Chair of Hobart City Council Finance and Audit Committee’s and Denison Candidate Philip Cocker has described the Gutwein election budget as a fairytale of epic proportions and should be called tales of the Faraway tree.
A significant proportion of the savings for this budget come from ending the subsidy to Forestry Tasmania. If they were to implement this then Forestry Tasmania would have no option but to shut up shop and effectively close down the Forest Industry.
I questioned Will Hodgman about this via Friday’s Mercury online blog and his response was that by opening up more forest again Forestry Tasmania would prosper. I urge him to read the Auditor General’s report on Forestry which found that Forestry Tasmania made a loss on every tree chopped down.
The Liberal response to advocate logging World Heritage forests and removing the subsidy is bizarre for a party supposedly supporting the industry. In fact chopping down more trees actually increases the loss of Forestry Tasmania. It is very basic economics.
The numbers for their budget are utterly undermined. Over 20% of their budget savings come from closing Forestry Tasmania which they say they won’t do. Have they not be aware of what has been occurring and the massive subsidies the industry has required.
