Victorian Protesters Will Face Jail Time After Forest Logging Protections Passed In Parliament
"This blatant attack on community members protecting native forests is unjustified, extreme, and fails to address the real crime – the ongoing lawless destruction of forests."
Victoria has passed new anti-protest legislation that could see environmental activists fined more than $21,000, or facing a year of jail time.
A bill on forest harvesting was pushed through the Upper House last Thursday with joint support by Labor, the Liberals, and the majority of the cross bench.
The Sustainable Forests Timber Amendment (Timber Harvesting Safety Zones) Act 2022 will increase penalties for offences relating to entering and remaining in a timber harvesting zone or hindering with timber harvesting operations, while also broadening the list of offences to include obstructing authorised persons and machinery in these closed off areas, and giving police powers to search protesters for prohibited items as well.
Lawyer group Environmental Justice Australia say the amendments will thwart efforts to monitor logging, and people keeping tabs on endangered wildlife under threat due to the practice.
“Instead of enforcing existing laws against [the Victorian Government’s] own logging operator, it is further criminalising peaceful protest, and punishing concerned citizens, whistleblowers, and citizen scientists,” said Environmental Justice Australia lawyer, Natalie Hogan.
State government-owned logging company VicForests faced allegations in November of illegal logging, and last Thursday, was accused of logging an area identified as the habitat for an endangered rare possum in East Gippsland.
In July, ecologist David Lindenmayer wrote in The Age that logged forests burn at a greater severity, raising concerns that VicForests’ salvage logging operations in Wombat State Forest was actually heightening the risk of bushfires in the state.
Premier Dan Andrews said the new laws would strike a balance between the right to protest and workplace safety, despite ignoring a push from the Greens to identify evidence of threats to the safety of workers, according to the AAP.
Two years ago, his government announced plans to phase out native forest logging in the state by 2030 — involving extensions to current forestry agreements until 2024, before a full 360 degree pivot to scaling down in the six years after.
“This blatant attack on community members protecting native forests is unjustified, extreme, and fails to address the real crime – the ongoing lawless destruction of forests,” said Victorian Forest Alliance spokesperson Chris Schuringa in a statement.
“Peaceful forest protests have been used for decades to protect important areas of forest — many significant environmental protections were won off the back of protests,” he said. “The right to protest has never been more important given the extinction and climate crisis we face — fuelled by continued logging of native forests.”
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