A big congratulations to the following books which have been shortlisted for this year's award.

Bilby Secrets
By Edel Wignell and Mark Jackson (Walker Books)

For All Creatures
By Glenda Millard and Rebecca Cool (Walker Books)

Hairy Nose, Itchy Butt
By Elizabeth Frankel and Garry Duncan (Jane Curry Publishing)

Helpings: Real Food for young people by young people
By Charlotte Wood and Friends (The New Literacy Programme)

Kangaroo and Crocodile: My Big Book of Australian Animals
By Bronwyn Bancroft (Little Hare)

Let's Go Wild: Just for the Record
By Sorrel Wilby, Michelle Pike (Harper Collins)

Mr Moonlight
By Jane Carroll and Anne Spudvilas (Puffin)

My Little World
By Julia Cooke and Marjorie Crosby-Fairall (Omnibus)

One Small Island
By Alison Lester and Coral Tulloch (Viking)

The Bicycle
By Colin Thompson (Harper Collins)

The Dream of the Thylacine
By Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks (Allen & Unwin)

Warambi
By Aleesah Darlison and Andrew Plant (Working Title Press)

What's the Issue: Australia's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
By Geoff Thompson (Macmillan Library)

What's the Issue: Australia's Water Shortages
By Greg Reid (Macmillan Library)

What's the Issue: Endangered Australian Animals
By Greg Reid (Macmillan Library)

What's the Issue: Great Barrier Reef Under Threat
By Julie Murphy (Macmillan Library)

Worms, the Mechanics of Organics
By Kellie Bollard (Growing Up Greener)

Award winners will be announced on our website on World Environment Day (5 June, 2012).

Left to right: Bob Brown, Indigenous Elders Ronnie and Dyan Summers, Tarkine campaigner Liz Johnstone

A wealth of cultural heritage: Indigenous tools in the Tarkine are evidence of thousands of years of human habitation.

A traditional kelp bowl made by Elder Dyan Summers.

The Tarkine, in Tasmania’s wild north west, is precious for many reasons. Named after one of the four original Indigenous clan groups, the Tarkinener people who lived in the Sandy Cape area, the landscape bears witness to thousands of years of human habitation.

Not only is the Tarkine an environmental treasure, a remote haven for threatened species whose isolation means lush forests have so far remained safe from logging. It is sacred to its Aboriginal custodians and home to ancient and enduring Indigenous cultural heritage sites.

Recently, campaigners Liz Johnstone and Ruth Groom joined former Greens leader Bob Brown and Aboriginal Elders Dyan and Ronnie Summers on a tour of threatened cultural sites in the Tarkine.

Stone tools, ancient campfire sites, and massive shell middens (piles of food waste like oyster shells) are testament to the millenia of continuous occupation of the sites – but are at risk from uncontrolled 4 wheel driving, logging and proposed mining ventures.

"These sort of things were left by our ancestors, right here," explained Dyan. "If it's not protected, this coastline is just going to be a memory to a lot of people."

At one site of 10,000 year old rock carvings (Petroglyphs), ugly gashes in the rock reveal places where treasure hunters have chiselled away carvings and stolen them.

"It’s crucial that we protect the Tarkine before it’s too late." said Tarkine campaigner Liz Johnstone. "Up until now, its remoteness has protected it, but now we have mining companies lining up to destroy it. If the series of open cut mines proposed by Venture Minerals get the go-ahead, roads will criss-cross the entire area and the destruction will snowball."

Elder Dyan showed the group traditional methods of collecting kelp from the icy waters off the Tarkine coast. "It’s truly humbling to think that people have been doing the same thing here for tens of thousands of years." said Launceston-based campaigner Ruth. "It would be an enormous shame if we were the ones to allow that heritage to be lost forever."

With your support, we will be working to achieve real and lasting protection for the Tarkine, so that both its natural and cultural wonders can be protected for future generations.

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Formal negotiations to reach agreement on the implementation of the Tasmanian forests agreement have finally begun, with signatories sitting down to discuss the conservation, industry and community outcomes that to be delivered.

This involves taking the detailed information presented by the Government auspiced expect verification group and beginning the difficult task of talking through a lasting resolution to decades of conflict.

Last Friday signatories issued a joint statement to announce that these negotiations were formally commencing. This signals the re-entry of the Forest Industry Association of Tasmania (FIAT) into the negotiations, a welcome move that means all groups that signed the Statement of Principles are now represented in the talks.

FIAT has been suspended from discussions for several months, due to its objection to ongoing campaigns in overseas market places to protect forests. Its decision to re-join the talks is welcome.

Budget boost for Forestry Tasmania

Meanwhile, late on Thursday, the Tasmanian State Budget delivered by Premier Lara Giddings held some disturbing allocations.

$110 million has been set aside over 4 years to help “ensure that Forestry Tasmania can continue to operate, meet its contractual obligations and perform its non-commercial functions in the event that market conditions do not improve.”

This reads like another taxpayer-funded prop-up for Forestry Tasmania, at a time when we need real agency restructure and reform as opposed to ongoing subsidisation to bulldoze ahead with business as usual.

On Friday we issued a media release asking the government for clarification as to how this money related to the overdue reform process. Subsequently, the Premier has guaranteed that none of this money will be spent until a review into the future of Forestry Tasmania is handed down. The review is due within two weeks, so watch this space.

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Up to 250 police officers were specially flown in to Broome to crush community opposition to the proposed gas factory. Photo by Damian Kelly

This week, the Government of Western Australia dispatched approximately 200 police officers to the sleepy tourism town of Broome to do the dirty work for several of the world’s largest oil and gas companies.

This mini army has been assembled on the doorstep of the Kimberley wilderness for one purpose, namely to suppress the wide spread opposition of the Broome community to the construction of the proposed $40 billion James Price Point industrial precinct.

In a startling admission, the Western Australian Police Commissioner, Karl O’Callaghan, confirmed earlier this week that the decision to pull police from their beats across Western Australia and send them to Broome will cost the taxpayer $100 000 a day, for an undisclosed period and with no cost to the companies involved in the project.

The final bill will likely be several million dollars. All to move away and silence a dogged and growing group of locals who have stood in the way of the plans of a consortium of the world’s biggest companies including Shell, Chevron, Woodside, BP and BHP Billiton to build this massive gas plant in a beautiful and sensitive part of the remote Dampier Peninsula.

Opposition growing

For the past 4 years community opposition in Broome has steadily grown and united the community in a way that has now forced Premier Barnett’s Government to take this extreme, jack boot action. Black and white, the overwhelming majority of Broome people have said no.

Opinion polling reported in the Australian newspaper this week show 79% of Broome residents oppose the development. Thousands of Broome locals have attended rallies, public meetings and community events over the past 12 months.

At the most recent council elections two high profile anti gas candidates were elected and one, Dr Anne Polina, is now Deputy Mayor. On every street corner, there are signs of opposition to the Gas plant.

So is this the new Australia, produced by the longest mining boom in our history? One in which the views of the local residents and of traditional owners are meaningless and where the state provides armies of foot soldiers, free of charge, to the big end of town?

Silent consent

All the while, the consortium of companies behind this project, remain stony silent about the actions that are being taken in their name to divide and destroy Broome. Not a word when last year aboriginal women and their grandchildren were dragged away by tactical response police to allow the safe passage of Woodside’s contractors down the main access road to James Price Point.

Not a word when the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Western Australia ruled as invalid a clumsy attempt by the Barnett Government to compulsorily seize the land for the gas hub from the rightful traditional owners. Not a word when 7000 people came together on the famous and fabulous Cable Beach to say no to the Gas hub. And now not a word as a Broome is converted into a war zone. All in their name, for their project, for their bottom line.

Their silence makes a mockery of their fine statements, their policies and their expensive advertising campaigns that pronounce their credentials as fine corporate citizens who care about the communities in which they operate. The prime mover of this consortium, Woodside, has a ‘Sustainable Communities Policy’ which states that as a company it “wishes to establish long term relationships based on trust and respect that deliver mutual benefit.”

It says it will achieve its objectives by "listening to the community and delivering on its commitments" and it will contribute "to the building of thriving communities." They must be joking. The Broome community and a growing movement of people across Australia have said no and have said it again and again.

Relationship ruined

How precisely does Woodside plan to establish long term relationships and trust and respect whilst an army of police is sent in to smash local opposition on its behalf, and when precisely will the company start listening to the community that does not want this development? Meanwhile over at the Chevron Australia website more fine words and sentiments about its deep commitment to the local community.

Here Managing Director Roy Krzywosinski tells us that "At Chevron Australia, we think like a community member because we are a community member" and "our focus is on building productive, collaborative, trusting and beneficial relationships."

Really? Well as a member of the 'community', perhaps Ray could let Premier Barnett know that he’s not that keen on having his neighbours thrown in prison for standing in the way of bulldozers or he could object when traditional owners are told that they can either accept a deal to have the development forced on them or have their land compulsorily seized.

Because that is what community means: standing up for one another, caring for one another. Long ago Premier Barnett and his head cheer leader in the Federal Government, Martin Ferguson, gave up looking like credible representatives of the public interest and the latest outrage by the Western Australian Government is hardly a surprise give their past form.

In this environment, only the Corporations can make sanity prevail and end this conflict. It is time Woodside and friends reread their policies and statements, it is time they listened to Broome. It is time that they said no to Barnett and Ferguson and it is time they announced they will pipe the gas south and leave Broome, its people and its beautiful environment alone.

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