Oh, that oxymoron, the government business enterprise.

Here we have Forestry Tasmania, inaugurated with a write down of $520 million, or 7 1/2 years of the current health budget shortfall, the gift of a clean slate, performing at a rate of return below that of fixed term investments.

The government claims that it is all their fault. Premier Lennon, closely associated with the head of Gunns, and Minister Green are the ‘directors’ of the GBE, their chosen CEO a child of the former Forestry Commission. And so as Directors they have taken all responsibility for FT’s share value crushing performance, every Tasmanian a loser.

What has changed since the 1996 restructure and write down. The employees became contractors, their numbers reduced, their pay and conditions renegotiated. In that time FT has been directed so well that for 8 out of 9 years no performance bonus has been paid to those employees.

The stock standard response is trotted out every time the performance of this anachronism is brought into question. The community obligations that FT oversees are pulling down their return on investment.

Perhaps this is so. However, their tourist ventures return some 9%, lifting FT’s overall poor return to that share value crushing 2.9%. It’s below the government’s pension deeming rate. It’s below the at-call rate at Tasmanian Perpetual Trustees. It’s beyond belief.

And who is responsible for this performance. The Premier and his colleagues, and of course the Premier’s forestry business advisor, the lord of simony

A person not experienced in the economy and at the twighlight of their life may manage their affairs this way, a hangover from the fear of wealth affecting their pension. It is not acceptable for any business enterprise.

And who is responsible for this performance. The Premier and his colleagues, and of course the Premier’s forestry business advisor, the lord of simony.

As in the good old days of that other former union boss, electrique Eric, when Hydro Tasmania was the name of the state, now another GBE with a virtual monopoly on energy, the then investment decisions were driven by the big players thinking up a number and multiplying by one greater than 2 to determine the future demand for cheap power. The Tasmanian parliament then set about creating the huge HEC debt, $1,500,000.00.

Now we have limonene Lennon leading us on a similar course, except a price with a fair return is divided by a number greater then 2 and Hidding remains hiding in the wings waiting to guide us along exactly the same path.

The government’s total economic performance is not so blatant, GST, departmental restructuring and the brilliant performance of the tourist sector disguising the abject failure of the people’s forests to return on the investment in them, let alone on their standing value.

Another mask that is not so clear, disguises the cost to tourism of giving away Tasmania’s natural heritage, leaving a sea of burnt forest on the way to the Airwalk. Claims about %’s of the state locked up are irrelevant when at the front door we lay industrial forestry out for all to see, so proud of the slaughter. People react to such an experience. It is not the result of consuming a latte.

After all, FT has millions of tons of woodchips and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of sawlog and high quality veneer timber to sell, some still coming from our irreplaceable high conservation value forests. Much of this sold to the one buyer.

How come the directors allow this abysmal performance standard to govern this GBE. Would it be acceptable for Aurora.

And we have seen at the same time nature take body blow after body blow as the harvesting methods move from the pre industrial age toward the automated factory floor. All with concomitant impacts on that Lennon chestnut, the chant of a Labor man without a conscience, jobs, jobs, jobs.

Kept as the most powerful arm of government, representing one customer and determining the position of all other natural resource managing sections of the Tasmanian government

With management like this all but the lords of venality, benefiting from wood as cheap as chips, would have withdrawn all the funds they had invested and put them in other sectors. Why does tourism come to mind here, is FT telling itself something.

Back to those experienced business performers, the director of FT and his apprentice.

These are the 2 who could improve FT’s performance overnight. The reason they don’t lying squarely in the court of cosy relationships. Kept as the most powerful arm of government, representing one customer and determining the position of all other natural resource managing sections of the Tasmanian government.

FT is not serving the Tasmanian people, even indirectly. It’s return is too low, great natural assets have been sacrificed to the timber option. If it is to be kept put the price up. With the destruction of the world’s forests they will eventually have to pay, even if it is blood for wood.

In the meantime tourists will flow to nature’s playground, growing business and jobs far beyond whatever the timber industry could ever offer, even if each tree returned $110,000.00, the full art return. And a substantial part of that money would flow into the Tasmanian economy, not to offshore banks.

This destruction of Tasmania’s forests for little return is historic. Learning nothing, we have failed to elaborately transform wood into high value products. Even now the proposal is to turn that wood into paper pulp, to gobble up water, to pump out pollutants onto the land, into the sea and the air.

144 to 1 on the pressure will be on to reduce the price of pulpwood from FT from before the day the dumb pulp mill opens

Not even a world’s best practice mill, the cry of business when they wanted government and economic reform, but from them comes a great silence when it comes to investing in a sustainable future. 144 to 1 on the pressure will be on to reduce the price of pulpwood from FT from before the day the dumb pulp mill opens.

Taking several of the community service obligations out of FT, the management of forest reserves and the creation of tourist attractions, so that it can focus on its core business, a return to the Tasmanian people from the native forests and any previously cleared land dedicated to timber production, is an essential.

Tensions between land managers within government may arise, the resolution of those is what the tea drinkers of the towers of babble and the narcissists of the parliament are paid to deal with.

If another model does not exist, then design one, oh experts at income and expenditure, whose revenueing position lies outside the competition of the market, with a monopoly on dipping into the private purse so they can play with the public.

phill Parsons has been angered, bemused, and saddened since the Woodchip Campaign was commenced at a kitchen table where he sat, some 33 years ago. Then, the dollar loss to Tasmania from woodchips was $29.00 per ton. Besides the value of a dollar falling from that time what, in the economic performance of the forest managers appointed on behalf of the Tasmanian people, has changed.