Dave Groves

Regarding the proposed forest abattoir and its feedstock, we have watched a company over the last four years bury its head in the sand of 1970 and keep moving back in time, perhaps frightened to adapt and get with the program of planet earth 2008. Despite the plummeting share price over the last four years, the company focus has the lens set firmly to the heady days of excess and access. Now in deep trouble and desperate to raise funds just to stay afloat let alone build one of the world’s biggest forest and water guzzling chemical factories, what has really changed since this epiphany occurred?

Old barrow boys like me often dream of the heady days when backs were strong and the sun felt good shining on them while the cool breeze fanned the sweat on the brow.

Those days are just good memories now, gone forever as years of toil and poor manual handling skills wrecked the posture and changed life forever.

So it is in the musty boardrooms of the woodchippers the memories still thrive of the days when heroes were men who chopped down every tree in sight. Greens were just tree huggin’ hippies on the fringe, real men wore suits and planned the next coupe cull from leather chairs and blackwood boardrooms.

An army of flannelettes and steel caps commanded the rainforests, men of the new frontier.

Diesel like the forests was almost free and the smell of money wafted from the forest mixed with two stroke and bar oil.

Ah yes, the echoes of “those were the days” must ring hollow in the flash new offices of glass and metal.

An industry that over time has secured government at its right hand, had laws and rules made to suit their status quo now find that in a changing world, the infinite ‘70s are no more.

Have they ditched the gas guzzling V8 in favour of a Hybrid or is the throttle pushed harder to the floor, set to extract every bit of power available?

Are they set to move with the times or as Python said, “Is the record stuck, the record stuck, the record stuck, the record stuck?

Regarding the proposed forest abattoir and its feedstock, we have watched a company over the last four years bury its head in the sand of 1970 and keep moving back in time, perhaps frightened to adapt and get with the program of planet earth 2008.

Despite the plummeting share price over the last four years, the company focus has the lens set firmly to the heady days of excess and access.

Now in deep trouble and desperate to raise funds just to stay afloat let alone build one of the world’s biggest forest and water guzzling chemical factories, what has really changed since this epiphany occurred?

Has there been a major restructure of the company board?

Has there been a major paradigm shift?

What striking new business model has been promoted as the way forward in light of climate change and carbon storage, finite fuel reserves, poisoned waterways and catchments and air emissions?

The answer is the same championed by our fearless leaders who still sit at the right hand.

Business Enterprise as Usual in Tasmania or BEAUT.

So when we hear that Tassie is a BEAUT place to do business, we all know why.

Nothing has changed from a business perspective or indeed from a government perspective.

The two entities form the sun and everything revolves around them.

This is the mindset that will extinguish the heat from the sun, but not before it has burned through a heap more money soon set to be thrown into the fire that is fanned by the old guard.

This is the most amazing show I have witnessed and the solution is so simple to me, but when the blinkers are folded inward and hands are stitched inside the puppets then all we can do is wait for the next thrilling act to begin …