Tas: Doctors for forests spreading
Copyright 2001 AAP NEWSFEED
August 17, 2001
HOBART, Aug 17 AAP - The doctors for forests movement which was so influential in the last Western Australian election has spread to Tasmania.
Keith Woollard, who helped found Doctors for Old Growth Forests and Liberals for Forests in WA, was in Hobart today to advise the new Tasmanian Doctors for Forests.
Dr Woollard, a Fremantle cardiologist and former AMA federal president, said similar groups were also emerging in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.
He said the major political parties could ignore the tremendous community support for saving forests at their peril.
Dr Woollard said Liberals for Forests, which he described as small ''l'' Liberals and small ''g'' Greens, did horrendous damage to the Liberal Party in WA and forced it to change its stance on logging.
The group was planning for the federal election and intended targeting Forestry Minister Wilson Tuckey in the WA seat of O'Connor.
He said Tasmanian doctors could have an even bigger impact.
The Tasmanian group, launched five weeks ago, already has 500 members, spokesman Geoff Couser said.
But 300 of them are not doctors.
Dr Couser said that as more pro-forest groups emerged, something like People for Forests might develop.
He said Doctors for Forests was not planning to contest the federal or next year's state election in its own name.
But a different organisation could develop as a political party.