To fully appreciate the depth of forestry influence in Tasmania, you need to challenge the system through official channels – through the Forest Practices Tribunal, and the courts. It’s a lot like Alice’s wonderland in that the law means exactly what they want it to – nothing more, nothing less.
For years every single objection to a PTR was rejected, despite the fact that the single ground for objecting, “direct and material disadvantage” to a neighbour, existed no where else in Australian law and had never been defined in Tasmanian law. This gambit was dropped when forestry was deemed an agricultural pursuit, and the PAL policy made it futile to object even on planning grounds.
I watched a judge, who owned substantial shares in Gunns, reverse one of his own earlier rulings on the same factual matter without explanation, and also declare that the central dispute in the case was one both sides agreed upon.
I have seen a Private Forests Tasmania representative complain before the Forest Practices Tribunal that an objection to a PTR had caused a landowner and a logging company to miss out on Natural Heritage Trust Funds they had been promised by PFT to convert native forest to pine plantation.
Every Tasmanian should have to face the logging industry/government in court before they are allowed to vote. Things might then change.
