Prime Minister John Howard unveiled his promised Tasmanian forest package while walking through the tall trees of Tasmania’s Styx forest.

The plan has been cautiously supported by Labor, but vehemently opposed by the Greens, while the Democrats called it a “piecemeal and expensive stunt” as nationwide forestry issues were not addressed.

Mr. Howard says that the joint $250 million plan with the Tasmanian Government will extend protection to over 180,000 hectares of old-growth forests, bringing the total protected areas to around 1 million hectares, without compromising local jobs.

“The Agreement delivers nationally and internationally significant conservation outcomes,” said Mr. Howard. “It preserves highly significant tracts of temperate rainforest in the Tarkine, adds new reserves in the Styx Valley to protect the tallest trees in the world and increases levels of reservation for many important forest types.”

The plan includes the gradual phasing out of clear-cutting- over five years on public land and over ten years on private land. “By 2010, only about 20 per cent of the old growth harvested each year will be clear-cut,” said Mr. Howard. The remaining 80 per cent of annual old growth logging will apparently be done with sustainable logging procedures.

Also included is an investment of $115 million for improving plantation productivity, plus a market-based Forest Conservation Fund, which will allow private landowners to voluntarily sell their land to form additional reserves, which are to comprise up to 45,000 hectares of the protected areas.

However, Democrats’ Environment Spokesperson Andrew Bartlett said that the Federal Government was yet to provide its promised $75 million to Queensland to end broad-scale land-clearing and called on the Government to significantly increase funding for the buyback of the ecologically diverse Daintree lowlands.

“It becomes clear that the Prime Minister is just dabbling in politics if he fails to establish a national legal framework for forestry assessment,” said Senator Bartlett.

“Until the recommendations of the Senate Inquiry into Australia’s Plantation Forestry are acted upon, including the removal of unrealistic and unsustainable targets from the 2020 Vision for Australian Plantation Forestry and the completion of a national water audit to assess the impacts of plantations, piecemeal and expensive stunts by the Prime Minister will fail to address forestry issues in a national way,” said Senator Bartlett.

Greens Senator Bob Brown has denounced the package as “forest torture”. “In the election campaign, [Howard] said: ‘I would like to see, I think most Australians would like to see, an end to the logging of old growth forests’, but today he backs old growth destruction to beyond 2010,” said Senator Brown.

“There is only 58,000 hectares of real forest protection – the remaining 94,000 hectares is largely unloggable, or the inevitable leftover of logging required by law such as streamside reserves.”

Mr. Howard said that 45 per cent of Tasmania’s forests are now under protection, making Tasmania the largest protected area in the world outside Antarctica.