DENI FIREWOOD RALLY FRIDAY 11 SEPTEMBER

The NSW Government is ending firewood collection in the Murray Valley and Murrumbidgee Valley national parks for good after 30 October and I want as many of you as possible standing beside me in Deniliquin on Friday 11 September to tell them to reverse it.

For 16 years Riverina families have paid $20 or $30 for a permit and gone into the forest to pick up dead wood off the ground, up to 8 tonnes a household, no felling, nothing sold, just enough red gum to keep a house warm through winter. National Parks now says the fallen timber is running out and the forest needs it more than we do, and it suggests we buy from a commercial operator or apply for an energy rebate instead. A commercial load runs to hundreds of dollars and I have talked to people out here who leave the lights off at night through winter because they cannot afford the power bill, so telling them to go and buy it is no answer at all.

Anyone who lives here knows there is no shortage of fallen timber in these parks, and if it stays on the ground through summer the fuel load builds and the fire risk climbs with it. Locking the forest up does not protect it.

So come to Eli Brown Park on the corner of Whitelock and Harding streets at 8am on Friday 11 September. I will have the gas barbecue going with sausage sandwiches, which is apparently the kind of heating they would prefer we used, and the petition to overturn the decision will be there to sign. If you cannot make it on the day, copies are at my Deni and Griffith offices and I would ask every household that has ever backed a ute into that forest to put their name on it.