I’d rather eat potato chips than woodchips

RUSSELL LANGFIELD
Once again David Llewellyn and the Tasmanian Labor Govenment are slashing funding of services to the agricultural industry departments.

Despite the recent massive efforts and desperate pleas of farmers to gain Government recognition and support for the security of the most important agricultural food sectors in Tasmania, they have been consistently ignored and left to languish especially over the last decade while any savings from these cuts have gone towards propping up and funding the defaulting, unprofitable and unsustainable pulp timber industry and other infrastructure and sporting failures.

Not so long ago Tasmania’s rural communities were thriving with large populations and services in each town. Now they are becoming ghost towns as the children leave seeking work elsewhere in droves.

Kimberley for example used to have a pub, butchery, bakery, supermarket, fuel outlet, library, train station and so on. All these have gone, and not even a public phone. All that’s left are some of the most productive food farmlands being forced to convert, through lack of support from Government and massive cuts in farmgate returns from the multinationals, into forest plantations with not a soul in sight ever working on them.

Jobs, Mr. Bartlett and Llewellyn, jobs and food are important, not unemployment and monocultural tree plantations. I’d rather eat potato chips than woodchips.

Russell Langfield
Kimberley