Fact Check

Tasmanian wilderness, Medibank Private sale and Comparing Putin with. Hitler (1x2)

Uitzenddatum: Mrt 28, 2014

The Federal Government has applied to have sections of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area delisted by the United Nations. If successful, tens of thousands of hectares of land could be reopened to logging and other activities. The claim: Tony Abbott says the 74,000 hectares the Government is proposing to remove from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is not pristine. The verdict: Expert analysis suggests more than 85 per cent of the area has not been logged, and that there is only a small amount of degradation or plantation timber. Further, UNESCO does not require an area to be "pristine" in order to be listed as a World Heritage Area. The proposed redrawing of the Tasmanian wilderness boundaries has provoked controversy, and is now the subject of a Senate inquiry which will report in mid-May. Speaking at a dinner organised by two forestry and timber industry bodies, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said: "One of the first acts of the incoming Government was to begin the process to try to get out of world heritage listing 74,000 hectares of country in Tasmania, because that 74,000 hectares is not pristine forest. It's forest which has been logged, it's forest which has been degraded, in some cases, it's plantation timber that was actually planted to be logged." The claim: Tony Abbott says the 74,000 hectares the Government is proposing to remove from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is not pristine. The verdict: Expert analysis suggests more than 85 per cent of the area has not been logged, and that there is only a small amount of degradation or plantation timber. Further, UNESCO does not require an area to be "pristine" in order to be listed as a World Heritage Area. Mr Abbott made his comments on March 4, 11 days before the Tasmanian state election. ABC Fact Check examines the Prime Minister's claim the 74,000 hectare area is "not pristine forest". -- On the money: Mathias Cormann says Medibank Private sale will