Economy
Tasmania’s election results and the forest deal
Dick Adams, Christine Milne and Tony McCall on ABC 936 Leon Compton State-wide Mornings 9 September 2013
Leon Compton: Was the swing against you a vote against the forest peace deal [12.3% swing against Adams]
Dick Adams: There was a fair bit of that, yes. I guess my history and my political processes have been pretty well linked into the forest industry and there were these massive changes that have occurred over the last three years and which a lot of people weren’t happy with. And though I wasn’t involved in all those decisions at all, they were… you know, you inevitably get tarred with that.
Leon Compton: Do you accept with this majority from Tasmania that the forest peace deal will now be unpicked?
Dick Adams: Well, that’s what they are saying; that’s what they [the Liberals] were running on. It’s gonna be pretty difficult to do. The forest industry isn’t what it was three years ago for a whole variety of reasons – mainly the changing technology and the way the markets want… what they used to have. And so there’s a whole change there that you can’t go back to, and there is also a lot of capital that was there, that isn’t here anymore; that was in the forest industries. … So there’ll have to be a few reality checks in that sort of policy thinking.
Leon Compton: What sort of reality checks? What do you think the stumbling blocks will be?
Dick Adams: The industry has totally changed; trending away from hardwood, sawed timber in the market place for the last thirty years. So pine plantation wood has taken over a lot of that market… that used to be filled with hardwood. The fabrication of wood; the moulding of particle wood; the making of boards – skirting boards and these things; these days they’re not pieces of hardwood, they’re pieces of reconstituted wood coming out of a machine that can do it very cheaply… and panelling, and veneering – making wood up through the process of where you join small pieces of wood together. All these things have changed the industry; where the markets are – that’s all changed. And we are going to a certified [wood product] processes; these are the standards…
Leon Compton: To what extent was the vote you experienced, a vote about the State Labor-Green government?
Dick Adams: Well, there was a bit of that as well. People tell you that in the street – that they are not happy with that. I think they are not happy with that because they see the Greens campaigns against mining; against forestry; they see jobs and their communities threatened, because they’re just about stopping things. You’re not about the other arguments up there – other arguments like why you should do things differently. And I thought it was highlighted in this campaign with the Greens’ agriculture policy which was really around being a cottage industry not about an industry where we take spuds off farms in semi-trailers, not a few bags for the farmers’ markets. I mean this sort of misunderstanding or no understanding – just talking in rhetoric – threatens people and communities are threatened.
Leon Compton: And what do you think that will mean as we move towards a State election with Labor and the Greens still in coalition?
Dick Adams: Ah well, it means that Labor needs to define itself – what it is and what it means to Tasmania. And it needs to state its case very definitely.
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Leon Compton: Senator Milne, how do you respond to the halving of your vote at the election in Tasmania?
Senator Christine Milne [Leader of the Australian Greens]: Oh well, of course it’s disappointing, Leon. There’s no doubt about that.
Tasmania is in a state of transition; there is a high level of unemployment and whenever there is a high level of unemployment people tend to take it out on the incumbent government and both nationally and in Tasmania that has been a Labor government working with the Greens. So I’m not surprised. …
There is a big job in Tasmania to explain to people and work with people in the transition that’s going on in the State. This is a difficult decade in Tasmania because the old industry base has been collapsing and that is not a function of the Green or the Labor Party or anyone else. It is a function of world markets and it is function of failure of Tasmania to transition earlier. This is exactly where we were in 1998 when Jim Bacon came in and said to Tasmanians: ‘No, you don’t have to transition. We’ll take you back to the old comfort zone of more logging, more mining. We’ll get on with that.’ And that’s what he tried to do and he had the benefit of $100 million of Harradine funding and the GST. And the money that came in the early days with the GST … that was basically something that sheltered Tasmania from the reality – the collapse of the old economy. Now we are doing it again. The Greens are working with a [State Labor] Government saying we must move on and the forest industry is the classic case. And that’s why I’m calling on Eric Abetz today to come out and rule out absolutely that he will tear down the World Heritage listing and remove the forests. He’s got to come out and rule that out or else they will be taking Tasmania backwards instead of forwards.
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The World Heritage listing is critical because this has been a key component of saving those forests, not only as the Carbon in those forests but of course ending the decades of fighting over the eastern boundary [of the Tasmanian World Heritage Area]. If Tony Abbott and Eric Abetz try to tear down that World Heritage listing, they’re not only wrecking that tremendous opportunity for Tasmania but they’re undermining the Tasmanian brand and I’ll be interested to see what the Chamber of Commerce and others have to say, because it will be a big hit on Tasmania and I’m calling on Eric to rule it out today. … I don’t believe the Liberal have a mandate …
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Leon Compton: Tony McCall, let’s talk about the Greens vote – halved across Tasmanian and reduced across Australia.
Tony McCall: I agree with Christine, the Party has to sit up and listen and look what’s happened here. There’s a really significant overlap between dissatisfaction with the deal that was done in Canberra and the minority government relationship here in Tasmania, I’ve argued that for sometime. This is a really clear indication prior to the State election in March next year that at least in the three northern electorates [Bass, Braddon and Lyons] the Greens are really in trouble, and Labor is paying a significant price as well.
Leon Compton: And so to what extent was this election about Tasmania’s forest policy and the forest agreement? You can see the venom which people went to the ballot box in Lyons particularly, does that tell you it was about forestry?
Tony McCall: Given that the forest industry is a significant sector in these three northern electorates where Labor candidates lost decisively. Given that as Dick Adams said it was a significant issue, and it enabled the Liberal candidate – Eric Hutchinson – to overcome a 12.3% margin.
What our politicians occasionally forget when they make decisions like a peace agreement in the forestry sector; when there is a restructuring process that was supposed to deliver a pulp mill that never happened. While that’s going on and not delivering the end goals, you are really making significant impacts, particularly in rural and regional communities that are highly dependent workforces. … So when you restructure to the extent that this has happened by decisions that are made in the market place or decisions that are supported by a peace agreement, then there are going to be consequences for you politically.
Labor and the Greens [in Tasmania] are going to have to differentiate their product. I think the Greens have really got a narrative story that’s not going down very well here in Tasmania. This notion that if they keep on talking about ‘this transition’ – the transition that they use as a narrative story – is one that is not really linked to any reality that most Tasmanians are feeling. The only transition that is likely to occur in Tasmania is the transition to recession. That will be clarified when we get the GSP [Gross State Product] results in November. So this is not a narrative story that’s going down very well and if you keep talking about that and basically the Greens are telling a story that doesn’t match up to the people’s reality at all, there’s a reaction to that.
The Greens are sort of telling people how they must vote and this is something that people don’t feel particularly enamoured with.
Leon Compton: Is the transition story a cover story for the greater interest in protecting as much of the Tasmanian landscape from development as possible?
Tony McCall: It’s supposed to be a description where we go from the old economy to the new economy, I’ve been a great supporter of this idea. The problem is there isn’t a platform to build it at the moment. … The transition really requires some concrete proposals that are going to bring it to that stage. The NBN is one of those transition platforms … where are the other transitions? As I said before the really regrettable thing about the forest industry is that it was based on an agreement and a goal that wasn’t delivered. That goal was a pulp mill, and it hasn’t been delivered and therefore we’ve had all this restructuring. People are completely bewildered about their futures because of what they saw was a sustainable, viable, ahh… industry sector in Tasmania – forestry.
From,
http://blogs.abc.net.au/tasmania/2013/09/mornings-on-demand-monday-992013.html?site=hobart&program=hobart_mornings
Picture: By Andrew Denman of WE25S Special Timbers Contingency Coupe – Clearfelled 2010 and re-sown with monoculture eucalypt. Coupe chosen by the Engo Signatories to the TFA to supply special timbers.
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