Another Lennon lemon

THE list of Lennon-Bacon failures seems to just keep growing and the Government’s slick spin-doctoring machine can no longer paper over the cracks.

Is the latest possible lemon-candidate the $100 million Southwood/Newood wood centre in Tasmania’s upper Huon Valley?

Southwood was to include several components of an industrial forestry conglomeration, including a giant woodchip mill, wood-fired power station, veneer mill and log segregation yard.

Paul Lennon, Forestry Tasmania and the Huon Valley Council are now being asked to account for 10 million dollars of taxpayer funds ploughed into the establishment of the controversial venture.

Last month (July 2005) heralded the 3rd anniversary of Paul Lennon’s announcement of the final approval of the Southwood-Newood wood centre proposal that was meant to eventually employ over 200 people.

So far, all the Lennon Government has to show for the millions of taxpayer dollars, a spin-doctoring frenzy and years of community conflict, is a single sawmill.

Is this why Paul Lennon and Forestry Tasmania have been so deathly quiet about Southwood lately?

Back when this all started, Forestry Tasmania released a document telling us that from planning submission, the project is likely to take two years to reach full development as investment in processing came on board.

What investment?

What investment?

Several years have now passed and where are the investors for the planned giant woodchip mill that was to consume over 75% of the incoming timber?

Where are the investors for the massive wood-fired power station that was to incinerate 300,000 tonnes per year of precious native forests to generate power to feed into the electricity grid and Basslink?

Where are the investors for the rotary-peeled veneer mill that was meant to employ around 120 people?

Ten million dollars is a huge amount of money, so surely Paul Lennon, Evan Rolley and approval bodies such as the Huon Valley Council, now have some serious questions to answer over this?

Planning staff at the Huon Valley Council put in huge amounts of hours to the Southwood planning process, yet the Council’s current planning scheme dates back to the late 1970s!

What do the Resource Planning and Development Commission have to say about this embarrassing nightmare?

At the outset, a fully independent economic, social and environmental analysis of the whole Southwood-Newood issue should have taken place, and may have seen this disaster coming.

Predictably, the woodchip industry is now collapsing under the weight of Forestry Tasmania and the Government’s own incompetent, 3rd world forestry policies.

Predictably, however, the taxpayer bears the cost, with Lennon and Rolley gutlessly blaming the conservationists.

So much for the end of the forest debate in Tasmania!

Doctor in training Neil Cremasco “Neil entered the forest debate in 1999/2000 when Paul Lennon’s quiet plans for a huge woodchip mill complex, 12 kilometres from his home, were sprung by Greens Leader Peg Putt. After much community opposition the woodchip mill, first called Southwood, then the Wood Centre and then Newood, still hasn’t been built.”