THE local media’s comatose ability at investigative reporting has at last begun to revive, especially at the Mercury, and it does the soul so much good!

We can only hope journos look beyond the Government and Forestry Tasmania’s media releases and fanfare over the new veneer mills in the Huon Valley and Northwest.

The veneer mill is a component of the controversial Southwood/Newood industrial forestry complex that’s been dogged by controversy and has had so much trouble getting off the ground.

We really have to ask ourselves whether this the very best we can do with our forests?

The Government/Forestry cuddly spin says that “regrowth” timber will be used in the veneer process. Remember however, that Big Red and Forestry tag as “regrowth” the giant, single logs frequently seen on the back of log trucks thundering down Macquarie St.

Forestry’s own Airwalk proves that such ancient trees are of more benefit left standing, to be admired by people from countries the world over who have lost most of their original forests.

Two ugly sisters

The mill will also use plantation timber, however massive areas of high conservation value forests continue to be flattened, and farmland lost to establish such plantations. These plantation trees grow so fast that they often don’t have the density and quality required to make decent veneer, and are fit only for woodchips.

The sugarcoated veneer mill announcement failed to mention the mill’s two very ugly sisters at the Southwood-Newood site. The first is the proposed, massive woodchip mill that will convert over 75% of timber intake into woodchips.

The other one is the proposed wood fired power station that will incinerate 300,000 tonnes of these native forest woodchips annually, feeding this dirty power into the electricity grid and into Basslink.

There’s a familiar fishy smell here, in that the veneer mill is more high volume, high turnover, minimal employment and foreign owned industrial forestry. To stitch the deal up, it’s likely the publicly owned forest resource would have been virtually given away to the investors at bargain basement prices with minimal returns to the Tasmanian public.

Meanwhile the real timber value adders and sustainable employers, such as local boat builders, local cabinet makers and tourist operators, will once again be elbowed onto the sidelines while the Big End of Town gets the lion’s share.

Neil Cremasco is a “student doctor who qualifies later this year”, and member of the Huon Environment Centre.

What Rene reckons:

300 Scottsdale timber mill workers need the sort of resource certainty offered to Malaysian company this week

Following this week’s good news announcement that a Malaysian company will be developing a rortary veneer mill project in the Huon, the State Liberals have today called on the hands-off Forestry Minister Bryan Green to intervene in a precarious situation for 300 timber mill workers at the two softwood processing plants in Scottsdale.

“These workers can be forgiven for being amazed that the Malaysian company in question has been offered a 20 year wood supply agreement when the best that their softwood mills may be able to achieve will be a seven year deal,” Opposition Leader and Shadow Forestry Minister Rene Hidding said.

“Seven years is a very short time in terms of investment and is out of synch with normal ten year business investment rotation periods,” Mr Hidding said.

“While the owner of the two mills in Scottsdale is dealing with a commercial company, Rayonier, as the contracted forest manager, Forestry Tasmania has one of three seats on the joint venture board which managers the softwood resource in North East Tasmania, and therefore the disparity between the two deals will be seen as highly unfair by the 300 workers.”

Mr Hidding said Premier Paul Lennon needs to explain to the 300 workers in Bass why the workers in his electorate appear to be able to benefit from substantial resource security while the 300 existing workers in Bass are being treated the way they are.

“Premier Lennon needs to instruct his hands off Forestry Minister to get himself involved in the stalled negotiations between Auspine and Rayonier to at least move past the fact that they only currently have resource security for 12 months, with only the insufficient period of seven years on the table.

“Minister Green also has the possibility in his own electorate of Braddon of this Malaysian company taking up an option to develop a plant in Smithton for which another 20 year wood supply agreement has been offered.”