Since the late 1960s the native forests of East Gippsland have been the subject of bitter socio-economic, ecological and cultural conflicts and the site of protracted discursive struggle. The aim of this chapter is to establish the historical and political background to this conflict and struggle.

The chapter provides historical detail concerning East Gippsland and attempts to locate this account within a wider historical and political context. The chapter is organised in four sections: first; an outline is provided of the historical and political factors which have influenced the structure and industrial geography of the timber industry in East Gippsland's forests; second; the focus is widened to examine critical factors occurring during the 1960s which contributed to the changing structure of Australia's native forest wood production; third; the emergence of an environmental discourse challenging the commercial development of `natural' areas and wood production in native forests is outlined and the case of environmental conflict over the Little Desert and the response from the state is examined; last, the early development of an environmental critique of wood production forestry is briefly outlined.

A detailed history of the timber industry of East Gippsland has yet to be written and McKinty's (1969) journal article and Featherson's (1985) study of the ecological effects of early logging remain the major historical sources. In the early European settlement of East Gippsland, timber was first milled for local use in gold mining and for house and farm construction. With the extension of a railway to Orbost in 1916, a local logging industry was established to produce specialty items such as railway sleepers and heavy construction beams. By 1920, 60% of Victoria's requirements for heavy beams and 25 % of railway sleepers were supplied from East Gippsland (from forests east of Nowa Nowa) (McKinty 1969:132).

Sleepers and beams were cut from selected durable species within easy access to the railway line. A harvesting method called `selection logging' was used to extract only high quality trees, particularly the durable species. The selective logging of the coastal mixed species forests led to extensive tracts of fundamentally altered and degraded forest ecosystems. The major impact was the almost total extinction of durable species, and a predominance of less-water-tolerant species, resulting in chronic disease and dieback in these forests (Featherson 1985).

However, in volume-terms the East Gippsland forests played a minor role in the supply of sawn timber products into the Victorian market before 1939. In early 1939 Victoria suffered dramatic bushfires which destroyed the State's major timber supplying forests and provided the historical event that was later to transform East Gippsland into the State's major timber producing region. In the production year 1940/41, the forests of East Gippsland were producing 3,600 cubic metres (m3) of hardwood mill logs, representing 0.5 % of the Victorian production from State forests (LCC:1974:31).

Before the 1939 fires, Victoria's major sawmilling industry had been centred within the Central Highlands close to the Melbourne market. These mountain ash forests supplied construction timbers, especially house framing, fencing and packaging, and also the pulp wood for APM's early pulp and paper mill plant in the LaTrobe Valley at Maryvale. The fires destroyed the bulk of the commercial stands within this forest region. A timber salvage operation lasted throughout the war years, but by 1946 the sawmills in the region had all but completed the processing of fire salvage logs.

With the destruction of the Central Highlands timber resource and increased demand for timber in the post-war housing boom, the Forest Commission was "...constantly proccupied with the structure and location of the hardwood sawmilling industry" (Carron 1985:186). The Commission wanted to control the relocation and structure of the sawmilling industry. The State government, more inclined to rely on market forces, did make a series of decisions which directed sawmilling activity to forest reserves in the east of the State (Carron 1985:187).

The first phase in this relocation, from 1940 to the early 1950s, was from the Central Highlands to the alpine ash forest resource located throughout the Victoria alps. The second phase was the movement from the alpine ash to the forest resources in East Gippsland, progressively from 1950 to the 1970s (Legg 1977). New mills were progressively opened in the East Gippsland region. From six operating mills in 1946, new logging allocations saw 34 mills by 1952 and 43 operating by 1967 (McKinty 1969:139). From 3,600 m3 representing 0.5% of State production in 1940/41, hardwood log production grew to 90,000 m3 or 6.4% of State production in 1951/52 and by 1971/72 to 343,000 m3, representing 26.7% of State production (LCC 1974:31). By the early 1970s the Forest Commission's eastern division, which included the forests of East Gippsland, had became the major hardwood production region in the State, accounting for 40% of Victoria's unseasoned hardwood timber.

The relocation of the major sawmilling activity into the alpine forests and then into the East Gippsland forests, was based on one important policy significant in shaping the forest conflicts to emerge in the post-1968 period. Despite one of the cardinal principles in forestry, that the rate of cutting should match the forests' ability to reproduce and consequently yield a sustainable cut, forests in the Alpine and East Gippsland regions were overlogged, as became evident in later Government inquiries (DCFL 1984, LCC 1974, Office of the Minister for Forests 1982). Under pressure from industry, the Government directed the Forest Commission to pursue policies which permitted rates of cutting to meet market demands rather than regional sustainable yields. This practice was also based, and thus justified at the time, on the long-term plan for the industry to eventually relocate back to forests in the Central Highlands once they had reached commercial maturity. Although there were reductions in logging in the alpine region, the first during the mid 1950s (Fletcher 1991:263-264), East Gippsland's output continued to increase to its high point during the 1970s. There are a number of other significant structural characteristics to the timber industry that developed in East Gippsland, all being important in the subsequent conflicts.

First, the industry was structured on high volume logging, well above a sustainable logging rotation. However, during this early stage the industry could expect to survive on high-volume forest logging until sometime in the mid-1990s. The technical basis of the sawmills constructed in East Gippsland was exclusively centred on production of unseasoned timber products, dominated by high throughput production runs of structural components for house construction, fencing markets and for pallet assembly. Unlike the industry that remained in the Central Highlands and which developed in the alpine forests, no further processing of the logging material beyond the green unseasoned stage was introduced in East Gippsland. No seasoning kilns or specialised product sawing technology was incorporated into any of the regions' sawmills. Thus the technical basis of sawmilling was later to be characterised by the phrase `volume not value'.

Second, a large number of independent sawmills were established to process the logging resource, ranging in both size and ownership. A number of spot mills, often family operated, salvaged small volumes (from 200 to 1000 m3) from the logging areas after larger allocated volumes were removed to supply what were regarded as the major sawmills, which held log allocations ranging from 3000 to 35,000 m3 annually. Of these large mills, only some were owned locally. Mills with the largest allocations tended to be owned by Melbourne-based timber companies or quite large integrated wood and resources-based companies. It was common for some corporate groups, such as APM, to own several sawmills in the East Gippsland region. One important aspect of the timber resource allocation system, unlike the long-term area-based concessions often granted by an independent Act of Parliament to large-scale pulp companies, was that specified log volumes for the sawmills were granted annually in the form of a licence by the Forest Commission operating under powers established in the Forest Act. Yet, by convention, these annual licences were renewed on an ongoing basis and provision was made for their sale. A number of log allocations was subsequently traded, enabling the consolidation and concentration of large allocations.

Third, the expansion of the industry was initially based on selection logging in the coastal forests, but soon moved into the extensive foothill forests. However, during the 1960s, the Forest Commission, based on new research into the technicial, silvicultural and financial benefits of logging and regeneration methods, introduced the harvesting and regeneration practice of clearcutting, more popularly know as clearfelling. Clearfelling is a method of harvesting an area of forest, known as a coupe, where all the merchantable trees, apart from the limited retention of trees for habitat and seed, are felled. As Florence has argued:

The effect of clearfelling in East Gippsland was the dramatic production of immense volumes of logging waste. Because there was no local pulpwood or export woodchip market, only the high-quality sections of trees were removed for sawn timber production from clearfelled coupes. Unlike other hardwood logging areas close to APM's pulp and paper mill and other pulp industries in Victoria, lower quality logs, conventionally termed `pulp logs', could not be removed for sale. In East Gippsland this resulted in up to 70% of the clearfelled tree resource being left on the forest floor. These trees were partially burnt in controlled regeneration fires, but substantial logs remained to suppress regrowth.

The existence of this waste was to become the substance of much of the later environmental conflict in East Gippsland where it became the subject of rival discourses. Related to the existence of this waste was the lack of any markets for the waste residues produced in the East Gippsland sawmills. Sawmills close to woodchip markets could, and most did, install sawmill chippers to process this waste; but in East Gippsland it was burnt in disposal incinerators.

Fourth, along with the effects of clearfelling on the forests were additional pressures on forest management from sawmill companies intent on fast economic returns. With the initial availablity of extensive unlogged forest reserves and in order to maximise throughput from the most solid logs, the regions' sawmills demanded that logging be located in the highest sawlog producing forest areas.

What was most notable in the 1960s was the role played by the district forester Gerry Griffin. Griffin (1993: per comm) was intent on two things: the rational management of forward logging programs; and the restriction of sawmills from gaining access to the more remote, high-altitude mountain and high-quality forest resources of the region. These forest resources were prized by sawmillers because they contained large solid logs suitable for easy throughput in the mills. However, these areas also contained the highest concentration of hardwood species suitable for processing beyond the green unseasoned stage. Griffin's position was that these species should not be logged until such time as the industry developed proposals to install sawing and seasoning equipment to produce high-quality value-added products. Despite pressure from the industry, during the 1960s Griffin drew a critical line on the district map which effectively embargoed the industry from certain high-quality resource areas. These opposite positions were not the subject of a public discourse, rather, they represent a dispute between an official with strong views and sawmillers with particular economic imperatives.

It was not until the late 1970s that Griffin's informal decision was disregarded by district foresters in their forward planning of logging areas (Geary 1993: per comm). However, Griffin's action was to have immense political importance for later land-use conflict because it saved extensive forests from logging, and it was these forests which became the battlegrounds between the industry and environmentalists during the next three decades. It is most probable that, without Griffin's action, little of this forest would have remained unlogged by the time claims for "pristine" national parks and wilderness areas were mounted in the 1970s. Griffin had effectively shaped the forest ground on which there could be struggle.

And last, the expansion of the timber industry throughout the 1950s and 1960s was to have major impacts on the regional economy and social structure of East Gippsland. Timber harvesting and processing became the major industrial activity in the Shire of Orbost where it accounted for 40% of full-time jobs by the 1970s. The industry generated both direct and indirect employment and employees in the industry added to the local population. However, from the present authors experience of living and working in the area, it was found that timber workers were never totally accepted by the mostly conservative local establishment of farmers, small business people and professionals, even though these groups gained both materially and politically from the timber industry. Class divisions between the timber workers and the local establishment, however, were overshadowed in subsequent conflicts between the region and city-based environmentalists.

Significant change in the structure of Australian production forestry occurred during the 1960s, which contributed to a greater industrialisation and corporatisation of wood production from native forests. The hardwood sawmilling sector underwent a transition dominanted by mill modernisations, with investment in automated equipment, and the amalgamation of log allocations. The result was a concentration of ownership by larger corporate groups and in same cases sawmills were taken-over by paper and woodchip corporations at the expense of "...small, private and typically family-owned firms" (Dargavel 1994:6). This was the start of employment loss in the hardwood sawmilling sector (Dargavel 1984, Watson 1990:2-9). In Victoria in 1961 there were 489 sawmills operating, but the number had declined by 1971 to 311. The respective annual output volumes rose from 696,000 to 720,000 m3 (FCV 1979:16).

The 1960s saw expansions of panel and plywood plants and the installation of increased production capacity and additional paper machines in the pulp and paper sector (Dargavel 1984, Davidson and Stewardson 1979:ch4). What distinguishes these industries, is their capital intensive nature and their political ability to secure long-term resource rights, usually in the form of special Acts of Parliament. The pulp and paper companies were given not only long-term volume resource-rights, but actual `area rights' or concessions over substantial tracts of native forests. These concessions were written into legislation. The concession system or area resource regime was adopted for the subsequent export woodchip schemes.

Two further trends in forest policy and practice developed and became entrenched during the 1960s. The first was the practice of multiple-use forest management. The concept was that native forests should be managed on the basis of the multiple products and values they contain. But, as many observers maintain, the practice of multiple-use became dominated by the imperatives of wood supply (Florence 1987:157-158, French 1980:4, Leslie 1987:14-15, Mercer 1990:64-65). Leslie has argued:

Further, the state's forest management services linked clearfelling with multiple-use management. As Florence has suggested, these management services believed:

This alleged distortion of multiple-use practice was to have significance in later land-use conflicts. In Florence's view "...it is this concept of multiple use which seems to me to be at the heart of forest conflict, generating the pressure for withdrawal of forest land from wood production" (Florence 1987:157-158).

A second trend during the 1960s was the development of the national objective of wood self-sufficiency. This was brought about by the perceived long-term decline in native hardwood sawlogs and the shortages and import requirements during World War Two. This objective was realised in an expanded pine plantation program and given effect by State-Commonwealth financial arrangements under the Softwood Forestry Agreements Act 1967 and subsequent Acts (Carron 1990:18). What was important about this pine plantation expansion was that in most cases the State forest management services chose to clearfell broad areas of State-owned native forests of low timber productivity in order to establish the pine plantations (Carron 1990:18-19, Leslie 1987:15, Watson 1990:11). The spectacle of native forest clearing and its replacement with mono-culture tree crops, or as Dargavel terms it, with `silvi-business' (Dargavel 1987:7), provided one of the major triggers for heated protest. The environment movement pressed governments to ban the clearing of native forest for plantations of any kind, softwood or hardwood, and began its advocacy of plantation forestry on already cleared and degraded lands in Australia.

However, it was the establishment of export woodchip operations based in native forests in the latter part of the 1960s that had the most dramatic effect both on the forests and subsequent environmental conflict. As Kellow has argued, the establishment of these schemes was "...the final stage in the shift of emphasis to volume rather than value" (Kellow 1987:265). These export woodchip schemes were encouraged by professional Government foresters because they enabled the removal of low-quality wood from clearfelling operations and the retrieval of additional sawlogs from previously selective logged-over forests. This created the means to a more effective regeneration of faster-growing uniform crops. They also provided markets for sawmill residues.

These export woodchip schemes were a response to the expansion of the Japanese pulp and paper industry during the 1960s. While the Japanese provided the market, State governments provided large area concessions for these schemes and the Commonwealth provided the export licenses. One policy goal in the introduction of these schemes was for the long-term conversion of the exported woodchips in an expanded domestic pulp and paper industry. All five of the original export woodchip licences issued between 1969 and 1971 contained clauses either for the construction of, or full feasibility studies into the construction of, local pulp and or paper mills which would use the woodchip resource.

The initial effects of these export woodchip schemes were dramatic. In Tasmania the actual volume of wood cut doubled in just the first few years. Under most schemes, sawmillers lost their area rights and became dependent for their sawlogs on the integrated operations dominated by the much larger woodchip companies (Conacher 1983, Dargavel 1987c:8). The commencement of these large scale operations was allowed before there was adequate knowledge of their long term impact on sawlog supply, regeneration effects and means of tending the new crops, and the environmental effects on other forest values such as water and habitat (Dargavel 1987c:8-9).

In summary, the structural trends of the 1960s were toward greater concentation of ownership, modernisation and increased mill-size in hardwood sawmilling, and an increase in the capital intensity of the wood industries. Multiple-use forest management became equated with wood production, self-sufficiency policies lead to expanded pine plantations on cleared native forest, and export woodchipping was introduced. All these factors added to the intensification, industrialisation and corporatisation of wood production in native forests. There were financial costs placed on Government by all these factors and during the 1960s, public forestry began to accumulate considerable expenditure losses (Dargavel 1987c:9, Watson 1990:12-18):

This situation, which was to lead to the charge that the state was massively subsidising the private wood industry, and the environmental consequences of public forestry policies and practices that dominated the 1960s, met head-long with the rise of the environment movement at the end of that decade.

Both this and the previous section have outlined the factors forming the political-economic basis of wood production in native forests. These factors represent the non-discursive material forces and context in which environment movement organisations would engage in political conflict. This particular political-economy of wood production contains a considerable embedded power in the form of its historical ecological legacies, its contemporary technological configuration and the political policies supporting it. Until challenged by the environment movement, this embedded power required little supportive public discourse for its ongoing legitimacy. From the early 1970s this situation would change as a new environmental movement was born. The remaining sections of this chapter will outline the beginnings of this environmental challenge.

The protection and preservation of `natural areas' and ecosytems have a long history in Australia (Bardwell 1974, Frawley 1988, Turner 1979). As noted in Chapter One, "...the mosaic of public reserves for flora, fauna, water, scenery and simple enjoyment has been featured on our maps for as long as reserves for timber" (Dargavel 1987c:5-6). However, these early actions to reserve land in parks "...were not manifestations of support for nature conservation but remained firmly within the exploitative pioneering ethic" (Frawley 1988:408). Frawley also suggests:

Yet in the 1960s and the early 1970s, campaigns for the preservation of `natural areas' developed into highly conflictual issues throughout Australia. Conflicts over development or preservation in such cases as: the Little Desert in Victoria; Lake Pedder in south west Tasmania; the Great Barrier Reef and Fraser Island in Queensland; and the Snowy and Blue Mountains in NSW, all became national rather than local issues. These conflicts contributed to an emerging development versus preservation schism and were part of a changing environmental discourse, from conservation to preservation. They were the first manifestations of the `new class' basis of environmental politics founded on post-distributional issues and claims. They mark the beginnings of a social movement politics of wilderness and forest preservation, which as Hall observes is "...aesthetically and spiritual based...the main thrust of such campaigns still relies on emotions, not economics" (Hall 1992:156). It was in this emerging political context that demands would soon be developed for the total exclusion from native forests of resource exploitation, particularly wood production.

The rise of land-use preservation conflicts onto the political agenda, in particular wilderness and forest use conflicts, was a major force leading to significant governmental responses to the emerging environmental activism in Australian politics. I suggest this period is the beginning of a problematic of government centred around native forests. Part of the early responses of government involved an increasing number of formal public hearings and inquiries, including the establishment of specialist agencies for environmental management. Important early initiatives included the requirement for public environmental effects statements of proposed major developments, enacted by the Environment Protection (Impact of Proposals) Act 1974-1975, and in subsequent State government legislation. The creation of a Register of the National Estate was established by the Australian Heritage Commission Act 1975, and was to formally list for protection parts of the natural and cultural environment on the basis of their value to present and future generations.

The conflict over the development or preservation of Victoria's Little Desert is worth some detailed consideration here. It is an important illustration of the type of land-use preservation conflicts of the late 1960s. The nature of the Government's response, in this case, is a classical example of a government establishing a discursive design which was to be of importance in later conflict over the forests of East Gippsland to be considered in the next three chapters.

During the 1960s the Victorian Government developed proposals to subdivide and sell some 80,000 hectares of semi-arid public land in the north-western part of the State known as the Little Desert (Scott 1989:2). The aim of the proposals was to clear the land for grain cultivation. The proposal was not without some initial local opposition and soon spread, to include a broad coalition of agricultural economists, government departments and conservationists. The arguments mounted against the development proposal included the proposition that the land was economically marginal, that the area had tourist potential, and that clearing the area would destroy the unique flora of the region. However, these "...arguments for retaining the area in its natural state were couched in the language of wise stewardship" (Hall 1993:137) and not on the more radical discourses and claims of later conflicts which demanded preservation based on the intrinsic and existence value of `natural areas'.

Despite the growing concern about the Government's development plans for the Little Desert which was reaching the national press agenda, in 1969 the Victorian Minister for Lands, Sir William McDonald, introduced legislation to enable the proposal to proceed. In reaction, conservationists formed the Save Our Bushlands Action Committee, and organised a large protest meeting calling for the area to be declared a National Park (Powell 1988:240-241).

The development proposal generated such public opposition that, at a by-election in late 1969, the Liberal Government received a huge anti-development swing against it and was forced to shelve its proposals (Hall 1993:138). A Government Committee subsequently recommended that the entire area be declared a protected reserve until its recreational and ecological attributes were investigated and reported on to Parliament (Lines 1991:225, Powell 1988:245).

The campaign against the Government's development proposal for the Little Desert was recorded by many researchers as a major turning-point in Australian environmental politics and management (Hall 1993, Lines 1991, Powell 1974, 1988):

In response to the campaign to save the Little Desert from development and the electoral backlash against its ad-hoc land-use policies and planning approach, the Government was forced to look for a more conciliatory and acceptable method of determining public land-use. The then Minister for Conservation, Bill Borthwick, and the Chairman of the Soil Conservation Authority, Geoff Downes, developed proposals concerning a formal governmental mechanism for the review and determination of public land-use (Scott 1989:2). Their proposals were contained in the Lands Conservation Act 1970 which established the Lands Conservation Council (LCC) as a multi-agency statutory advisory body. The LCC was based on the principles of "...independence, expertise, and public consultation" (Scott 1989:3).

The LCC is composed of an independent Chair; the heads of various government agencies concerned with the management of land, water, soils, forests and wildlife; and other members from outside the public service representing conservation, farming and industrial groups. Its functions are to conduct investigations and produce recommendations dealing with public land use. It is directed under legislation to consider "...ecological, landscape, historical, recreation, conservation and preservation aspects of land use in regard to the present and future needs of the people of Victoria" (Carron 1985:206). It is required to provide for public submissions on its reviews and proposed recommendations. To date, its final recommendations to Government have almost always been accepted.

The formatiom of the LCC conforms to Dryzek's (1987, 1990a & b, 1992) concept of state discursive designs, discussed in Chapter Four. It is an example of the state attempting in the face of an intense public conflict, in this case over use of public land, to establish a public sphere aimed at giving rational/knowledge based participation to all parties wanting involvement in a public decision process. The LCC was established to operate as an institutional mediator, processor and arbitrator of rival claims over land use. It uses standard procedures, receives and considers public submissions, commissions outside technical advice and claims to adopt a rational planning approach. It has been described by critics as a means to "...remove the government from areas of controversy" (Lines 1991:226). The LCC's procedure of calling for public submissions has resulted in it becoming an arena for counter demands and discourses mounted by the various forces involved in conflict over land and its resources. As will be demonstrated later in this case study, this has been one of its most critical functions.

The other critical impact of the LCC's formation has been its impact on the Forest Commission near total dominance regarding the management of State public forests. The Forest Commission is a member of the LCC and is obliged to provide it with data, and to reach consensus positions on forest-use with other members of the LCC (Carron 1985:207). It has also to implement LCC recommendations. The advent of the LCC has enabled alternative claims to enter the system of forest management determination. This has had some effect in restricting the previously largely unrestrained power of the Forest Commission to determine forest management regimes in State forests (Sheehan 1977).

During the first half of the 1970s the environment movement, along with a number of academics, began publishing what Mercer calls `counter institutional documents' (Mercer 1987:23). These publications represented significant and influential challenges to existing native forest management policies and political arrangements. They constituted the start of a prolonged modern environmental critique of Australian public forestry.

Major examples of such `counter institutional documents' included: The Fight for the Forests: the takeover of Australian forests for pines, woodchips, and intensive forestry (1973) by R and V. Routley published by the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University; The Alps At The Crossroads: The Quest for an Alpine National Park in Victoria by Dick Johnson for the Victorian National Parks Association (1974); and Vanishing Forests?: woodchip production and the public interest in Tasmania, editored by Dick Jones of the Environment Studies School at the University of Tasmania (1975).

The focus of this emerging critique, which was driven by the anti-industrialism basis of `new class' environmental politics, was the recent commercialisation and the intensive forestry policy adopted and implemented in Australia's native forests. The main targets were the clearfelling and conversion of native forests for monocultured pine planatations, the recent advent of export woodchipping resource concessions in native forests, and the alleged state subsidies to private timber companies. Criticism was also levelled at the forestry profession, especially those foresters who were employed by and running the State's forestry agencies. The critics labelled them a `captured bureaucracy' working with, and for, the benefit of large timber companies.

The book by R and V. Routley is regarded as the first major critique of the timber industry, government industry policy and the State forest agencies. Its highly polemic criticisms were effective on two counts: first, they highlighted the basis in government policy of what they claimed and visually depicted were broadscale clearfelling practices resulting in the devastation of natural native forest areas; and their replacement with industrialised `biological deserts' (Watson 1990:11). And second, the Routleys in labelling the professional Government foresters as `captive bureaucrats', established hostile relations between the environmental movement and State forestry agencies which have persisted over two decades.

This situation provoked strong and heated, but mostly defensive, responses from the State forestry professionals. This attack and counter-attack was to contribute to the development within the forest agencies of a "...siege mentality in most of its dealings with outside critics" (Watson 1990:12). According to Mercer, the Routleys' publication in 1973 marked "...a turning point in a changed consciousness concerning forestry practices on the part of non-professional foresters" (Mercer 1987:19). Such publications add to, and form a significant part of. the emergence of `counter-institutional forces' in Australia, which represent:

However, the critical role and effect of such publications, especially the Routleys, was that they "...crystallised an antagonistic public mood which the timber-first philosphy had been, slowly and unknowingly, provoking for years" (Leslie 1987:15). They represent a case of social movement intellectuals or knowledge providers effecting the critical translation of a range of diffuse concerns over native forests into a public `fact'-based critical account of a social and ecological problem.

The substance of this Green account was the misplaced primacy of wood production policy in the management of native forests and the professional compliance of the forestry profession in implementing and promoting such policy. This account suggested that wood production forestry neglected other uses and values of native forests. Wood production was held to be destroying native forests, which the emerging environment movement held to be, and promoted, as sacred (Easthope and Holloway 1989). As a later critic said "...timber production forestry, indeed, has become one of the conservation movement's chief targets" (French 1980:4). And here these publications had also achieved another important part of the translation process required in the construction of social movement protest. They had named the `antagonist' as wood production forestry. These early Green critiques provided the political overview and unity for the emerging environmemntal campaigns which sprang up in various regional forest locations throughout Australia. Such critiques forced the timber industry and government foresters on to the defensive, and as a result, they also become far more politically aware and tactical, in defense of their positions.

This chapter has presented a brief historical and political background to the case study of environmental conflict over the East Gippsland forests. In the first two sections my primary focus was to outline a history of the major non-discursive elements of wood extraction in East Gippsland and in Australian native forests. The next two sections examined an emerging preservation politics and early governmental responses in Australia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was an prelude to the environment movement's challenge to the dominance of native forests by the wood resource industry and supportive government policies.

As suggested in Chapter Four, non-discursive elements have historical and embedded power effects. In the case of wood extraction, the most noticable effects are found in the dramatic shaping or re-shaping of the forests. This history of effects flows from the political-economic structure of the industry, its embedded technologies in the forests and their ecological effects, and the range of government policy conventions for timber extraction.

I have noted two major periods of wood extraction in East Gippsland prior to the 1970s when wood extraction became contested by the newly constituted environment movement. The first (1920-1939), saw the durable species in the mixed coastal forests selectively cut for sleepers and heavy beams. These durable species did not regenerate as rapidly as other species, producing a fundamentally unbalanced ecology and disease/die-back conditions over extensive areas of this coastal forest ecosystem. The fate of these degraded forests (approximately 200,000 hectares) would become the subject of later environmental conflict and the subject of a restoration/employment plan proposed in this thesis.

The second period (1939-1968) saw a major expansion of the sawmilling industry with East Gippsland becoming the State's major producer of unseasoned timber for housing, fencing and packaging. Such expansion resulted from the 1939 bushfires which destroyed Victoria's major timber industry in the Central Highlands. This, and the demand for timber in the post World War Two housing boom, led to the extensive opening-up of the foothill and mountain forests in East Gippsland. The industry that developed was high-volume and low-value with almost no value-adding beyond the unseasoned stage. The industry was based on levels of logging that were, in the long-term unsustainable. This was central to Government policy, which planned to over-cut East Gippsland until the sawmilling industry could relocate to the Central Highland forests after they had regrown.

Two additional elements were added during the 1960s. These would further effect the shape of the forests of East Gippsland. First, the harvesting method of clearfelling was introduced in the early 1960s. Essentially, clearfelling cuts almost all standing trees in a single and often large area of forest (a forest `coupe'). In East Gippsland, with no markets for logging waste (called pulpwood), clearfelling resulted in large volumes of logs being left in the forests to be burnt and to rot. However, this unused pulpwood created the prospect for the establishment of a pulpwood/woodchip industry. Second, during the 1960s decisions of Gerry Griffin (district forester) denied the industry access to extensive areas of foothill and high allitude forests until investment in further processing was undertaken. His action shaped the region's forests so that by the 1970s there were still large tracts of old-growth forests which remained untouched by logging. Later the environment movement would make these forests central icons to be saved.

During the 1960s, major structural change occurred in Australia's native forest wood production industry. There was a concentration in the ownership of the industry and large investments in automated technology, leading to lost employment. Clearfelling became the dominant logging technique across Australia. A `wood production first' discourse drove forest management policy. By the end of the 1960s, the Australian export woodchip industry had commenced, based on large long-term resource regime concessions. From its very inception, export woodchipping dominated logging and sawlog supply arrangements. As we will see in the next three chapters, it was the advent and ongoing expansion of export woodchipping, and its prospects in East Gippsland which would become a major object of conflictual public discourse.

Towards the end of the 1960s a series of conflicts over the development of `natural/wilderness' areas emerged in Australian politics. At this time, the discourses deployed against proposals to develop `natural areas' drew on a long tradition of conservation thought, based on `wise-use' of natural resource and the recreation and romantic preservation concerns over `natural' landscapes. I noted that Governments responded to these early environmental conflicts with environmental laws and arrangements for public participation in land-use planning. The chapter payed particular attention to the Little Desert conflict which resulted in the creation of the Lands Conservation Council to review public land-use across Victoria. This was to be a highly significant `discursive design' of government. As a mode of `official' inquiry it provided extensive public participation in its processes. As will be demonstrated, the Lands Conservation Council would play a critical role in the events of the East Gippsland forest conflict.

In the wake of these early conflicts, during the early 1970s, environment movement intellectuals produced substantial publications critical of the native forest wood production industry. Central objects of these critiques were: the clearing of native forests for pine plantations; the ecological effects of the early export woodchip schemes; and professional Government foresters who were called a `captive' bureaucracy. Counterposed, were the environmental beauty and assets of what were depicted as ancient pristine forests. These publications represent an example of the process of `translation' of initial concerns into a popular cause. As such, they were important discursive events, pivotal in providing an initial shape to environmental public protest, discourses and demands over the forests.

The forests of East Gippsland became one of the sites in a long-running and bitter environmental conflict between the forces of resource development and the forces of preservation. In the next chapter I take up the East Gippsland conflict in detail and look at the period 1968 to 1982. During this time, discourses on woodchipping, parks and sustainability were to shape the nature of the forest conflict, a political conflict which quickly became a major `problematic of government'. This period, as the next chapter indicates, saw a major discursive change in the basis of environmental concern: from the traditional `wise-use' stewardship and romantic conservation to a more politically radical `preservation - nature first' discourse. As argued in this dissertation, this new discourse on `nature' correlates with: the development of the modern environment movement; the `new class' support basis of environmental politics; and the increasing class nature of conflict over `nature'. In Australia, the central objects of this new environmental politics became native forests and wilderness.