[Greens-Media] Rudd, Howard will remain global climate change outcasts until forest burning stops

[Bennett, Ebony (Sen B. Brown)]

		 Monday, 2 April 2007

		Rudd, Howard will remain global climate change outcasts
until forest burning stops

		"The CFMEU's Michael O'Connor is a Howard supporter on
forests, ready to torpedo Labor again" - Brown

		"Logging and burning forests in Tasmania, as in
Indonesia, is the biggest cause of greenhouse gas pollution," Greens
Leader Bob Brown said today.

		"Kevin Rudd should end this unnecessary and economically
ruinous policy of clearfell logging and burning, which the Prime
Minister endorsed through his Regional Forest Agreements."

		"The CFMEU's forestry division, red-flag waving backers
of John Howard at the last federal election, now demands Rudd backs the
Howard line too - or else.  This is Michael O'Connor, a logging
extremist, telling both national leaders to ignore the most
irresponsible and needless component of Australia's infamous greenhouse
gas profile-burning native forests."

		"While the ALP national conference sits in Sydney later
this month, Tasmania's logging industry will be firebombing dozens of
clearfelled coupes to prevent remnant seeds and cotyledons from
competing with the fast-growing exotic plantations replacing them.  The
wildlife is eradicated.  It is an environmental holocaust, no different
to the Sumatran clearfelling and burning which so appalled Sir Nicolas
Stern a fortnight ago," Senator Brown said.

		"Michael O'Connor's pro-Howard, pro-pulp mill, pro-Gunns
push has not helped scores of contractors and the workers sacked from
the industry in recent times.  Nor has he complained about the Howard
Government's current policy of 'locking-up' more forests through the
Community Forest Agreement - a process still underway," Senator Brown
said.

		"O'Connor has a proven capacity to clearfell and burn
national Labor's right to protect Australia's great carbon-absorbing
forests and their rare wildlife. John Howard must love O'Connor,"
Senator Brown said.

For more information, contact Ebony Bennett   0409 164 603

--------------------------------------------------------------
Ebony Bennett
Media Adviser
Office of Greens Senator Bob Brown
Mobile: 0409 164 603
Ph: (02) 6277 3170
Fax: (02) 6277 3185
ebony.bennett at aph.gov.au