In November 2023, Dr Sophie Scamps MP launched The Forest Pledge, calling on all state and federal politicians to work together toward a total national ban on harvesting native timbers from our precious forests. Join Dr Sophie Scamps MP and Richard Denniss for a conversation about how Tasmania could end native forest logging.

The end of native forest logging is occurring throughout the world. Western Australia and Victoria have already ended their native forest logging industries, and Tasmania should be on the same path.

99% of Tasmanians do not work in the forestry industry—with jobs in decline and the transition to plantations well underway, now is the time for Tasmania to end native forest logging.

But Tasmania continues to delay the inevitable end to an industry that is a small employer, heavily subsidised by the taxpayer, and one that causes climate change and habitat loss.

Tasmania, let’s talk about a pathway out of native forest logging.

Speakers:

• Dr Sophie Scamps MP is the Independent Member for the Federal electorate of Mackellar. Sophie made history at the 2022 election by becoming the first Independent to win the Northern Beaches seat since it was first formed in 1949. Sophie won the seat after promising a new way of doing politics, putting the community first and campaigning on a platform of climate action, integrity, health and equality. Before deciding to stand as an Independent in the 2022 election, Sophie was a practicing GP in Narrabeen while she also served the community as a doctor in the Emergency Department of Mona Vale Hospital. Whilst studying medicine at the University of Sydney and then Oxford University in the UK, Sophie was an elite athlete. Sophie is also the sponsor of the Forest Pledge, an initiative that brings together politicians, scientist and civil society groups who want to see an end to native forest logging through Australia.
• Richard Denniss is Executive Director of the Australia Institute and a prominent Australian economist, author and public policy commentator. He has spent the last twenty years moving between policy-focused roles in academia, federal politics and think-tanks. He was also a Lecturer in Economics at the university of Newcastle and former Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU. He is a regular contributor to The Monthly and the author of several books including: Econobabble, Curing Affluenza and Dead Right: How Neoliberalism Ate Itself and What Comes Next? He addressed the 2023 MONA Forest Economics Congress about how Tasmania could create more jobs by subsidising the making of furniture than subsiding the logging of Tasmania’s native forests.

Host

• Vanessa Bleyer is the Australia Institute spokesperson for Tasmania’s Native Forests and the Director and Principal Lawyer at Bleyer Lawyers. She has a long history operating at the interface between our forests and the law. She was President of Lawyers for Forests Inc from 2003-2007 and returned as a committee member in 2021. She has twice been awarded the Law Institute of Victoria’s President’s Award for providing Access to Justice for our native forests and the species that depend on them. She was Chairperson of Environment Tasmania Inc from 2012 to 2015 and in 2022 she became a board member of Landcare Tasmania.