“The Commonwealth has surprised everyone with this initiative in calling the matter in which effectively would end logging down in the Riverina for some time and the jobs would be lost,” he said.
The NSW Government’s position is that we want to defend these jobs. The Riverina has been devastated by drought and it cannot afford to lost another 800 jobs.”
Deniliquin Mayor Lindsay Renwick says the logging ban would devastate the community.
“It would be the nail in the coffin that would concern us here in Deniliquin,” he said.
“Peter Garrett should think of the people that he is putting out of jobs in ruining the inland of Australia … he and his government at the moment are working on a witchhunt to try and cruel the central parts of NSW.”
Mr Garrett says he would be happy to discuss the matter with the State Government.
“It’s really important that we make sure that we resolve this issue as quickly as possible and I certainly have asked my department to ensure that intensive discussions continue over the coming period,” he said.
And Georgina Woods from the National Parks Association says she is glad the Federal Government has stepped in.
“The logging undertaken by Forests NSW in the RAMSAR-listed wetlands of the central Murray is illegal under the Environment Protection Bio-diversity Conservation Act,” she said.
“What’s really needed is a structural readjustment for the industry so that we can have exit packages and we can have redundancy packages for workers, because the forests down there are running out of timber and continuing to log them at the rate that New South Wales is doing is not going to be able to be sustained in the long term.”
