The Tasmanian Liberal party has promised to open 40,000 hectares of protected native forests to logging if re-elected next month, prompting accusations it is playing politics with forestry workers’ jobs and planning to accelerate damage to the environment. The premier, Jeremy Rockliff, said the Liberals would allow logging in 27 areas that had been protected since a 2012 “forest peace deal” struck by the timber industry, conservation groups and unions. … Rockliff contrasted his plan with the bans on native forest logging introduced this year in Victoria and Western Australia after the industry became environmentally and economically unviable. He said Tasmania would boost supply of native forest sawlogs to local sawmillers by up to 10%. …Rockliff said the Liberal party’s intervention in 2014 had “rescued” the areas from being “permanently locked up”, and set them aside “for a rainy day”. “That rainy day has now arrived,” Rockliff said. “The Liberals are the strongest supporters of Tasmania’s high-value native forestry industry.”