THE State and Federal governments have slammed Monday night's ABC TV's Four Corners program on Tasmanian forestry as emotive and biased in favour of the conservation movement.

From Jemma Bavage of The Advocate

The program only focused on relations between the Tasmanian Government, the Liberal Opposition, Forestry Tasmania and timber company Gunns Ltd. It has incited heated responses from many Tasmanians and forest industry workers.

Claims on the program that Tasmania's forest industry was “self regulated, self-serving and unaccountable” have outraged the State and Federal Governments and forest groups arounbd Australia.

Tasmanian Infrastructure, Energy and Resources Minister Bryan Green said he would write to the ABC seeking an apology over misrepresentation about the extent of land protected from logging in Tasmania.

He said a map featured on the program omitted hundreds of thousands of hectares of forested areas protected in national parks and wrongly asserted it was available for woodchipping.

The National Association of Forest Industries said Four Corners reporter Ticky Fullerton's narration was "so one-sided as to be over the top" and formal complaints would be made against the report.

"It does the ABC little credit to take on board the green spin so completely," NAFI executive director Kate Carnell said.

Timber Communities Australia will lodge a formal complaint with the ABC.

Federal Forest Minister Ian Macdonald said the program was "so full of emotively based innuendos that it is impossible to list them all". He said the program grossly exaggerated the percentage of old-growth forest harvested for woodchips.

"Only between five and 10 per cent (of woodchips) comes from the waste and residue of old-growth forests," Senator Macdonald said.

Mr Green said the program was part of a campaign against the Tasmanian forest industry.
"I will not stand in the way of reasoned and rational debate, but I will not stand for those who set out to demonise the forest industry and those who work in it based on misinformation," he said.