Using Foucault's theory of power through discourse, the case study of forest conflict has attempted to present a `history of the present'. This has been achieved by assembling an archive of the multiplication of forces, events, causes and effects of the political conflict over the forests of East Gippsland. This prolonged conflict and governmental intervention has effected new relations of power.

This chapter has two aims. The first involves a summary of the key points in the case study and the interpretive analyses I have made so far; I highlight the significant material and historical contexts (the non-discursive) of the forest conflict, show the dominant discourses and their deployment, and dimensions of governmentality surrounding, shaping and partly containing the conflict. This, as indicated in Chapter Four, provides the platform for comment on outcomes, the extent of realised positions and claims and the detection of repressed or ignored positions. The section concludes with a critical comment on the current prospects facing East Gippsland.

The second section outlines a proposal for change in the East Gippsland timber industry and within production forests. This proposal is based on two marginalised, if not repressed, discourses. These discourses concern the state and future of the substantial degraded forests and the value-adding and employment possibilities indicated by research on the pulp or woodchip log resource in the region. These discourses can inform the combining of an industry restructuring strategy with a forest restoration strategy, having the effect of synthesizing the positions of ecological justice and social justice. Such a result would be significantly different from current outcomes based on the view that these two positions are opposed (where the best result is seen to be some form of balance reflected in the division of forests between the forces of forest resource extraction and forest preservation).

The prolonged, socially divisive and bitter conflict over the East Gippsland forests can be described as a conflict between resourcism and preservation. These are of course substantial positions, with powerful justificatory discourses deployed by polarised social forces. I argue that these can be located against the particular class positions which have been constructed within the conflict and struggle over the forest: (1) the class positions of private capital involved in the exploitation of native forest resources along with forces within the social state which rely on the accumulation of profit by capitalism; (2) the class position of new class environmentalists and their allies more generally located within the urban middle classes who want forests de-industrialised and preserved; and, (3) the rural based industrial working class who see the forests as their source of work.

The forests of East Gippsland from the early 1970s became politically contested by these class forces. It is important to note that in the face of the environment movement's challenge, timber workers have locked their position in behind those of the owners of the timber industry. The industry has successfully used the situation of timber workers in their employment discourse as a barrier to the totality of environmentalists' claims over the forests. However, timber workers have not contested the industry policies of capital in the forests which are generally short-term, and in the Australian case are leading to a forestry without wood production. For instance, the dominance of wood production by export woodchip companies has every possibility of leaving timber workers subject to the cyclical nature of the international pulp and paper market and to global shifts in the location of resource extraction. There is little evidence of any dialogue between environmentalists and timber workers, and as mentioned in Chapter One, this is a result of the cultural impasse of environmentalists who have been too ready to label timber workers as puppets of capital, and consequently to de-value the voice of the workers.

The contest over East Gippsland's native forests which emerged in the 1970s was played out against the backdrop of the material and technological configuration of the timber industry and its arrangements with Government forestry bureaucrats. Prior to being challenged by the environmental movement, these forces were driven by a `primacy of wood' philosophy with a residual and token allocation of forest for conservation purposes (usually recreational). This is shown on the map of existing National parks and recreational reserves at the time of the first LCC review in 1974 (see Map 9.2). This approach to the use of the forests could be successfully portrayed within the dominant rural pioneering ethos of spirited manual work carried out by the rugged individualist Australian male. This of course did not convey the reality of the timber worker, of a low paid, dirty and dangerous life in small isolated townships.

From the 1920s the coastal mixed species forests were selectively logged for durable species to make sleepers and beams. These water tolerant species did not naturally regenerate, leaving the less water tolerant silvertop gums to dominate the forests with associated chronic die-back. In this way nearly 200,000 hectares of forest were fundamentally altered and ecologically degraded (see Chapter Five). With the destruction of the major commercial wood forests in the 1939 Victorian bushfires, the mountain and high altitude forests of East Gippsland were progressively opened up to the timber industry. Logging was permitted well above the rate the forests could sustain, on the basis of Government policy, who planned the relocation of the industry to the 1939 fire destroyed forests after they had reached commercial maturity.

The technical basis of the sawmilling industry established in East Gippsland was rudimentary. This industry produced low-value unseasoned timbers in large volumes. There was no investment in value-adding technology. In Chapter Five I noted that historically important for environmentalists was the action of the district forester Gerry Griffin who, during the 1960s and early 1970s, embargoed the industry from high-quality wood producing areas until it invested in value-adding technology. This was to save large tracts of unlogged forests that later became the icon areas in environmental campaigns.

By the early 1960s clearfelling had replaced selective logging. This logging technique, without commercial markets for low-quality wood, left large volumes of wood in the forest after the removal of sawlogs. No markets for this wood waste existed in East Gippsland until the introduction of export woodchipping in Australia post-1969. It is interesting to note that in 1969 the Government unsuccessfully tendered this `waste' wood (called pulp or woodchip logs) for commercial development without environmental protest.

The `primacy of wood' philosophy and the clearing of forests for plantations of pine disturbed early critics of the commercial exploitation of native forests. However, it was the widespread introduction of clearfelling during the 1960s and development in the early 1970s of export woodchip operations (which used the waste created in clearfelling) that provided the major substance of an effective critique of production forestry developed by environmental intellectuals (see Chapter Two and Five). They named the timber industry, particularly the export woodchip companies and supportive Government bureaucrats as the `antagonists' in the struggle over the forests. This critique of production forestry was important in the initial process of the translation of an emerging environment movement's perception and background knowledge of the forest problem into a focussed set of issues. It enabled the generation of core public discourses so important in the social construction of protest and for movement mobilisation (see Chapter Three).

By the mid 1970s an environmental social movement politics, centred on forests and wilderness, had been established in Australia. While this new movement had drawn on existing concern with nature conservation, in particular the campaigns of the 1960s over `pristine' wilderness areas, it represented a distinct transformation of discourse and political strategy. The existing positions on nature conservation had been advocated by mainstream conservation organisations. They were based on human-centred (anthropocentric) discourses; wise use stewardship, recreation and scenic tourism and romantic landscape images. In contrast, a new ecocentric philosophy and radical environmental politics had emerged from the 1960s which was fundamentally opposed to `industrialism' and its exploitation of `nature' (see Chapter Two).

Significantly, part of a new class politics arose in the industrialised Western world concerned with the obsessive dominance of discourses of growth and material development. This new environmentalism rapidly established itself as a new social movement, struggling to secure what Touraine calls a new `historicity' (see Chapter Three) by its proposal for a new social relationship with `nature'. This new `historicity, is to be based first, on extending natural rights to `nature' and second, by claiming respect for `nature' on the basis of its intrinsic and existence values. This position, as I suggested in Chapter Two, is underpinned by an unhistorical philosophy of `naturalism' finding its most radical expression in the deep ecology movement with its slogan `nature first'. This new environmentalism, it was argued, is a movement that has in the main been constructed and supported by the `new class' of intellectually-trained and state-supported professionals in the cultural and social services industries (see Chapter Three). In Chapter Two I argued that this `new class' environmentalism has produced claims and discourses on Australian forests and wilderness which are in the conventional sense post-distributional.

In Europe this new environmental politics focussed on the nuclear threat and industrial pollution. Australia's focus however, was native forests and wilderness. In fact these issues have dominanted contemporary Australian environmental politics (see Chapter Two). As earlier noted, while the Victorian Government in 1969 could call for export woodchipping in East Gippsland without drawing any environmental protest, just five years later, the environment movement launched its claims and supportive discourse for the total preservation of native forest and wilderness. This new discourse contained the very visual depiction of the effects of `industrialism' on the forests with recently clearfelled forests against standing `virgin' forests (see an often-used example in Figure 9.1). During the first Lands Conservation Council review of East Gippsland (LCC) land-use (1974-1977) key environment groups developed and deployed discourses that linked clearfelling to the export woodchip industry and attacked the excessive and wasteful use of packaging and paper products this forest industry produced.

Complementary discourses from the environment movement show the influence of radical environmental philosophy, especially deep ecology. All were underpinned by the basic claim that forests and wilderness ought to be preserved in their `natural state'. On this basis we can understand the use of ecological discourses that deal with the timber industry's savage destruction of old-growth forests denying the forest the right to progress through its full growth and successional processes, with the associated loss of bio-diversity and genetic assets. The movement effectively deployed discourses which counterposed the industrial view of forests as resources to be mined, with the view of preserved forests as spiritual and aesthetic havens standing against the mono-culture of industrial and consumer society. To defend itself from the charge of job destruction, the movement deployed subsidiary discourses concerned with alternative employment for timber workers, especially in imaged environmentally sensitive tourism.

In the face of this radical attack, the timber industry and government foresters generated counter-discourses. Foresters drew on their professional science base to defend clearfelling as an appropriate method of extracting wood and renewing the forests. The industry consistently deployed the discourse that forests were renewable against the charge of destruction. The industry used in its political campaigns a particular `knowledge' of fire renewing ecological processes in Australia and the sustainable Aboriginal use of fire for regrowth (see Chapter Two). This found its popular expression in the industry's campaign slogan `Growth and Regrowth'. This discourse has been skillfully intertwined with the achilles heel of environmentalists' demands for preservation, the industry discourse on forest employment.

The future of the timber workers and the rural communities, dependent on the continued industrial use of native forests, has been deployed by the timber industry as an effective political barrier in the face of constant environmental demands that forests be preserved. It is around these discourses, coupled to its discourse that forests are renewable and wood production is sustainable, that the timber industry has been able to set-up community based counter-organisations; for example, the establishment of the Victorian Timber Towns Association, and later the national Forest Protection Society, the latter being directly funded by the large woodchip companies.

Through these organisations the industry played up the uncertainty for workers and their communities. It was these organisations that provided a new militancy against the dramatic protest actions of environmentalists who blockaded logging operations. Counter protests such as those blockading rural highways and, at crucial times the blockading of Parliament buildings, became a feature of forest disputes.

Along with the jobs uncertainty for timber workers and the dependent towns, the industry was able to add the uncertainty for investment caused by environmentalist demands. The large pulp and export woodchip companies threatened an investment strike, citing considerable capital investment plans on new value-adding and domestic plant and equipment. These companies produced a `resource security' discourse in this context. This discourse blamed environmentalists for lack of progress in capital development within the forest industry, especially in downstream processing such as new pulp and paper plants, and demanded long-term legislated rights to the forests before it could commit further capital. The industry constantly noted the large foreign deficit in wood products which it claimed could not be addressed without `resource security'.

In response to environmental concerns with clearfelling and export woodchipping, both the industry and Government foresters produced the `waste utilisation' discourse to support the removal of vast amounts of low-quality wood produced in clearfelling operations. This, as I have suggested, became an object of contested discursive conflict with environmentalists countering the `waste by-product' argument with their own discourse. The counter-discourse suggested the so-called by-product was in fact the wasteful result of an ecologically destructive logging technique driven by the needs of the export woodchip industry. Contrary to industry arguments that this `waste' represented considerable problems with the regeneration of forests, environmentalists noted the importance of the wood for habitat.

The environmental and industry discourses discussed above became the basis for the mobilisation of popular support around particular positions over the forests. They provided the campaign issues and rhetoric for social movement and counter movement organistions. However it was the deployment and refinement of these discourses within the processes of governmentality which surrounded, shaped and at times contained the forest conflict which has been the central theoretical and empirical concern in this dissertation.

The rapid translation by the environment movement of its concerns over the forests into a political issue was an achievement. The forests had been set up as a contested political field, as the case study has demonstrated, they became a sustantial `problematic of government'. I have argued that this forest contest represents a struggle for power. Based on Foucault's view (see Chapter Four), I argue that power facilitates certain things and denies others. Power operates as discourse and discursive struggle and modern forms of power are found in governmentality. Rival forces to the forest conflict are about securing their own definition of the forests. Governmentality is about the transformation of the problematisation of the forests and the rival demands into the subject of policy and administration.

The establishment of the permanent LLC as a result of politically damaging land-use decisions became the first of many discursive designs of the state to inquire into the East Gippsland forest problem. These discursive designs all featured extensive public participation procedures and became the site of intense discursive conflict. They were mostly established or activated at various points of political tension within the forest conflict. They provided governments with so-called neutral umpires and hence legitimation for conclusions. They also allowed government a sense of governing at a distance. These discursive designs were information-rich and functioned to generate official governmental knowledge on forest problems. Such designs also represented significant government technologies which directly generated or were used to generate official discourses on the forest problem, which provided official policy positions and programs of government.

The most important official discourses on East Gippsland were the two LCC land-use recommendations (1977 and 1986), the Victorian Timber Industry Strategy (1986) resulting from the Ferguson Inquiry into the Victorian Timber Industry (1985), the National Forest Policy Statement (1992) which resulted from the Resource Assessment Commission's Inquiry into Forests (1990-1991) and the Ecologically Sustainable Development Working Group's report on forests and forest industry (1990), the Commonwealth Forest Package (1995), the East Gippsland Forest Management Plan (1995), the Comprehensive Regional Assessment (1996) and the East Gippsland Regional Forest Agreement (1997). The case study indicates the extent of information produced to support these official state discourses. This was achieved by the take-over and re-processing of selected discursive information from the rival contesting forces as well as information produced by expanded units of government bureaucracy especially established to handle the forest problematic.

While these official discourses are highly significant in the detection of outcomes and the success of rival discourses over the forests, the case study also showed how outcomes result from other elements of governmentality and discursive conflict: from implementations of official discourse, disputes over official discourses leading to continued conflict and tactical manoeuvres by the forces in a conflict, critical ongoing decisions of government, and core data and assumptions which undergo significant discursive and intertextual change in discourse. Examples of these factors are briefly illustrated below.

The major selective implementations of official discourses were the attempts by Victorian Government foresters to establish woodchip operations prior to the recommended environmental effects statements being completed. The exercise of trial woodchipping in 1981 and the almost secret granting of sawlog licences enabling new woodchip machines to be built in East Gippsland during 1987, point to the securing of industry outcomes by such implementations (see Chapters Six and Seven).

The disputation of official discourses on the forests has been the norm throughout the forest conflict. Such disputes sparked continued points of conflict, often leading to changes in tactical positioning of the various forces. The environment movement's dissatisfaction with the park proposals of the LCC in 1986 lead directly to their campaign over the National Estate forests. This involved the call for Commonwealth intervention to protect forests nominated for the National Estate, which ultimately secured additional forests for preservation status. The industry's `resource security' campaign, after the collapse of the Wesley Vale pulp and paper mill development proposal in 1989, was equally effective in pressuring governments into restricting preservation declarations and forcing final and long-term governmental settlements to forest-use disputation (see Chapter Eight).

Particular tactical manoeuvres of governments throughout the forest conflict have been critical as a turning point or spark to conflict. The clearest example is the decision of the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment, who in 1994 provided funding to peak environment groups, in order to provide him with a documented list of forest coupes that should be protected in the 1995 export woodchip licence renewal process. This lead to an open conflict between the Environment Minister and the Minister for Resources, who refused to accept the majority of these recommendations and increased the export licence volumes for 1995. The dispute lead to a summer of open conflict between the environment movement and the timber industry, and also within the Commonwealth Government, with final intervention from the Prime Minister. In a series of on-the-run decisions and counter protests, the list of approved logging coupes was amended, first favouring the environmentalists, but in the end (with the spectacular industry/union blockade of Federal Parliament in March 1995), resulting in an industry victory. The initial decision made by the Minister for the Environment had triggered a massive escalation of the forest problematic (see Chapter Eight).

Significant transformations or mutations of discourse and consequent critical changes within the `discursive formation' on the forests have occurred throughout the conflict. Clearly, the most important case of discursive change in the context of the overall forest conflict has occurred with the take-over, incorporation and transformation by the state of the discourses associated with preservation (the position of the environmental social movement) and resourcism (the position of the timber industry and government foresters). The state has attempted to combine these two conflicting discourses as central components of its official discourses on the forests. In this `transformation or mutation' of contesting discourses, preservation is partly secured by the establishment of a `representative, adequate and comprehensive' reserve system; and resourcism is partly secured with long-term resource rights and no restrictions on export woodchips on forests outside the reserve system based on regional sustained yields. I will return to this discursive-policy approach when considering major outcomes of the conflict, but here I want to again return to the particular case of discursive transformation and change traced throughout the case study.

This concerns the assumptions and core data on the sustainability of wood production and related resource estimation discourses of government in the East Gippsland case. I noted the significance of discursive changes in the text of the Timber Industry Strategy (1986) where the economically based definition of sawlog production forests was changed to a biological definition which disregarded the convention that had previously divided the forests on economic grounds (see Chapter Eight). This lead to sawlog production being scheduled across all existing production forests regardless of their sawlog volumes or whether pulpwood was also removed. This crucial change, designed to increase the availability of sawlogs in the context of obvious policy changes to remove large volumes from the annual cut for both new parks and the achievement of a regional sustained yield, represents a substantial discursive realignment of the previous and powerful resource discourse.

However, this central discursive change retained the conventional definition of what a sawlog was. In Chapter Eight, I noted the research into the question of what was a sawlog and what was a pulp or woodchip log conducted for two timber companies by the CSIRO. The findings suggested that up to 50 % of the now regarded non-sawlog material could be recovered for sawmill processing. This I argued (see Chapter Eight) represented the possibility of a fundamental challenge to the basis of dominant resource estimates and suggested the possibility of substantial changes in the nature of the industry, the stability of employment and the impacts on the forests. This information has however, failed to effect any major intertextual change in the `official resource estimation discourse' used to support the Regional Forest Agreement for East Gippsland signed in February 1997. This Agreement sets the long-term policy directions and future outcomes for the forests.

It is strongly argued that the CSIRO research findings represent the possibility of making a fundamental rupture to resource definitions and estimates. They offer a basis for developing a radically different future in East Gippsland than is presented under current Government positions. They present a challenge to the polar positions held by industry or the environment movement. This new direction is outlined in the second part of the chapter. Now I consider the major outcomes of the forest conflict.

After 25 years of prolonged conflict over the forests, outcomes can now be seen on the forest maps, showing huge areas of forest legally declared national parks or wilderness forest. Within these forest areas no logging or extractive industry is permitted. Figure 9.2 depicts progress of preservation for the East Gippsland case.

There has been great conflict over the distributional consequences of whether to log or preserve these forests. As mentioned in Chapter Two, a quantitative distributional analysis of the decisions which have progressively transferred forests to preservation status has yet to be undertaken. Such an analysis would be extremely complex given the variety of elements involved in the redistributions that have taken place (see Chapter Two for Gerritson's wide list of elements requiring analysis). It would however be a rewarding undertaking, beyond the scope of this dissertation. My comments regarding outcomes remain qualitative and are based on the description and interpretation contained in the case study.

Environmental criticism has lead to reforms in the manner in which wood extraction is practised. Clearfelling coupes are now much smaller in size, rainforest is excluded from logging, forest buffers around streams are larger, more habitat trees are retained and regional sustained yields have been introduced. However, that forest maps still retain areas assigned for wood production is a clear sign that the ambit claim of the environment movement, the total eviction of the timber industry and the total de-industrialisation of forests, has not been realised. In fact wood production-rights or new `resource regimes' have been entrenched on the forest maps. Export woodchipping and clearfelling, the main targets of environmentalists, remain the central elements of forestry in Australian native forests, having withstood sustained critical scrutiny. Export woodchipping has been de-restricted and is set to expand.

The achievement to date of environmentalists has been the making of the subject of forests and wilderness into a sustained social movement politics in Australia. Rich advocacy and movement organisations have constituted forests as a new `problematic of government'. This has occurred across State Governments and has generated a national forest politics as the Commonwealth Government has been drawn into the dispute over forest use during the past decade. The aim of the environment movement was the liberation of what they saw as `pristine' `nature' from the forces of resourcism and industrialism. I would argue that the history of the conflict shows that this aim has not been realised, rather the opposite has occurred. The resistance of the timber industry to environmental claims and the intervention of Governments have lead to the detailed policing of the forests by the administrative state where forests are now a new domain of government.

The constituting of this new domain of government has been based on the prolific accumulation of knowledge of the forests. The nature of this very activity and the type of governmental technologies required for its production have been attractive to the environment movement as it suits the class skills, occupations and resources of many of its most active members. To this extent alone the environment movement has been implicated and somewhat supportive of this policing or government of the forests. There are signs of more direct implication in the administrative state where environment movement organisations have participated along with industry and governments in this corporate style forest policy formation.

What this governmentality of the forests has produced, and I regard this as the central outcome, is a new division of the forests between the forces of preservation and of resourcism. This is reflected on the new maps as separate and distinct areas of forest-use. This, as noted in Chapter 2, represents a new shaping of the forests. This redrawing of forest boundaries has been the attempt by governments to force a settlement to forest conflict, by installing a balance between the rival forces. I have already referred to how this was achieved in the official discourses containing both a preservation and an industry-employment discourse, leading to the partial realisation of each rival position.

The division of the East Gippsland forests, written into the recently signed Regional Forest Agreement (February 1977), sees over half the forests dedicated to preservation in some form of conservation zone. What will happen to these preserved forests without the active intervention of a fire management regime (opposed by environmentalists) is yet to be seen. The fire ecology history of the region indicates the future may involve massive bushfires, driven by the uncontrolled build up of ground fuel (see Chapter Two). The forest, given over to long-term wood production, still takes up 35 % of all public land and now includes the degraded coastal forests the environment movement campaigned to save from logging. These production forests on a sustained-yield basis are planned to produce 170 000 m3 of traditionally defined sawlogs per year. This compares to 390 000 m3, which was the extraction level prior to the advent of environmental protests in 1970. In addition, some 80 000 m3 of new D-grade sawlogs pa and 650 000 m3 of residual logs pa (woodchip logs) have been made available, and all restrictions on export woodchips have been removed. If all this wood is used, as seems likely in the short-term, the total volume of wood extracted annually would more than double the previous high point reached in 1970 of 390 000 m3 pa.

There have already been retrenchments as the industry has reduced, to meet regional sustained yields and from the withdrawal of timber to create new national parks. The employment question has been effectively used by the industry to restrict the size of the preservation commitments from Governments. We have previously noted that timber workers have not generated their own discourse on employment, and have relied on the industry's position. While the official Government discourse allows the continuation of intensive wood extraction within the declared production forests, there has not been any requirement on the industry to move to a further value-adding and more labor intensive processing and product base. This leaves the future of forest employment resting on single low-value volume markets. It leaves forest workers subject to shifts in woodchip supply within the global market and subject to the threat to unseasoned timbers from the now price-competitive domestic and Pacific Rim softwood plantations currently in over-supply.

For the timber worker the current prospects in East Gippsland are not bright. The decline of solid unseasoned timber products in competition with softwoods has begun to bite, with many mills reducing their production to a four day week. The clear lack of progress with value-adding investments means the industry may not adjust in time to create new markets with dried construction and decorative products. Decline in employment may be partially offset with new export woodchip operations which will reinforce the industry into a woodchip lead one. This will be subject to regular wide cycles in demand, and possible long-term collapse in the face of cheaper Third World supplies. In the meantime the degraded forests will chiefly support the intensive extraction and production of woodchips under a management regime that will pay little if any attention to the restoration requirements of these forests. In the next section I outline an alternative proposal for East Gippsland.

This section outlines a proposal (or discourse) for East Gippsland based on combining two marginalised discourses: ecological justice for the extensive degraded forests by conducting a restoration plan; and social justice for the timber workers by creating stable and sustainable employment.

The ecological balance of the coastal forests has been disrupted by decades of selective logging. They are now degraded and contain chronic disease and die-back (see Chapter Five). These forests, on ecological justice grounds, require us to think about their `long-term extension in time'. This requires a sensitive long-term restoration strategy, aimed at restoring the original species composition (prior to European settlement and use). Forest restoration theory and applied practice is well-advanced internationally and could be applied in East Gippsland (Merchant 1990, Pilarski 1994). It is impossible to imagine these degraded forests being restored if they are to be subjected to a large-volume export woodchipping scheme. This is the most likely current prospect permitted under the East Gippland Forest Agreement, with five new export woodchip licences having been issued since March 1997.

Not only has export woodchipping been approved, but the employment it will generate will be the political defence for its extension in East Gippsland. I have already indicated this will most likely be a short-term employment outcome and will be subject to wide fluctuations in overseas demand. The issue of employment, as we have argued, is the central political barrier to many preservation claims over the forests. It has often been suggested that the demands of preservation, given the demands of present generations, and the rights of future generations to have pristine forests, far out-weighs the demands of a relatively small number of workers. However from within deep ecological philosophy comes a position from which to ethically decide questions thrown up by the issue of whether to log or preserve native forests. Based on Taylor's biocentric Respect for Nature (1986), on the basis of the principles of distributive justice (a normative and highly contested ethical field, see Chapter Two), the argument can be posed that human beings (timber workers) are not required to sacrifice their basic rights for nonhumans (forests) (Booth 1992, Taylor 1986).

If one accepts this position in the face of the competing claims for preservation and employment in the forests, then the question becomes, are the claims of East Gippsland timber workers basic, especially in the context of a capitalist market economy? What is the evidence? First, the creation of alternative employment in East Gippsland has been slow. The much acclaimed environment movement proposals for alternative jobs, outlined in Jobs In East Gippsland by Christoff and Blakers (1986) has, after one decade, been shown to be a dismal failure. This study, claiming it was formulated with timber workers, was not followed up by any implementation resources from the environment movement. Second, the census study of East Gippsland timber workers conducted by Bould (1986) reveals a group of workers with almost no formal education qualifications, no trade qualifications, extremely poor literacy and numeracy skills and little employment record outside the timber industry. These employment barriers are coupled with housing and family commitments in an isolated rural region, with little alternative manual-based employment. On these grounds I argue that the claims of workers for continued access to forest-based jobs, in order to meet basic needs, are supportable and require equitable arrangements in the forests that deliver both secure employment and respect and protection of the long-term existence of these forests in good ecological condition. I have critically questioned whether the official Government position on the forests and the industry's direction will deliver such an equitable outcome. We have also suggested that the non-interventionist preservation regimes imposed by environmentalists may not suit the long-term ecological requirements of the forests.

The possibility of an alternative direction in East Gippsland comes by linking two factors: first, the existence of 200,000 hectares of degraded forest requiring restoration. A restoration strategy would yield steady wood flows from clearing, thinning and replanting programs. Second, as previously mentioned, based on new CSIRO research, it is technically possible to use up to 50 % of so-called pulp/woodchip logs in a sawmilling industry (discussed in Chapter Eight).

To achieve restoration of the degraded forests, as discussed in Chapter Eight, requires a vast reduction in the logging intensity than is currently proposed. This of course would lead to loss of jobs. If, however, the industry was restructured, based on sawing as opposed to woodchipping pulp/woodchip logs, jobs would be created, enough to stabilise current employment levels while allowing the low intensity logging required as a tool of restoration. Further, it would also provide the jobs to allow a lower intensity and the possibility of longer logging rotations in the old-growth forests still remaining in the region's production forests.

The employment advantages of sawing as opposed to woodchipping pulp/woodchip logs is indicated in Table 9.1. This analysis was conducted by the present author in association with Gary Waugh from the CSIRO Division of Wood Products, based on the CSIRO studies of the product potential of these logs (Waugh 1989a,1989b,1989,1991a,1991b) (see Chapter Eight). Part 1 of this table contains the assumptions drawn from the CSIRO research. Of note is the finding that of all low-quality logs below C grade sawlog standard, 8 % can be upgraded to C grade standard and will achieve a 35 % sawn timber output. Of the remaining logs 55 % are technically capable of being sawn with an 18 % recovery of sawn product. The remaining logs would be woodchipped. The table also contains the standard employment requirements for sawing and for woodchipping. Part 2 of the table contains projections of employment and other socio-economic benefits based on sawing 50 000 m3 of pulp/woodchip logs. It indicates employment requirements for sawing at 45.4 jobs, compared to 8.6 jobs from woodchipping based on a throughput of 50 000 m3. This is an increase by the factor of five. The currently proposed logging intensity will produce 900 000 m3 of logs per annum. This is the extreme of sustainable production. If the alternative sawing strategy was pursued and the employment gains as projected were achieved, existing employment could be maintained using less than half the proposed wood off-take, cutting the intensity of logging required to implement the restoration strategy. This employment analysis is based on sawing for existing unseasoned products and does not factor in any additional employment from moving to seasoning and further processing of the wood, nor the possibility of replacing export woodchips with local processing (eg; particle board manufacture).

The sawing of logs, as opposed to woodchipping, will require substantial restructuring. The key to this would be the development of a centralised log classification centre along with a log breakdown sawing system designed to saw out solid wood sections from pulp/woodchip logs. Existing sawmills which take logs in the round directly from the forests would be converted to finishing centres and would receive pre-prepared squared wood blocks directly from the centralised log breakdown system.

The proposal outlined here, although tentative, is based on existing research. Its implementation would require a change in attitude from environmentalists, unions and industry. Further research in this direction is currently underway to re-confirm the early CSIRO findings, and concerns the design of the restructuring components required in the sawmills (Anon per comm 1997). What is also urgently required is that all parties now come together to formulate a new forest restoration and industry restructuring blueprint for East Gippsland. That this is urgent is clear as export woodchip operations do not take long to set-up. Once in place they have the political resources to dominate the directions in East Gippsland.