News release

Wednesday 31st January 2001

 Mr Colin Dorber resigns leadership of Forest Products Association (NSW) to avoid excruciating embarrassment on phoney power stations

 Today Friends of the Earth, Sydney spokesperson Tom McLoughlin reacted as follows:

 "Mr Dorber's decision to move on greatly improves the prospects for forest protection but it also allows him to avoid excruciating political embarrassment.

 "For many months now Mr Dorber has advocated 3 new power stations for NSW to be fuelled by native forest wood "waste", in other words woodchipping of natural forests.

 "However the environmental lobby advice, sourced to power company Macquarie Generation in the Hunter region of NSW, is that wood burning is not financially viable. Macquarie Generation burned 20,000 tonnes of woodchips in a trial in 1999 and found the calorific value (or heat energy) was too low to efficiently run their plant.

 "In other words Mr Dorber in his desperation to find a new market for loggers to continue destroying NSW's precious native forests raised regional expectations in a totally unrealistic way. As international woodchip plantations out compete domestic native forest woodchips, and local plantations out compete native forest timber, "leaders" like Mr Dorber have run out of phoney policy options. Dorber was due to front a meeting in Gloucester in February.

 "We call on the logging industry to finally accept a complete and speedy phase out of the native forest woodchipping industry. We call for co-operative action to implement employment packages in the processing and utilisation of existing plantation resources. Plantation timber output in NSW is ten times the native forest logging industry" concluded Mr McLoughlin.

 More: Tom McLoughlin 0410 558838, 9517 3900