This chapter is intended as a broad overview of questions of the present which exist within and have been raised by recent Australian forest politics and which, in a more general way, are an endemic part of modern environmental conflict. Of course these represent the political concerns of the author. The purpose here is to set up what I regard as central thematic issues and introduce arguments which will figure throughout the thesis.

The chapter is in five sections: first, I start by reviewing some of the major explanations offered to the question of why native forests and wilderness issues have dominated the environment movement's agenda and played a leading role in defining recent environmental politics in Australia. Second, the origins and central discourses of modern radical environmentalism are outlined. It is argued that an elitist and ahistorical philosophy of `naturalism' dominates Australian environmental politics. Third, the major features of the political economy of the wood production industry based on native forests is outlined. It is this industry which has mounted a skillful defence of its rights to commercially exploit the forest resource against the potent political challenge of the environment movement. Fourth, I discuss the critical issue of archaeological and paleo-ecological claims about the origins of the Australian forest ecology. I note the use of different histories in contested discourses over Aboriginal use and transformation of the ecology, and about the extent of tree and vegatation cover at the time of European settlement (the question of how `green' was Australia in 1788), especially in the context of the role these discourses play in contemporary land use and management debates. Finally, I briefly examine the issue of distributive justice and its relation to outcomes in social justice terms for the timber workers and ecological justice outcomes for the forest ecosystems. These situations are both implicated in recent conflicts over the forests.

Numerous commentators share the view that Australia's contemporary environmental agenda (since the advent of modern environmentalism during the mid 1960s) and its attendent eco-politics has been dominated by wilderness and forestry issues (Christoff 1993, Tighe and Taplin 1989, West 1991). In this section, attempts to explain this dominance are reviewed. As Christoff (a leading Australian environmental activist) has suggested:

West (1991), in his explanation of the reasons for the environmental agenda being dominanted by wilderness and forestry issues, argues that these issues were not chosen by the environment movement alone, "...the issues were forced upon it by others. The pace and direction of events were determined by those who sought to change the shape of Australia with resource-based projects, particularly mines, dams and forestry developments" (West 1991: 136-137). Such resource projects were not the only industrial, social and ecological forces restructuring Australian society. West suggests there were in fact many potential issues on which an emerging Australian environmentalism could have developed. West's attempted explanation is tautological. He simply asserts that the movement's choice of goals was shaped by the outlook of its leadership core, which he claims was preservationist as opposed to conservationist (West 1991:137). West's argument is that this leadership core "...believed that the Australian wilderness, particularly its forests, should be entirely protected from development. For them, the issue was, above all, spiritual" (West 1991:138).

Tighe and Taplin (1989) have attempted the most substantial explanation to date as to why land-use conflicts, in particular forestry and wilderness issues, have held a dominant place on Australia's environmental agenda. They begin their analysis by pointing out that:

Explaining the dominance of forestry and preservation issues Tighe and Taplin advance the following thesis:

While Tighe and Taplin have directed attention to the support base for forestry and wilderness preservation politics within middle-class urban Australia, Watson's (1990) class analysis takes this theme one step further where he argues that "...the conservationists' concern for the `non-productive' values of the forests was only possible because they did not earn their livelihoods there" (Watson 1990:xix). Watson has been concerned to explore and explain the deep acrimony of forest conflicts and the cultural antagonism between rural timber workers and, what he clearly identifies as, middle class conservationists. Watson uses a class analysis in accounting for the fundamentally different `cultural worlds' and relative resources available for the cultural productions of the above protagonists. His analysis is based on the theoretical view that:

The fundamentally different cultural worlds of the timber workers, as opposed to the conservationists, are related to "...the intellectual division of labour which is dominant in advanced capitalist societies" (Watson 1990:129). The nature of class relations explains the hostility between these protagonists as much as the issues in conflict (Watson 1990:129). For timber workers, native forests are places of work where "...nature is seen primarily as a source of material wealth", in turn, `nature' for conservationists is a "...source of intellectual or spiritual wealth" (Watson 1990:97). According to Watson, contemporary conservationists are part of the new middle class, whose economic rewards are gained from intellectual labour. Watson locates this class group as a fraction of the working class, citing overseas and Australian research which has demonstrated that the vast majority of environmental activists are highly educated and drawn from professional occupations. Further, Watson argues that conservationists have access to a "culture of critical discourse" which has enabled them to successfully transfer "...their city resources - their political and media contacts, their researched arguments, their articulate presentation - into the rustic setting of the bush" (Watson 1990:89).

Watson has been critical of conservationists, in that their construction of nature, of history and their shaping of the cause in an emotive altruism of saving pristine `last remnants', has lead to a "... simplistic view of their adversaries as `puppets'" (Watson 1990:102). This has made it difficult for conservationists to regard "...timber workers as complex humans, with their own sophisticated conceptions of history and nature, and their own personal and legitimate fears about conservation politics" (Watson 1990:102).

Watson's analysis has been outlined at length because it presents the most sustained attempt at applying class analysis to forestry and wilderness conflicts. Issues of class and the applicability of class analysis to an analysis of environmental conflicts, will be extensively reviewed in Chapter 3.

It remains to be pointed out that whatever the merits of Watson's account, it still begs the question of why forestry and wilderness issues have so dominanted new middle class environmental politics in Australia. In addressing this, a most useful perspective has been advanced by Hay and Haward (1988) in their discussion of the relative signifance of anti-nuclear (Europe) and wilderness (North America and Australia) issues. They argue:

Hay and Haward are offering an event-causal explanation, where the perception of the destruction of wilderness areas and the consequent diminishing of wilderness experiences provided the political opportunity on which to base an environmental politics. Not only is the strong reaction to wilderness destruction a reaction to recent past events, it is also a reaction to a continuing visible enemy. The advent of export woodchipping into Australia in 1968 provided much of the `momentum' required for confrontational movement building. Hay and Haward argue that newly politicised citizens, chiefly persons professionally trained in the natural sciences, initially made the running on forestry and wilderness issues in North America and Australasia. These activists were not associated with traditionally-established nature conservation organisations who had enjoyed good relations and access to government.

Hay and Haward point out that these activists were politicised in the context of the analyses and political polemics of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and the neo-Malthusian ecological predictions of the 1960s and early 1970s, and they tended to develop an adversarial attitude to government (Hay and Haward 1988:436). Such activists were given impetus by radical developments in ecological philosophy, chiefly North American and Australian achievements, advocating the extension of moral value and existential rights to nature. These new ecocentric ethical positions focussed on wilderness and forests and provided the political language and the symbolic apparatus for the development of a popular mass movement which was to cut "...across distributive conflicts between labour and capital" (Burgmann 1993:11). In the next section we will further explore the basis and contents of modern environmentalism.

Since the 1960s there has been a distinctive turning point in the political status of `nature' and associated environmental problems and conflict. The subject of `nature' and natural resources has since the 1960s become highly political. `Nature' has become one of the central issues in political and administrative agendas. The politicisation of `nature' has become a new field or problematic for government. It is increasingly accorded extensive scope and resources within the administrative state (Dryzek 1992, Paehlke and Torgenson 1990).

It is argued here that this recent politicisation of `nature' is associated with the development of contemporary environmentalism and its oppositional politics, underpinned by an ecocentric philosophy in which `nature' is viewed in moral, spiritual, and romantic terms. What is distinctive about this movement is that it poses a fundamental challenge to previous conservation thought and state practices. The clash centres around two opposite social constructions of `nature', ecocentric opposed to anthropocentric positions (Eckersley 1992: 26-31, ch2, McLaughlin 1993: chs 4,8, Modavi 1991).

Contemporary ecocentric thought and politics is united by the common thread of `naturalism'. `Naturalism' is based on the separation of nature from society and the related proposition that social organisation should be modelled on the laws of `nature', that we should live by the laws of `nature' (Oechsle cited in Grundmann 1991a:114-115, 1991b:16-28). At its most radical, `naturalism' is reflected in what has been called the deep ecology movement, providing the philosophical and tactical underpinning of the most oppositional positions in recent environmental conflict and politics. This has been the case in wilderness and native forest conflicts in America, Canada and Australia. The development of deep ecology occurred as numerous accounts of ecological problems were published in the post-war period. Studies of population projections, pollution, nuclear radiation, pesticide and chemical poisoning, resource depletion, wildlife and forest disappearance and the deterioration in the quality of life in urban areas, culminated to form a massive survey of the ecological crisis (Lukes 1988:67).

Deep ecology promotes what is considered to be an emerging ecological sensibility, where the attitudes of humans to `nature' are based on a new understanding of humanity as one part, equal with other parts, of `nature' in an interconnected and mutually supportive system. In what is an extension of deep ecology, Fox (1990) has developed what he calls `transpersonal ecology', which is centred on a new definition of self to be found within `nature', not opposed to it. Deep ecology, along with `moral extensionism' which is a movement advocating the extension of human-centred concepts of morality and values onto `nature' (Nash 1990), represent a rupture with anthropocentic worldviews.

Both movements are closely associated with the advent and development of the science of ecology. The term `ecology' derives its use from Haeckel the German biologist and Darwinian, as early as 1868 (Enzensberger 1975:3-4, Nash 1990:ch 3). From its foundation, through the dominant influence of the American plant ecologist, Clements, the dominant view of natural processes was their fundamental interconnection and mutual dependence and the concern with interfering human processes unbalancing natural processes. This view produced key concepts such as; `ecosystem', `dynamic balance' and `states of equilibrium' (Eyerman and Jamison 1991:70). Despite the radical challenge to this ecological position which occurred during the 1960s suggesting nature was not so interdependent but rather was complex and recoverable (and has been interferred with by people for eons) (Barbour 1996:223), the former closed ecological view provided the basis for a new ethical or moral philosophy, an ecophilosophy. As Barbour comments:

This can be regarded as a particular view of ecology suited to the environment movement's challenge to anthropocentric positions toward `nature'. It provides a clear polarisation of an ecocentric/preservation/non-interference position against an anthropocentric/resourcism/nature manipulation position. The movement away from anthropocentrism has a long history which has involved the widening of the originally narrow concerns of the ecological sciences. Influencial in popularising this worldview, in opposition to anthropocentric positions, were Leopold's `land ethic' (1949), Bookchin's anarchist social ecology (1962, 1971), Carson's Silent Spring (1962), Naess's deep ecology (1973), Commoner's first law of ecology (1975), and Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis (1979).

Such positions maturing since the 1960s, represent a substantial challenge to a highly technocratic, economic based and state-sanctioned conservation movement which on all accounts is anthropocentic. Nash has remarked:

The powerful social and political philosophy of modern environmentalism argues the case `...that other beings besides humans are entitled to moral consideration, regardless of their material or spiritual utility for us' (Mathews 1987:38). This radical ecocentric strand of contemporary environmentalism is dissimilar from, and critical of, two versions of conservation/environmentalism: the early resource conservation and preservation movements; and more recently, reform environmentalism or shallow ecology.

The origins of the early resource conservation and preservation movements are often associated with the popularisation of Marsh's Man and Nature; Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (1864). From this time, two major tendencies developed. Both were reactions to the dramatic increase in extractive industries and the colonial industrialisation of agriculture which were central to the rise of industrial and mercantile capital. These developments can be seen as reactions to a short-term utilitarianism or an egocentric ethic which is characterised by unrestrained exploitation of natural resources and expansionism (Fox 1992:2-4, Merchant 1990:46-52).

The first tendency is the development of a `wise use', stewardship and sustainability approach to resource-use derived from Marsh, which gave rise to what has been called the `progressive conservation movement' associated with Gifford Pinchot, the founder and active administrator of the US forest service and who was supported by President Theodore Roosevelt. Here the state takes a central role in resource use, control and planning (Modavi 1991). Hays suggests that this approach was discursively underpinned by a `gospel of efficiency' (Hays 1959).

The second tendency, associated with the American transcentalists Thoreau and Emerson, and advocacy of Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, was based on the romantic traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries and developed around the preservation of `nature' for aesthetic, recreational and spiritual reasons. Although this tendency, often called `romantic preservationism', is regarded as a prelude to recent ecocentric ethics with its call for a moral attitude to nature, not just an economic one, it was in its outlook like progressive conservation, essentially anthropocentric or based on human centred but non-economic uses of `nature' (Mathews 1987:38, Nash 1990:41).

Radical ecocentric environmentalism is critical of reform environmentalism or what the deep ecologists deride as `shallow ecology', seen to emcompass all contemporary philosophies and policies toward environmental problems influenced by human centred motives and/or logic and which reflects technological solutions and a commitment to growth and industrialism. According to Luke (1988), this shallow ecology approach is criticised by ecocentric advocates because of its:

Radical ecocentric environmentalism, in contrast to the environmentalisms discussed above, is fundamentally opposed to industrialism, which is regarded as the root cause of the reification of `nature' and ecological damage (Lukes 1988:68, McLaughlin 1993). The historical tension between the two environmentalisms outlined above has been described in the following way:

As argued above, `naturalism' is the common thread in ecocentric moral and social philosophy. `Naturalism' claims that if `nature's' authority and laws formed the basis of a new social formation, an ecological society, environmental problems would be solved (Grundmann 1991a:114). It is further argued that `naturalism' amounts to a fetishism of `nature' by according it a permanent ontological status or essence with authorial privilege (Quigley 1992:300). This logic of `naturalism':

`Naturalism' fails to adequately account for a fundamentally altered `nature' where human activity, and more recently the far-reaching effects of capital, have so altered `nature' as to render a pristine `nature' no longer possible. `Naturalism's' appeal to external or pristine `nature' fails to account for the processes which have cumulatively and fundamentally transformed the original `nature'. It is, consequently, ahistorical (Grundmann 1991b:17, Martinez Alier 1987, O'Conner 1994, Schmit 1971).

In a tradition of analysis originating with Marx, numerous authors have explored the role of the human labour process in the production and consumption of `nature' (Cotgrove 1976, Grundmann 1991b, O'Connor 1994, Redclift 1987, Schmit 1971, Smith 1984, Williams 1972). Through the labour process, and with the ever-increasing range of technologies, societies have dramatically transformed `nature'. Because of the substantial transformations and the human production of `nature', the premised separation of `nature' from society that `naturalism' advances is consequently a rather particular and contingent, if distorted discursive position.

The position taken in this dissertation accords with Smith's (1984) discussion of the processes involved in the production of `nature', which he bases on Marxist theory. Smith suggests that because we are so used to "...conceiving of nature as external to society, pristine and pre-human..." (Smith 1984:xiv), we find it hard to accept that `nature' is transformed, produced and consumed by the labour process. According to Smith, it is the logic of capital, and in particular, the requirements of capitalist accumulation, that contradicts any separation of `nature' and society. Industrial capitalism is the most substantial phase in the human alteration and appropriation of `nature'. The logic of capital requires that society be more and more bound up in the very production of and commodification of `nature'. Smith argues that:

As well as the above criticism, `naturalism' can be questioned for being nothing other than a social construct. This position suggests that in its attempts to counter and displace anthropocentric attitudes to `nature', it represents another regime of truth which is a "...man-made (sic) interpretation or language game of nature" (Wissenberg 1993:16). The argument in this dissertation is that concepts like `wilderness' which is central to `naturalism', is a social and cultural construct rather than an "...instrinic biophysical reality" (Stankey 1989:10). However, despite its ahistorical nature, and the fact that it represents a social construction of what `nature' is, ecocentric environmentalism has evolved to present a substantial popular political contest with mainstream attitudes and actions which regard `nature' as resources to be developed. The simple way to see this contest is in terms of `resourcism' versus `preservationism' (Oelschlaeger 1991). Resourcism is based on the management of ecosystems for multiple use and sustainable extraction, while preservationism is based on management for limited human interference and ecosystem health and maintainence.

This discussion represents a brief overview of the development of modern ecocentric environmentalism and its principle positions and discourses. It was from these maturing positions that an environment movement would undertake its struggle against the commercial use of forests. In the next section the contemporary configuration of commercial wood production in native forests is examined.

Australia's native forest wood industry has been fashioned by a set of interrelationships between private capital, the state and the forests. Industries were shaped in part by the ecological conditions of the forests. However, in the long process of development in use, the industry has re-shaped the nature of the forests (Dargavel 1988, 1994). These processes of change are highly complex and so far few detailed ecological histories of these processes have been undertaken (notable works in this direction include Dargavel 1983, 1994, Featherson 1985, Mills 1988, Nix 1994, Rolls 1981, 1994).

The following factors have been significant in the structuring of the wood production industry and in the reshaping of native forests. Industries developed as small-scale dispersed operations, especially in the sawmilling sector, with its high level of competition. The earlier sawmilling industry practised a `cut out and move on' approach to the resource, which had implications for the ability of the forests to supply resources in the future and for the long-term viability of regional industries and their social infrastructure. The post World War Two period with increased industrial and consumer demand, saw the introduction of automated technology and a reduction in the number of sawmill operations. However, the forests were generally still cut at rates to suit the "...capacity of the mills...rather than the usually lower capacity of the forest" (Dargavel 1994:90-91).

In that part of the industry where large capital inputs were required, most particularly in the development of pulp and paper mills, resource security had been an important component in investment decisions. From its origins in the 1920s and 1930s, Australia's domestic pulp and paper industry has been monopolistic and politically powerful (Davidson and Stewardson 1979). It had solved its resource security problems by organising long-term and legislated near-monopoly rights over large areas of public forests located near a small number of processing centres. These wood rights can be called `area concession resource regimes'. The key effects of these pulp and paper resource regimes on the forest resource has been the reduction in the availability of sawlogs for sawmilling and the gearing of new forests earmarked for short-term rotations for pulpwood and not sawlogs (the maturity age for sawlogs can be three to four times that of pulpwood).

Resource regimes similar to those for local pulp and paper accompanied the introduction of the export woodchip sector, despite its limited capital input. Since the 1970s, these export operations have massively contributed to the volume and area of pulpwood logging and to the articulation of the sawmilling industry to the large corporate and monopoly bulk fibre woodchipping operations. Further detail on the restructuring which occurred during the 1960s, leading to greater concentration and industrialisation of wood production, is provided in Chapter Five.

The shape of the industrial structure of native forest wood production and processing that evolved by the mid-1980s has been illustrated by Dargavel (1987d). His chart is reproduced here as Table 2.1 to show the industrial structure of the industry. With some minor changes, Dargavel's analysis holds true into the mid 1990s. The industry consists of four basic structures: a mostly self-employed logging and transport sector with minimal unionisation; a widespread and competitive sawmilling sector with numerous independent firms; a domestic pulp and paper sector dominated by a couple of large corporations; and the export woodchip sector consisting of eight separate corporations. The latter three sectors are heavily unionised.

In the political economy indicated by Dargavel, the role of the state has been important. If for no other reason than as owner of the land and timber resources, the formation of state - industrial resource policies is critical in the relationship between capital and the forests. The Australian States have

allowed a nomadic type sawmilling industry and a monopoly pulp industry to overcut a public resource (to log at unsustainable rates). The Resource Assessment Commission (1991:Vol 1), as mentioned earlier, reported that it could not find any State Government which was practising sustained-yield cutting policies in any of their hardwood regions.

Overcutting of native forests by private capital has been at an environmental cost, as well the industry has been sustantially subsidised at public cost. These subsidies come mainly via sales of wood at much less than the cost of growing new forests and the public financing of forest management and industry infrastructure. Clear trends toward mounting deficits in state forestry have been detected as the States have pursued a high-volume-low value industry policy of wood extraction since the release of resources for export woodchipping (Dargavel 1984).

Public subsidies are often justified on the basis of facilitating net social benefits. The premise of much of public forestry policy has been the generation of employment; this was especially the substantive policy goal in permitting the export

woodchip schemes, on the basis that the chips produced would soon be processed in new and local pulp and paper mills. Not only has there been no gain in employment from resource expansion, but trends in automation in the sawmilling sector have lead to employment declines during the 1970s and 1980s (Aitkens 1987:306, Dargevel 1983, Watson 1990:2-9).

The trends of rising state subsidies, declining employment and negative additions to social benefit, lead Dargavel to conclude that, "as it is presently practised, public forestry has an economically regressive effect on the distribution of income" (Dargavel 1987d:54). Such a conclusion refers not only to the lack of any gains from employment from the expansion of volume based export woodchipping, but also to the regressive social costs of regional decline from the state's failure to control cutting rates so that regrowth matches the removal of the old-growth resource. The state has faced impotency in cases of regional de-industrialisation, flowing from rationalisation of operations within the pulp and paper sector and extensive declines in sawlogs in many regions. Future cases of regional de-industrialisation will also result from the quick-cut policies of the woodchip companies, which according to Clark (1992:8) are being driven by the recognition that forthcoming competition from the Pacific Rim will eventually render these operations uneconomic. Of further significance within these trends, as mentioned in Chapter One, is that sawlog removals declined by 2% each year during the 1980s and pulpwood removals increased by 4%. By the end of the 1980s pulpwood constituted 55% of all removals from native forests, compared to only 14% in 1970 (Clark 1992:2).

In the context of trends building up in the Australian plantation sector and in the wood economy of the Pacific Basin, in particular the threat to domestic hardwood markets from softwood plantations and woodchip markets from a maturing pulpwood resource, sectors of the Australian wood political economy face the prospect of collapse. In this context, the state's compliance in the industrial use of marginal wood to expand into short-term high-volume and low-value markets needs to be confronted. One of the major contentions of this dissertation is that such policies are made at the expense of alternatives such as using less wood, especially marginal wood now chipped, in regionally stable value-adding wood industries (with export prospects). The technical requirement for such alternatives and their social and ecological justice implications are the subject of Chapter Nine.

The structure and emerging prospects of native forest wood industries, needs to be placed in the context of the wood industries place in the national economy. Some key indicators are:

The picture that emerges of the Australian wood products industry, based on native forests, is one of considerable size but one unable to meet total local demand. It is an industry functioning on state subsidies and based on volume extraction and low value-adding. It is an industry based on widescale over-cutting, parts of which are nomadic, but in total one that has critically neglectful of the new forests after the initial cutting. It is an industry that is clearly ecologically and socially unsustainable in its present form. It is this industry that has had to defend its position against a mainly urban-based environment movement.

Australia's native forests have been radically changed and reshaped over the past 200 years. However, were these forests untouched prior to this or were they massively altered by prior Aboriginal occupation and use? Debates around these questions have found their way into contemporary land-use conflicts and are examined in the next section.

It is not surprising that rival historical claims and discourses are part of the contestatory politics over Australian native forests. Radically different interpretations of Australian prehistory, Aboriginal settlement and of how `green' was Australia at the time of European settlement have found their way into contemporary land use politics, where they are not insignificant in shaping the debate.

Contemporary discourses differ on the history of Aboriginal use of the environment, especially the exact impact of fire practices in the creation and alteration of forest and woodland cover. Central in these discourses are semantic debates on the extent of tree cover in and around 1788 (Cary and Barr 1992) and whether the forest ecology at the time of colonial settlement was essentially pre-human wilderness or `manufactured' landscape (Head 1989, Horton 1982, Jones 1969).

Political use can be, and is, made of these discourses. The construction of versions of Australia's pre-history and pre-European history often reflect partisan views aimed at winning acceptance of particular discourses of `naturalness' and consequent land-use and management practices (Cary and Barr 1992:7-9, Held 1989:43-46). Partisan historical discourses are used to support positions taken by forces seeking the preservation of wilderness, and the contrary positions taken by natural resource development forces. Each uses historical evidence to support its discourse of tenure, management and sustainability.

"To what extent were Australian vegetation patterns in 1788 a product of human activity?" (Head 1989:37). Were the first white colonialists seeing the primeval forests and woodlands of an unoccupied or passively occupied landmass, or one massively changed by Aboriginal use and systematic alteration? Answers to these questions find their way into contemporary land-use conflict, where the competing forces use differing historical perspectives to support their positions.

It has been argued that Aboriginal fire regimes did have substantial effects on the shape of the Australian landscape, discovered at the time of the colonial invasion (Jones 1969, Cary and Barr 1992a,b, Flannery, 1989, 1995, Pyne 1990, 1992). From this argument, the concept of a `vast virgin land' is a myth: rather, Aboriginals using fire-stick farming, which may have been practiced for 130,000 years, dramatically altered the distribution of the vegetation from forest to open grassy areas.

A politically difficult thesis for the environment movement has been posed by Cary and Barr (1992a,b) and Pyne (1990, 1992) who suggest Aboriginal fire-stick farming "...helped to create and maintain eucalypt-dominated forests" (Cary and Barr 1992b:8). Pyne argues:

What this historical argument points to is, that what is left of Australia's contested forest regime is substantially a creation of human agency. This presents problems for the environmentalists' discourse on wilderness, and the discursive basis of their struggle against the extractive wood industries. This is depicted as a struggle to save direct examples of `pristine nature', which can be looked at (thus the strong visual potential in such campaigns), which can be touched and experienced, and where what is saved offers an immediate and dramatic antithesis of the human experience of advanced capitalist culture. This wilderness ethos is reflected in the description by Dr Bob Brown, former director of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society, "...a region of original Earth where one stands with the senses entirely steeped in Nature and free of the distractions of modern technology" (Brown 1982, quoted in Griffiths 1991:90). Yet, if Pyne and others are correct, often what is being portrayed as the last of `pre-human nature' might in fact be the result of massive human agency, an agency however, that was pre-European.

The fire-stick farming model and the consequent dramatic change in the ecology has been questionned (Horton 1982, Head 1989). The alternative model suggests that there is a "...natural potential fire regime in Australia which Aboriginals observed and made use of..."(Horton 1982:249). In contrast to the fire-stick farming model, where Aboriginals were assumed to use fire to modify the landscape, Horton suggests their role was simply to provide an alternative source of fire, a supplement to natural ignition. Had Aboriginals not inhabited Australia, the distribution of vegetation would have been identical to that found at the time of the white colonial invasion (Horton 1982:249).

This alternative historical theory is part of the environmentalists' reading and fits their discourse which would have Aboriginal society passive and in harmory with `natural' ecology. This discourse has been supported in Governmental statements. The Lands Conservation Council concluded, that "Before the arrival of the Europeans, however, all of Australia was essentially unmodified" (LCC 1990, quoted in Griffiths 1991:94). More recently, the Commonwealth Government has decided that a broad benchmark of 15% of the pre-1788 distribution of each forest community should be represented in statutory conservation reserves (Prime Minister 1995c). The environment movement is pushing for a benchmark of 60%. This thinking can be questioned for assumming that prior to 1788 the land was unmodified (Cary and Barr 1992:7-9, Flannery 1994:378-386, Griffiths 1991:93-96). This perspective:

The notion that Aboriginal society was in harmory with `natural' ecology is promoted by the environment movement. This view it has been suggested is "muddled, based on misinformation, and racist":

There is an uneasy tension between the views and positions of elements within the environment movement and the contemporary Aboriginal land rights movement. The threat of a `Green' cultural imperialism in Australia has been commented on by some green activists who have suggested that:

A manifestation of the tensions between environmentalists and Aboriginal people recently surfaced in Queensland. Here environmental organisations are deeply divided over legislation that would allow Aboriginal groups to make land and management claims over national parks, which in part could lead to the re-introduction of traditional practices such as hunting and fire as management tools (The Age 12 Nov 1991). There is also a tension between environmentalists and some archaeologists:

The environmentalists are not alone in a partial and often biased, use of history. The commercial wood industry refers to the historical record of Aboriginal use and transformation of the Australian ecology, to argue that forestry and woodchipping are just one of many alternative uses of an already altered resource. This is evident in a submission from the industry to a recent Government inquiry:

The wood industry lobby has skillfully used the past sustainable use by Aborigines as support for its alleged sustainable extractive use of forests, claiming the:

The industry claims that its well managed logging programs, which include controlled burning for regeneration, replicate the fire potency of the continent and the history of fire-stick farming by Aborigines, thereby renewing the forests.

The above discussion has attempted to illustrate what can be called the politicisation and opportunistic use of historical analysis in rival land-use and management discourses. The critical question remains, what should be conserved and preserved and what should be used in native forests? "...the vegetation and fire patterns we have now, those that existed 200 years age, or perhaps even earlier" (Head 1989:44). Discussing the case of existing National parks near Sydney, and by implication native forests generally, Flannery has argued that if we choose:

The scenario suggested by Flannery would not suit the romantic views of the environment movement based on scenery and non-interference; it also may not suit the present configuration of the commercial wood industry, for it may not have a role. It most likely would be a management regime based on active forestry without wood production.

Historical disputes are, of course, only part of what is contested. In the next section, the question of social justice and environmental politics is briefly examined.

Debates about social justice and ecological justice have been a central part of the recent contest over native forests in Australia and elsewhere. Theories of justice deal with "the system of liberties and obligations and the distribution of income" (Elster 1992:185). As recent Western contributions to theories of distributive justice indicate, there is no universally accepted theory evident in the radically different normative positions developed by Rawls (1971) and Nozick (1974). As well, more recent work of a more analytical nature on local or adaptive justice (Elster 1992) attempts to examine the nature and operation of notions of justice in the "...processess and decisions whereby most social goods are distributed in comtemporary society" (Schmidt 1992:789). Ester's (1992) work indicates how in its application `justice' is arbitary, contingent and contested.

The rise of radical environmentalism has further complicated approaches to justice by adding into the equation the question of justice for `nature'. Often claims made in social justice terms have fundamentally clashed with alternative claims made on the basis of ecological justice. This has been the case in the real world of forest politics where there is no doubt that there are substantial distributional and social justice issues involved in decisions, to continue to use native forests for industrial purposes, or to preserve them.

The impacts in social justice terms of environmental politics have been complex and contested. The environment movement's philosophies and demands have repeatedly drawn criticism that they are ultimately dismissive of social justice concerns and have generally lead to regressive distributional impacts (Benton 1989, Di Chiro 1996, Enzensberger 1974, White 1996). Since the 1960s there has been "...a perception of tension between societal equity objectives and the environmental agenda" (Paehlke and Rosenau 1993:672). Not long after the advent of the modern environment movement in the US and other advanced societies "...there was a flood of criticism of the social class composition, ideologies, and impacts of environmentalism" (Newby and Buttel 1980:25). Some critics viewed the environment movement as middle class, run and supported by privileged persons "...whose ideologies were insensitive to the needs of the poor, and a thinly veiled guise for the maintenance of privilege" (Newby and Buttel 1980:26). Contemporary environmentalism has been substantially criticised by Marxist and socialist writers. Benton provides a summary of these criticisms of the environment movement:

It has been argued that the evaluation of ecological externalities depends on geography and social class, and the powerful North has attempted to establish an environmental agenda where the "...study of poverty has became more fashionable (and richly funded) than the study of wealth as the main threat to the environment" (Martinez-Alier 1987:xi). The theme of Western cultural imperialism has been developed in the analysis of the dominance of preservation concerns within environmentalism:

Negative equity implications of this Western wilderness imperative when applied to the Third World have been detected in studies of wilderness proposals in the Amazon, Africa and India. In these countries Western concern and power has lead to the introduction of preservation status over land, at the cost of local peoples' homes and livelihoods, and native peoples' being evicted as a preservation measure (Guha 1989, Hecht and Cockburn 1990:228). This Western `wilderness' imperative is driven by monumentalism, the "...wilderness movement itself begun as a nationalist crusade to preserve `monuments' of nature not found in Europe..." (Guha 1991:89). In his native India, Guha claims:

Within advanced industrial societies neither the neo-Malthusianism nor the ecocentric perspectives within the environment movement pay much attention to "...the way capitalist development makes use of the environment" (Redclift 1988:11). There is a tendency within radical environmentalism to depict the ecological crisis as larger than politics, larger than capitalism. The view held by the environment movement, its self understanding as being above traditional politics, has lead to substantial questioning of its lack of concern with social justice and class equity issues:

In terms of Australia's environmental agenda, a prominant environmental activist has remarked that of the major pillars of the modern green movement, social justice has been "...weak and spindly" (Christoff 1993:AO7). In terms of Australian forest conflicts, it has been suggested that the neglect of social justice by the environment movement reflects its movement to the right:

While the issue of job losses and the more general issue of social justice has bedevilled forestry and wilderness politics in Australia, Gerritsen (1990) has been the first to actually initiate discussion of the complex factors involved in considering distributional implications of forest and wilderness preservation. He has suggested that:

This survey of distributional impacts has been criticised for its narrow anthropocentric approach and the concentration on the "...direct consumption of wilderness through recreational use" (Mercer 1991:131). Mercer argues this neglects the rights of the biosphere and a range of other indirect benefits people gain from wilderness areas. It is surprising that in the context of his book about the `question of balance' in natural resource conflicts, Mercer does not propose how any distributional impacts relating to these factors could be empirically measured. What the criticism does do however, is raise the problems of the ecocentric/anthropocentric dualism. As well it indicates the complexity of conducting a quantitative distributional analysis of policy decisions concerning whether to log or preserve native forests.

In terms of the continuing conflict over forestry and wilderness in Australia, the question of social justice translates into asking what are the socio-economic effects of withdrawals of native forests from wood production to meet ecological justice demands. The ambit claim of the Australian Green movement would involve the total de-industrialisation of native forests. A forestry without wood production might also result from continuing the present trends of intensive wood extraction, earlier discussed. Either of these prospects have direct negative impacts on the timber workers and their communities. For them the social justice goal remains access to a sustainable livelihood.

This chapter has discussed a range of issues central to the conflict over native forests in Australia. Aboriginal use and transformation of the ecology by fire-stick farming is historically contested and remains a significant issue in contemporary partisan land-use debates. The claim of pre-human `wilderness' is historically incorrect and racist. The forests have been shaped or reshaped by 200 years of capitalist-state relations of commercial wood exploitation and agriculture, grazing and mining. The Australian wood products industry has over-cut native forests and failed to adequately manage regrowth forests. Large volume and area resource regimes have been provided for export woodchip production and these schemes have become the major target of the environment movement's attempts to de-industrialise native forests in Australia.

The Australian environment movement has been strongly influenced by a radical environmental philosophy dominated by `naturalism' which separates `nature' from society. It is opposed to industrialism and natural resource extraction in particular. This radical position, combined with the middle-class background of environmental activists, has led to recent Australian environmental politics being dominated by forest and wilderness issues. These issues are far removed from the economic positions of the environment movement's mass support base in urban middle-class electorates. The political position and the tactics of the environment movement have alienated timber workers. The question has been posed "...what sort of social existence or class position has determined the shape of deep ecological consciousness" (Luke 1988:85). This question is addressed in the next chapter. I ask what is the nature of recent environment conflict, is it a `new class politics'?