The motion was tabled in the Senate by Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries Senator Jonathon Duniam.
In a major embarrassment for anti-native forestry industry activists, the Australian Senate has joined the growing list of those condemning the “bodgy” research which wrongly linked forestry to bushfires.
The motion to condemn the error-ridden research and the way it has been misused by the Greens and activists to attack sustainable forestry, was moved by Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries Senator Jonno Duniam. The motion reads that:
The Senate:
(a) notes that a report used by the Australian Greens to assert that forestry operations cause bushfires has been retracted and withdrawn after insistence from the academic community;
(b) further notes that the withdrawal of this paper was required because of the number of significant errors and wrong conclusions and that it did not meet the standard for ‘high-quality scientific works’ as required by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI);
(c) condemns the Australian Greens and the Bob Brown Foundation for consistent use of bodgy science to attempt to backup their falsehoods about forestry; and
(d) calls on the Bob Brown Foundation and the Australian Greens to apologise to the hardworking men and women of the forestry industry that they use misinformation to demonise.
The motion was supported by Coalition and ALP members, but not by the Greens, despite the authors of the research paper themselves conceding it should not have been published.
The “bodgy” research paper was removed from the journal FIRE last week, and the FIRE editors apologised for its inclusion in the first place.
The Chief Executive of the Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) Ross Hampton said, “Activist academics have for years been using “bodgy” research to attack sustainable forestry in Australia. It happens in many ways. A small sample can be wrongly extrapolated out to make sweeping statements about vast forest areas. Or coincidence and causality is deliberately blurred.”
“The example of this “bodgy” research paper, which clearly should have failed any peer review, is, sadly, unlikely to stop the activist academics who seem determined to try to restart the ‘forest wars’. It should however give great pause to our academic institutions which prize their reputation above all else, but are allowing their names to be associated with activism posing as research,” Mr Hampton concluded.
You can read the media release here:
