Make a quick call to Premier Andrews for Victoria’s native forests

Here’s a sample phone script, if you’d like guidance on what to say

STEP 1: Introduce yourself

You could mention you are a concerned member of the Victorian community (if you live in his Mulgrave electorate, share that!)

STEP 2: Say you are calling to share your concerns about protecting native forests.

Here you could mention:

• The recent court rulings about VicForests’ illegal logging operations
• The Andrews government’s history of rolling back legal protections for forests and handing out massive subsidies to its own loss-making logging agency.
• The critical importance of native forests as carbon sinks and habitat for endangered greater gliders, yellow-bellied possums and Tree Geebungs

STEP 3: Ask Premier Andrews to publicly commit to:

1. Protect our forests before it’s too late
2. Safeguard our nature laws, don’t gut them
3. Urgent support for workers to transition to jobs with a future.

Close off the phone call by sharing your wishes for the government to make the right call.

Once you’re done, fill out the quick form to let us know whether you got through and how the call went.

The background

Last week, VicForests was forced to halt native forest logging across much of Eastern Victoria – after two separate court rulings found the state-owned logging agency is illegally killing endangered animals and destroying their habitat.

The Court ordered the logging agency to find and protect endangered plants and animals living in the forest before logging, because its operations were very likely to have been killing them.

But the logging agency is not a fan of this court order.

Now, the logging industry is doing everything it can to pressure the Victorian government to change existing laws so they can resume the very operations the courts have just ruled are illegal – and continue killing endangered animals.

Community groups have been calling for an end to native forest logging for years. These landmark judgements are incredible wins – wins that will protect some of the densest carbon sinks in the world, and critical habitat for countless endangered animals like greater gliders.

But we have serious concerns the Andrews government might sneak through changes to gut legal protections for forests and endangered animals, as we’ve seen them do in the past.

The state government is under increasing pressure from vested interests in the loss-making native logging industry to roll back environment protections, gutting our nature laws.

That’s why your quick phone call today is so important.

For more detail on the court cases and previous changes to Victoria’s forest protections, see this BACKGROUNDER