The power of Forestry over the Tasmanian community is vividly portrayed by this obvious and serious plantation fire hazard in the centre of a residential district in Deloraine.
It is on a slope and the known prevailing winds will blow the smoke and ensuing fireball into the adjoining school and residences.
At the resulting enquiry, should a disaster occur, I can tell you now, no one will be to blame.
Opposed by residents and Council at the time, this Private Timber Reserve is outside the control of the planning authorities. As a result, the appeal fell on deaf ears (Download: Huett_1206.pdf). It was found, as always with forestry interests in this state to be inviolate.
The obvious placement of a Private Timber Reserve (PTR) plantation alongside existing homes - using as the facilitator the unique-to-Tasmania Government Business Enterprise Private Forests Tasmania (PFT) - would indicate, I suggest in this particular case, a clear example of the corruption of due process.
Once declared by PFT - for a small fee - as a PTR, it falls outside the planning scheme; thereby confirming the inherent power of this Lib/Lab legislation and the then power of Gunns/ Forestry to exercise their power over the people of this state.
The PTR was appealed before The Forest Practices Tribunal as “Private Timber Reserve Application No 1206”, in Launceston on 21 December 1999 before Mr Justice Pitt QC, who during his time hearing many of these cases rarely granted an appeal ... whatever the circumstances.
In this particular case the PTR was on 3.85 hectares adjoining three residential streets in Deloraine. Some 1,200 nitens per hectare were initially planted, a total of some 4,500 trees.
Think of that in terms of a 7 acre bonfire 25 feet high just outside your front door; when no Private Timber Reserve should be granted on an area of less than 5 hectares.
Nothing but nothing stops forestry in this state - especially when funded by the taxpayer and backed by the Lib/Labs. Only Greens or Independents holding the balance of power can exert any form of control over this proven lethal duopoly.
Hence their undying and absolute hatred of those who can control their god-given right to dole out this type of toxic and corrupt largesse.
Why was the subject of fire never mentioned or raised at the appeal by either side - or more importantly Pitt who dismissed the appeal with costs as they lay.
Hall, and later Shelton - both former mayors of Deloraine/Meander and Liberal Party hacks now morphed into state pollies, are powerful backers of the PTR system, the clearfelling and burning of the Tiers, the PAL policy and Abetzian MIS-scam plantations.
Deloraine is the epicentre of their patch.
I ask: Are they proud of this Deloraine plantation, an extreme fire hazard adjoining a residential area, created by a system that they have both worked tirelessly to promote and seemingly to this day, still endorse to the full?
Download Forest Practices Tribunal Hearings:
Andrews_850.pdf
Andrews_850b.pdf
Andrews_1372.pdf
Armatos_1419.pdf
Barker_527.pdf
brownePTR.pdf
Burley_1212.pdf
Cubit_1003.pdf
Flowers_1530.pdf
Gunns_1363_1368.pdf
Hay_NJF0017.pdf
Huett_1206.pdf
Linger_943.pdf
Louden_Tanner_PTR_ARN1493.pdf
RMPAT-Appeal.pdf
Taylor_945_946.pdf
Tuson_624.pdf
061017_-_Pdf_of_decision_D003-06_POR1698.pdf
• Posted to go with Andrew Ricketts’ comment 13:
cb31_fm_guidelines_plantations.pdf
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Comments (14)
Clarification is required. If this was not a plantation and instead a native reserve, would you be calling for it to be bulldozed?
On this basis Greg Hall should exclude himself from the TFA Committee hearings, or at a minimum abstain from any voting procedure. Shameful!
Actually, I raised the issue of fire risk with the FPT in Andrews 1372 above - and had it ignored.
They also ignored the fact that the sole ground on which an adjoining neighbour could object to a PTR approval was “direct and material disadvantage”, a term which exists nowhere else in Australian law, but which the FPT nonetheless invoked without definition to refuse every neighbour appeal for seventeen years. They also recorded decision 850b as being heard by Roach & his offsiders, when it was actually a Pitt job.
Hall and Shelton both tied the knot with the woodchip industry. The Meander Valley Council, which shared its lawyer with Gunns,ended up being the respondent in an action to prevent high -sensitivity karst directly above the Mole Creek water supply from being logged and converted. The Supreme Court also brushed off the fact that the approval was seconded by a councillor/logger whose mother would benefit from the approval.
The SC also had no problem, despite the Local Government Act, with a written statement by then MVC Mayor (and TCA member) Shelton that conflicts of interest were matters for councillors to determine for themselves.
If things can get any worse, the Abetz Party will know how to get there.
John Hayward
If a native reserve it would predate the houses.The choice to build is then made by the householder.
No native reserve would be as dense as this plantation and all Councils if they so wish can have it removed.
You do not seem to understand the full import of my article.
PRIVATE TIMBER RESERVES WERE SET UP BY GOVERNMENT TO BE OUTSIDE ALL PLANNING CONTROLS, NOBODY CAN REMOVE THEM, THEY ARE ABOVE THE LAW.
This CORRUPT creation by the forestry industry facilitated by the Lib/Labs produces this BUSHFIRE TIME BOMB.
A result unique to Tasmania.
I ask you Mr Davidson what would you do?
Does #4 mean - no plantations -no busfires?
Kevin Rudd poured billion$ into building school libraries at a time books had become obsolete. China has now opened paperless schools and yet only months ago Lara Giddings loaned millions of taxpayer dollars to Norske Skog. Giddings did this at a time Tasmania was closing hospital beds.
Apparently the Tasmanian Labor Government has entered the ‘loot the treasury’ phase of it’s last year in government. Don’t tell anyone because its a closely guarded secret.
Mr Hawkins at #6,
I would build one of these plantations next to Greg Hall’s residence upwind and I suspect David D would have his answer to your imponderable. And you are exactly correct about density of planting as on Coupe BA388D the regrowth density is 100 to 150 E Delegatensis per hectare.
If your primary concern is for the livelihood and safety of the people in close proximity to this plantation then I think what you have detailed has just cause.
However, if your safety concern is merely guise for the woe you feel regarding the regulations governing state forestry, then this all comes across as rather pretentious.
I do agree though, what we need is clear and concise regulation of how close trees are allowed to be to one another. Massive areas of this state are a “BUSHFIRE TIME BOMB”.
Following a major fire in the district of Bridgetown/ Balingup, a major timber area in South Western Australia at the Balingup Small Farm Day Show a local tree nursery a had a photographic exhibition of the impact of the fires and the value of alternative tree plantings.
It maybe of interest to Tasmanians as to the value of fire retardant tree plantings in areas of large single variety plantations.
Some of the photographs can be seen at this site.
http://www.smalltreefarm.com.au/Fire-retardants.html
Not a politician in sight until PM Gillard arrived in town to inspect the fire damage in the south east! Perhaps a conscience about the lack of State funding that meant not enough firemen and not enough police to co-ordinate the bushfire response as they may have wished.
Regards
T Hale
@#9 W.O. sounds great!
Imagine the outcry on these pages when people start planting european trees, possibly replacing natives.
Regarding the valuable link to information/ photographic material provided here (via Western Observer#9)today regarding the use of living shelter near roads and buildings, infrastructure etc. this is the dabete we have to have.
Yes, I have followed this principle on our properties, both zoned rural residential in West Tamar.
My quick response: So they do not simply take my words for it. Nice to get things confirmed after two and a half decades of pointing such things out since moving (as a forester) to Tasmania with my family.
Looks like a classic case of
“First they ignore you -
then they fight you -
then ... the time will be judge.
Frank
Rosevears
Here just a small snipped from one report:
TAKE THE EUCALYPT OUT OF INCENDIARY DEBATE:...“Local governments should particularly encourage the planting of such species onthe edge of towns and around dwellings. A belt of oaks or pistachios instead ofeucalypts could mean the difference between life and death in the climaticconditions that lie ahead.(Nick Brown is a former high school geography teacher who grows trees nearTrentham, Victoria. Robert Darby is a freelance writer and long-time Curtin(Canberra) resident.)
In 1999 the State Fire Management Council drew up the INTERIM FIRE MANAGEMENT GUIDELINES FOR FOREST PLANTATIONS. (A copy of this document is sent (by separate cover to Tas Times and is posted on the article).
Strangely the knowledge of the fire risk of artificial forestry plantations has not translated into a State Code, a Plantations Policy or anything else as far as I can see.
Instead the PAL Policy, planning schemes and the new Planning Directive No. 5 Bushfire-Prone Areas Code is forcing residential owners to set back huge distances in Rural Tasmania whilst plantation fire breaks fail to be created properly and fail to be maintained to the FPC. Artificial forestry plantations are a bushfire prone area.
The steepness of the PTR in question and its location on the windward side and close proximity to residential Deloraine, a town, is worrisome.
Re #1
A ridiculous post! Why?
1. Plantations are planted at about 1.5m intervals of same species, same age and same height. The undergrowth is bone-dry and weed infested because the overplanting of trees has sucked every bit of moisture from the ground. A small fire in here will explode into a wildfire in no time.
2. Native Reserves are multiple species sparcely germinated, with usually a reasonably green undergrowth because the trees and shrubs haven’t sucked the moisture from the soil dry as in plantations.
Re #5
No plantations = less bushfires and most certainly even less wild-fires.
Re #9
The problem is that our wet mixed endemic species Tasmanian forests are being trashed for a loss then turned into even less profitable non-endemic extremely closely spaced dry eucalypt plantations.