others, to render things subject to knowledge and intervention.

Second, the dissertation has constructed a case study of forest conflict in East Gippsland. The method used follows from Foucault's theoretical position. It has been concerned to document what Foucault calls the `eventualisation' of the case. This involves using descriptive historical methods to trace the development and deployment of discourses and their effect on shaping a problematic of government and securing outcomes. The case study shows how discourses on woodchipping, national parks, sustainability and forest employment formed the substance of a conflictual `discursive formation' over the forests. These issues and their respective discursive economies were worked over and rendered the subject of discursive realignment and change to emerge in mutated form in official governmental discourses on the forests. That the forests have been subjected to division, to meet the class positions and claims of preservation and resourcism, is the key finding of the case study.

Third, the dissertation has been concerned with the prospects for East Gippsland resulting from the outcome of conflict. Despite the employment question being pivotal on forest outcomes, neither the environment movement nor the timber industry have delivered in social justice terms, a successful outcome for forest workers. The environmental movement, it can be argued, remains post-distributional towards the situation facing workers, and racist in regard to past Aboriginal occupation and use of forests. The timber industry has used workers as a political barrier to preservation. It has provided little to replace its short term, capital deficient industry strategy, leaving workers with little employment security. This dissertation has proposed an alternative direction in the East Gippsland case. This involves a restoration plan for degraded forests, using the wood produced in value adding processing which, on the basis of existing research, would cut the rate of logging by one half and secure and increase employment.

The dissertation points to further research. The logistical details and economics of the forest restoration and industry restructuring proposal requires urgent research. It also needs advocacy among unions and environmental organisations. A quantitative distributional analysis would be a useful empirical addition to the assessment of the outcomes of forest conflicts. Additional case studies of other regional forest and wilderness conflict would also build a comprehensive body of study to this important chapter in our environmmental history.

It is important to note that although the ALP was defeated in the March 1996 Federal elections, the new Coalition Government has continued its forest package. However, it has lifted Labor's 5.2 million tonne limit on export woodchips to 6.2 million, pending the rapid completion of Regional Forest Agreements (RFA's) (Anderson 1996, Anderson and Hill 1996). After six months of public consultation and the conducting of an `official' Comprehensive Regional Assessment (CRA 1996), an RFA for East Gippsland was signed in January 1997. This was the first RFA in Australia and it transferred a further 1 % of production forests to preservation to make up a `regional reserve system'. It also removed any restrictions on export woodchips from forests outside the new reserve system.

On 17 February 1997, the new Commonwealth Government issued new 20 year licenses with no volume restrictions to several companies to export woodchips from East Gippsland. The next strategic contest will concern which company will gain the final rights to the residual logs and how these logs will be processed. The results of this contest will determine the fate of a large part of East Gippsland's forests and its timber workers. It appears that in this contest the environment movement has been marginalised. However, environmental activists have continued their border raids. By July 1997, there had been 150 activists arrested for blockading logging operations in East Gippsland.