The Tasmanian Greens today continued to call on federal Forestry Minister Joe Ludwig to reveal details of the Forest Contractor Exit Package process, and to initiate a probity audit of that process, as forest contractor Noel Jackman went public with his concerns about the Package, especially:
• unanswered questions about the make-up of the selection panel and the criteria used to determine eligibility for the exit packages;
• whether some contractors who have received exit packages had also received payments under the Community Forest Agreement that were supposed to be used to convert their operations from native forest into plantations; and,
• the way those associated with the upper echelons of the Tasmanian and Australian Forest Contractors Associations (TFCA and AFCA) appear to be over-represented as package recipients.
Greens Forests spokesperson Kim Booth MP said his office has been contacted on a daily basis during the last few weeks by angry forest contractors who are all raising the same issues, and it is now up to Minister Ludwig to reveal the answers to the legitimate concerns being brought forward by these contractors.
Mr Booth also reiterated his support for the exit package, which he has spent years calling for, but only if it is paid out to those forest contractors who are truly eligible, which does not currently appear to be the case with some of the recipients.
“Federal Forestry Minister Joe Ludwig must stop being secretive about the details of this entire process, and start answering the contractors’ serious questions about:
• the panel used to select recipients and the final criteria used to determine eligibility;
• whether or not all recipients were working in native forests or even held contracts to do so;
• the influence of the TFCA and AFCA, and the benefits received by those closely associated with these organisations; and,
• whether or not contractors who received public money under the Community Forest Agreement, paid in return for them re-tooling their machinery to move out of native forest logging and into plantations, have been the recipients of any of this exit package funding.”
“This exit package was badly needed by the industry, but if the process has been rorted in the manner that is being suggested to me by multiple contractors, then it is imperative that Minister Ludwig immediately launches a probity audit, answers the questions that the contractors are raising, and comes clean about issues related to the selection process used to determine eligibility,” said Mr Booth.
