The Great Western Tiers. The view field is currently World Heritage, but is proposed to be wholly excised from the Tasmanian Wilderness WHA by the Australian Government, with the support of the Tasmanian government and various Legislative Councillors such as Greg Hall.
What will be lost … Rob Blakers’ photographic record of WHA-listed forests, http://www.robblakers.com/
King Billy pine forest, Great Western Tiers
Oldgrowth wilderness forest, Peak Rivulet, southern Tasmania
Sassafras grove, Butlers Gorge
Oldgrowth forest, Upper Florentine Valley
Oldgrowth forest, Upper Florentine Valley
Snowgums, Navarre Plains, just south of Lake St Clair
Greg Hall campaigns as an Independent representing the Electorate of the Western Tiers in the Legislative Council. His submission No 114 to the Senate Committee Enquiry into World Heritage Listing under the Tasmanian Forest Agreement (TFA) is downloadable below.
This submission is a deceitful document written by a leading political player responsible – in part through his outspoken position in Parliament – for the design and distribution of Government largesse to the logging industry. The Submission is of serious importance to Tasmanians for its unspoken sins of omission.
Hall knows that land in private ownership, as a result of the unique to Tasmania, Private Timber Reserve (PTR) legislation, may be logged whatever the circumstances.
Hall knows that land in private ownership has not been incorporated into the areas under World Heritage consideration – but this exemption is not stated.
Hall knows that privately-owned Tasmanian forests are abundant and provide no competition to Forestry Tasmania (FT) as they cannot compete on price.
Hall, as the former Mayor of Meander, knows that by requesting an application for a PTR over privately-owned land it can be removed from Council planning controls, logged, clearfelled, burnt, put into plantations, or for that matter selectively logged for peeler billets. As a result there is no problem over supply from the private resource.
Hall knows that the problem is not supply but price. Forestry Tasmania virtually gifts our timber obtained from State Forests to Ta Ann, the last standing major consumer, via quotas and contracts, thereby keeping privately owned timber out of the market. All this is achieved by a compliant system in which no questions are asked.
None of these matters are raised by Hall in Submission 114.
The system has been operated by all Tasmanian pollies to the benefit of the now-bankrupt Gunns – and now Ta Ann – and also those that have supported them. We have paid millions and millions of dollars to these parasites on the public purse through the seemingly willing efforts of our pollies.
All that remains is to buy FSC for public forests with the $7.5 million allocated under the TFA. With that amount of money, despite rollback, Colbeck and the Liberals are betting that FSC certification for Forestry Tasmania (FT) can be achieved.
Paul Harriss is now the State Minister for Forests. He and and Hall are close to Ta Ann – a company gifted large quotas by FT to supply billets from public forests to the factory door at a price protected by commercial-in-confidence from FOI requests.
This price is believed to be at an operational loss to FT and hence the public purse. The contracts and quotas were negotiated by Evan Rolley as head of FT. Rolley is now CEO of Ta Ann. We have paid Ta Ann $26 million to forgo a proportion of this quota, in part,as a result of political support led by Hall and Harriss in the Upper House of the Tasmanian parliament.
These billets are readily available from privately-owned land but FT keeps the private landowner out of this market by supplying the gifted quota to Ta Ann for a near or actual loss. This is not in the interests of Tasmanians – particularly the private landowner – who cannot deal with this timber asset in a market controlled and subsidised by FT and the public purse.
The World Heritage listing of the last of the easily-accessed forests owned by the people creates a problem for Ta Ann as it will be forced to look to privately-owned and more expensive billets. The name of the game for Hall, Harriss, Senator Richard Colbeck, Eric Abetz and Rolley is to remove the World Heritage listing as agreed under the TFA and return the public forests to the former status quo – at the same time allowingTa Ann to keep the $26 million under the TFA.
The TFGA under Jan Davis appears to make no effort to promote the interests of its members by promoting protection of public forests under World Heritage listing. If FT actually has to abide by the TFA it will reduce eventually the area of public forest available for logging by some 500,000 acres. This would allow the privately-owned forest owner into the market at a real rate of return rather than him having to compete against a GBE – Forestry Tasmania – which can operate at a loss … subsidised by the public purse.
This is not in the interests of Ta Ann, hence the pollies concentrating their efforts on protecting the loss-making GBE Forestry Tasmania by rolling back World Heritage listing to regain access to the public forests; in order to keep billet prices down.
If one bears the above in mind the actions of a so-called Independent in the Parliament namely one Greg Hall his sins of omission become contentious and his simple but devious comments then fall into place (Hall’s comments are italicised):
However my particular focus relates to a far more personal and long-standing relationship with this area… there is approximately a 100 kilometre interface with private land in the electorate…. The World Heritage addition of some 74,000 hectares is for the whole of Tasmania; not just the section within the Hall electorate of the Western Tiers. Hall is not talking about – nor will he address – the very thin highly visible band below the 800 metre snowline – all that remains after 200 years of white settlement. The private property boundary hovers around 400 to 500 metres, in the main and thus there is a visually exciting, publicly owned, natural forested slope between the amazing Western Tiers escarpment, the tree line at 800 metres and private land below 400 metres. Hall dodges the real issue as he wants access and no protection.
Why and on whose behalf?
I have over many decades been a keen bushwalker and resident of the Western Tiers region. I have extensively walked the tracks that criss-cross this wonderful landscape. Many of those tracks were cut by local bushmen and their ancestors, to gain access to the hinterland that is their backyard. Question: Why then, as an Independent representing your local community, would you wish to roll back protection to ‘this wonderful landscape’, to allow clearfelling at the most visible highest points between 400 and 800 metres that are still in public ownership?
I appreciate the many existing reserves across the face of the Tiers, and also the fact that timber harvesting is not permitted above the 800-metre level. This sounds good but there are very few trees to protect above the snow level at 800 metres; just alpine plants and rocks. This is the deceit that allows the Hall and the pro-logging lobby to claim that 40% of the island is locked up.
I also appreciate the fact that from the rim of the Tiers southward, is an already existing very large World Heritage listed area. Why because it is a virtually treeless, barren landscape of button grass plains, well above the snowline in which a chainsaw is of little or no use.
What I don’t appreciate are the many fallacious claims that the extension meets the criteria for proclamation of a World Heritage Area. Indeed, virtually all of this area has seen timber production in one form or another and recreational use since white settlement … Google Earth proves that this is a lie. The privately-owned lower slopes have been clearfelled and burnt for woodchips made profitable by replanting with monoculture plantations under the Abetz MIS scam. The FT-owned upper slopes have been selectively logged but are still there. The huge landslips that have scarred the Tiers are a result of all this activity.
The fact that the slopes of the Western Tiers are coveted by environmentalists is testament to a job well done and the active management by aboriginal people, local people, recreational users. The Mountain Hut Preservation Society and the list goes on. With particular reference to the public FT-administered forest between 400 and 800 metres, why is the Independent Hall not promoting the landscape values in the public interest of World Heritage protection while this is still possible? It is coveted by the wider community because of its contribution to our sense of beauty and landscape.
It is my strong belief that interfering with that process, of local custodial management will give rise to concerns about on-going management of the region, increased vermin numbers and escalating fire risk. Custodial management is the misnomer for FT and part of the Hall submission of weasel-words to allow FT to remain in control of the logging industry. The supply of cheap billets to Ta Ann and the freeze-out of private forest owners is all part of the Hall and Harriss campaign which begs the question: what do they receive in return? It is certainly, not the plaudits of the thinking man
I would conclude by saying that my constituents appreciate the need to preserve natural values. Why as Mayor did Hall allow the binning of the Meander Valley Scenic Management Strategy so as to prevent any form of landscape protection legislation over the Tiers?
But in this instance, the great majority are totally perplexed and have no respect for this autocratic and arbitrary decision! A lie … he means the logging industry, not the great majority.
It is simply deemed totally unacceptable by the wider community’.A lie. He means the logging community … not the wider community.
In his submission there is no mention:
• Of the world-famous Mole Creek Karst.
• No mention of Scenic values.
• No mention of loss of native vegetation on the lower accessible slopes.
• No mention of a complete lack of scenic protection; a situation unique to Tasmania.
• No mention of the iconic Tiers value to tourism
• No mention of PTR’S that take clearfelling for woodchips and replacement by plantations out of the planning scheme and Council protection.
His “long standing relationship” with the area saw him as the local mayor cleverly resisting any move towards landscape protection over the Western Tiers in order to facilitate the clearfell and burn woodchip industry. Is his aim to clearfell and burn this state owned landscape to benefit Forestry Tasmania and their logging contracts with Ta Ann?
With this Submission Hall proves beyond doubt how devious and deceitful a so-called Independent MLC can be. Our district becomes poorer as a result of his years of entrenched association with a corrupted logging industry acting to the detriment of the Tasmanian economy and landscape.
Selective logging on private land for a proper financial return to owners who have gained FSC approval is Hall’s correct line of address; acting as a true Independent representing the Western Tiers with no political affiliations.
This is not in the interests of FT, Ta Ann or Minister Harriss or seemingly Hall, which poses the obvious question: What is their reward?
Greg Hall’s car with Give It Back sticker…
Greg Hall
Download Greg Hall’s submission
Submission_114.pdf
• TT Media HERE for … • Kim Booth: Liberals under Budget, Health and Forestry Pressure and • Richard Colbeck: Coalition policy to return security to forestry industry … among many other Meedja Releases …
• TT Media HERE for heaps of opinions, including Kim Booth: $2.1 Billion Reasons Why Treasury Federal Budget Analysis Must be Released and Richard Colbeck: World Heritage mockery etc
• Garry Stannus, in Comments: Forestry (Rebuilding the Forest Industry) Bill 2014 – Clause 6 allows for the HCV to be logged before 6 years! I had a look at current Bill which Paul Harriss has introduced into the Parliament. It’s called the Forestry (Rebuilding the Forest Industry) Bill 2014. I don’t mind that someone wants to rebuild the Forest Industry, as such, but I feel an amount of sadness that this man is going to take us back into those dark places …
• Bryan Green: Liberals split on approach to environment groups
phill Parsons
May 25, 2014 at 11:22
Ego is in it for Hall as he hopes for the Presidency of the Legislative Council. Gaining this position is dependent on a long incumbency. A long incumbency requires a pandering to the views common in the electorate not to telling them a different narrative, even if it were to make the electorate wealthier.
One cannot say he is afraid of taking on the status quo, Hall is after all a member of it, so able to understand and work within it.
However, it has been easier to represent the old economy [although he has diversified his own farming operations] and thus keep his electorate where he wants it – with a feeling of being under siege fed by Hall etal as they see it as the best way to remain on their easy street.
Pete Godfrey
May 25, 2014 at 12:56
It does seem that there is an agenda going on between our politicians and the logging industry that is not to the benefit of the community as a whole.
As for Forestry Tasmania well they definitely don’t work for the states benefit.
Prices they received for peelers are as follows
2007/8 2008/9 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12
Ta Ann $67 $68 $64.27 $60 $62
Export $79 $80 $83 $85 $40
the Ta Ann prices are mill door landed, so that takes into account freight, cutting, roading etc.
The Export peelers are to China, no idea what happened to the price in 2011/12 but we can only assume FT needed to get rid of more logs and China had all the bargaining chips.
john hayward
May 25, 2014 at 14:29
Tasmania is the only state which provides no protection for native forest on private land. In practice it provides no protection for private land native vegetation on the steepest gradients, even where they are catchments for municipal water supplies as well as on landscapes as prominent as the Western Tiers
Greg’s mates in the TCA also campaigned against protection for riparian vegetation.
PTRs also enjoy breaks on rates when converted to plantations, which the rest of the municipality must then make up. Because PTRs are commonly clearfelled by logging companies in partnership with landowners, the return is determined by how the loggers grade the trees. A trust relationship, Tassie style.
As an MLC, Greg has applied his very modest abilities to ensuring the Tiers resemble the “industrial zone” that the TCA wanted all rural areas to become.
John Hayward
lmxly
May 25, 2014 at 14:44
Can you say what difference, if any, the denial of future subsidies from the State government to FT will make to its supply of billets at below cost to Ta Ann? If as John Lawrence predicts, the loss of the subsidy ($95m over 4 years) will force FT into a position where it will be trading while insolvent, then it will have to cease trading at all or FT directors will be criminally responsible to the ACCC. Alternatively it will have to increase the price it charges Ta Ann for peeler billets to a level that enables it to trade solvently – which may raise the price sufficiently for the private timber suppliers to compete.
Is this a feasible scenario?
Barry Reynolds
May 25, 2014 at 14:59
Any of you people heard of the RFA?, you want to open a can of worms try and navigate your way through that little gem.
Ted Mead
May 25, 2014 at 15:15
#2- Pete – Read the Auditor General reports on FT over the past few years.
The export of logs to China was heavily subsidised with obviously no profit as we paid for all the shipping costs. The administration costs were not factored into the final sums so we would have essentially been paying China to take our sawlogs. Dumb Dumb Dumb!!
This probably comes to no surprise for many of us that FT just cut forests to justify their own existence, hence why they were allocated a contingency fund of $110 million over the next 3 years to keep them solvent.
Labor said at that time that the State Treasury suggested this fund, but this was simply a government smoke screen because anyone within Treasury would know that this was a fiscal farce. The media never interviewed anyone in treasury regarding this.
More of the then Minister Green’s fiscal brainwaves.
They average merchant selling sausages on the street would have more business acumen than that!!!!!!
Jack lumber
May 26, 2014 at 00:08
Re #3 dear john ok I will bite please explain why the forest practices code is flawed , corrupt and clear fall is the only mandated silvicultural option please explain how all logs are chipped and there is no sawlogs recovery on private land . The ether awaits your information that will support your claims .
Robin Charles Halton
May 26, 2014 at 04:42
The usual whingers can whinge but after tomorrow the TFA will be scrapped as well as the integrity of State Labor for following Green ideology.
Oh, look at all of those wasted years under State Labor killing time by kicking forestry in the guts to bolster Green ambitions which would eventually lead to stopping all native forestry activity.
The last of great Green conquests has failed leaving Labor red faced with 400,000 ha of State Forest returned for Multiple Use Forest Management
Also with Gunns out of the way and a far weakened and ineffective Labor and Green opposition, forest management can be gradually restored to pre TFA management.
This ensures the level of sustainable forestry can be achieved in the long term as the pre TFA levels of Reserved land will return to and remain under the 20 year Tas RFA legislation 1997-2017
Gordon Bradbury
May 26, 2014 at 11:59
It is certainly telling that the politicians never ever talk about the profitability of the public native forest industry. The debate must only ever be about “science” and “forest management”. Forestry as a community service. Pathetic really!
John Hawkins
May 26, 2014 at 12:18
Halton.
Sustainable forestry in Tasmania is a pipe dream.
Forestry in Tasmania is a political football used by the players to get elected.
A gravy train of public largesse based on who can pay the biggest bribes.
That’s it.
john hayward
May 26, 2014 at 13:01
#7, Read more carefully , Lumber. If you compare the FP Authority’s figures on the volume of wood carted away with the total chip exports, you get a measly figure. I’m not saying they don’t sometimes pay the owner farmer for bugger-all sawlogs while actually whisking a bit more over to the mill.
John Hayward
Mark Poynter
May 26, 2014 at 15:34
#11 Ah …. the usual conspiracy theories….
Having worked with private native forests in northern and central Tassie for about 6 years, I can tell you that the majority of these forests were dry forest types with low sawlog yields, and that they were mostly being selectively thinned specifically to remove the poorer trees and retain the better quality trees to be future sawlogs.
Think of properties like Benham (60,000 ha of forest) and many others in central Tasmania that were being harvested at the time and for many years after I left.
Understandably, most of the wood removed was only suitable for pulp, and there was a low sawlog yield …….. but I’m sure you won’t let inconvenient truths such as this get in the way of a good yarn about industry greed and corruption.
Garry Stannus
May 26, 2014 at 20:29
Forestry (Rebuilding the Forest Industry) Bill 2014 – Clause 6 allows for the HCV to be logged before 6 years!
I had a look at current Bill which Paul Harriss has introduced into the Parliament. It’s called the Forestry (Rebuilding the Forest Industry) Bill 2014. I don’t mind that someone wants to rebuild the Forest Industry, as such, but I feel an amount of sadness that this man is going to take us back into those dark places. Over the years, my own position has defined and then moved, while travelling along our tortuous forest way. In those years of dispute, I became willing, in the end, to commit to the Permanent Timber Production Zones – provided that the HCV were also ‘provided’ for, i.e., given protection. Provided that FT should lift its game and provided that the Forest Practices Code would be strengthened.
King Canute is something of an enigma. Did he really imagine that he could turn back the tide? Was it a fatuous exercise in vanity, as is often imagined? Or indeed was he instead simply trying to demonstrate that no one, could turn back the tide of an inexorable event? Questions with various answers. Can human intransigence ignore the encroachments of climate change? Does Paul Harriss think that by repealing the Tasmanian Forests Agreement Act 2012 he can rebuild the Forest industry?
Tony Mulder short-changed us with his durability conditions while Harriss, Dean and others in the LC were so opposed to the TFA that they often refused to enter the debate, or did so with the proviso that they were dead against it, but just in case it got passed, they’d try and water it down.
It is particularly galling, that the Labor Govt, in its dying days, chose to ally with the Liberals to destroy the only legal path we had to challenge the pulp mill – the matter of the expired P/permit/s. Those Labor men and women did not have the moral integrity, the sense of democratic purpose, that we so much need here in this state. Lara Giddings. Let it be written on her political headstone, that she did a deal with the devil. That devil is the Liberal Party of Tasmania.
Can it get them the pulp mill? Isn’t that over with? Isn’t it just a case of the last bits and pieces being sold off? It’s dead isn’t it ? Zombies aren’t really true … are they? How could we have a zombie pulp mill built with no one to pay for it? It was bigger than Ben Hur. How could we have a pulp mill that had no timber, once Gunns plantations were sold off? New Forests have studiously avoided the purchase of the Pulp Mill Permit. The LibLabs wouldn’t think of building the pulp mill still, would they?
Is Paul Harriss in denial or what? . He’s probably been in that state for all the long years of his Parliamentary life. He must think that by his move into the House of Assembly, by his becoming the Minister for Resources, that he can turn back the tide. What will he do with 400,000 Ha of HCV forest that he’s fixing to take off the protected-for-future-reserves list, as well as the million or so hectares in the already existing Timber Production Zones?
Surely the protection of the environment is an idea whose time has come, and surely you can’t turn back the clock.
Sure. He might think he has the numbers. But he is part of a Government which, while in opposition, knew only negativity and envy. That was the Hodgman embrace. His humiliation at the hands of the Labor-Green govt. The missed prize. So our Premier, our Liberal Govt, and our Federal Tasmanian Liberal members, think that, Canute like, they can turn back the tide. So they are in the process of delisting 74,000 hectares of our World Heritage Area, and in the process of retiring more than four hundred thousand hectares of high conservation value native forests as a first step in rebuilding a Forest Industry in our state. Does they really think that they will be able to log and sell these forests? Do they think that they can still get the pulp mill up and running? There is a disconnect at work here.
Cont …
Garry Stannus
May 26, 2014 at 20:31
We have to change our ways. All we have demonstrated in the last two hundred years is that our use of our timber resources has not been sustainable. Otherwise, why would we still need to be going into hitherto unlogged old-growth areas? Have we not been able to harvest and reharvest (i.e. ‘sustainably’) those areas that we have logged since we came here? Obviously not. And until we change our ways we will only wreck what we have got left.
This Bill, introduced by Paul Harris, is perverse. It is Canute-like in that it believes that the glory days of willy nilly forest clearance and wood chipping can come again. There is hubris in a man who would inflict this onto our state:
Clause 4: FUTURE POTENTIAL PRODUCTION FOREST LAND
4. Future potential production forest land
(1) The land –
(a) described in column 2 of the table set out in Clause 2 of Schedule 1; or […]
(b) that is the subject of an order made under
is to be known as “future potential production forest land†…
This is the land that under the TFA was given protection for future reservation. No more High Conservation Value nomenclature. Now it’s to be called ‘Future Potential Production Forest Land’. Yet there’s nothing ‘potential’ at all in this. Here is the theft of more than 400 thousand hectares of High Conservation Value native forest reserved ‘for future protection’ under the TFA (Tasmanian Forests Agreement) Act 2013. Column 2 of “the table set out in … of Schedule 1†runs to some 30 pages consisting of 295 parcels of land – an area now to be stolen under the thin pretence that as future potential production forest land, it will not be logged for 6 years. That is manifestly so that FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) Certification will be achieved by Forestry Tasmania, and then these forests will be put onto the chopping block. FSC doesn’t even get a mention in the Bill, yet it lurks there in the background. But it’s not even as simple as that. This Bill also contains the ability to log those areas before the 6 years is up! (see Clause 6)
Clause 6: “EXCHANGE OF LANDâ€
The Minister (Paul Harris) “may request the Crown Lands Minister to consider the exchange of future potential production forest land for permanent timber production zone land.†In other words, the HCV can be piecemeal-logged first, while still maintaining publicly that there is a 6 year delay on any logging of those areas, while the matter is supposedly better and more fully considered. (Vanessa Goodwin is the Minister for Justice, which administers the Crown Lands) This legislation is a lie.
Clause 7: “Conversion of future potential production forest land and permanent timber production zone landâ€. After six years from now, there will be no requirement to pretend to swap PPF land for TPZ land. All of our HCV will be open to being designated as permanent timber production zone. That, ironically, would include any TPZs which had been swapped for PPFs. It’s called giving with one hand and taking with the other.
Section 8: “Conversion of reserved land to future potential production forest land†The Minister can move to have any areas delisted from the World Heritage Area List and designated as future potential production forest land.
Let’s take a break from the Bill at hand: The Liberals must think that their overall raft of hateful legislation will together bring back their glory. What else is in the pipeline?
1 There is the concomitant move to delist 74,000 Ha from our Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area on the grounds that some 3,000 of those those hectares bear the obvious marks of disturbance – that allows over 70,000 Ha of wilderness ‘to be put to the sword’, to use Tony Mulder’s expression.
2 At the same time, our Federal and State Liberal Governments promise a number of legislative changes to stifle our opposition to their barbaric anti-environmental intentions. There is the Consumer and Competition Act which the Feds plan to change in order to make it illegal for individuals and groups to put our side of the story to the international market.
3 Then here in Tas, Will Hodgman canvasses draconian fines and jail terms for protest in defence of our forests. That’s the Work, Health and Safety Act which he intends to use as a tool to log the HCV forests.
cont
Garry Stannus
May 26, 2014 at 20:32
4 Then again, they have promised to change the Defamation Act so that SLAPP suits, similar to that which Gunns launched on the ‘Gunns 20’ can again be used by corporate big boys to silence us recalcitrant citizens.
This is the face of Neo Liberalism in Australia. It is an ugly beast. It believes in surrounding refugees in razor wire, and in attacking our poor, our sick, our unemployed, our young and our old. And as if that’s not enough, Neo Liberalism believes in denying that Climate Change is happening. The new Liberal team, Tasmanians both state and federal, are aspiring King Canutes. As the melting of the ice sheets accelerates, they seem to believe that if they don’t mention global warming, it will go away. That it won’t be a problem. That sea levels aren’t rising.
Australia used to show leadership in the world community. Now it begins to model hate and anti-science. They haven’t introduced a ‘thought crime’ Bill yet, have they? If not, it’s probably just a matter of time.
Pete Godfrey
May 26, 2014 at 21:12
Thanks Garry Stannus for taking the time to read the Harriss bill. The idea of swapping production land for reserves has been used so many times in Tasmania.
There was the great land swap whereby 77 thousand ha of land was shifted into FT’s hands under freehold title, there has never been any proof that any land was actually swapped back into crown land in recompense.
Then of course there were 70 odd thousand ha of reserves that were put back into production under the RFA. Tooms Lake and Teekopana plateau are two parts of that. Teekopana was taken out of the SW conservation Zone and given to FT to recover Huon Pine from. I do not know where the rest of the land was but it is mentioned in a short potted history by the National Parks service.
So swapping, of course some horribly degraded over logged land will end up being swapped for HCV forest that will go into the maws of the peelers.
Typical of the vindictive attitude of the modern day conservatives.
Jack lumber
May 26, 2014 at 21:40
Re # 11 thank you john . Several allegations where made by you and it would appear that you have again not substantiated any of the claims you make . The matter re private sawlogs yields has been explained and could you please explain how FPA or should I say FPP estimates are a measure of yield or that sawlog recovery is not being maximised . Could it be that is the volume that is reflective of forest type. Or have I misread something ?
phill Parsons
May 27, 2014 at 11:59
Swapping around reserves so the forest can be disturbed in the least and destroyed in the most does not meet cinservation goals and thus degrades Tasmania’s and Australia’s international standing.
Mark Poynter
May 27, 2014 at 13:33
The comments have somewhat drifted away from John Hawkins article as is almost always the case. However, his article is somewhat confused and contains unsubstantiated presumptions trumpeted as though they are indisputable facts – as is typical of TT’s coverage of forestry issues.
Some of these have been rightly pointed out by Jack Lumber but have not been answered.
For me the article’s central theme is that by closing down public forests, Ta Ann can shift to private forests for its needs.
The problem with that simplistic notion is that there is a substantial difference between the two resources – one is certain or near enough to it (the public native forest resource), and one is uncertain (the private native forest resource).
In reality, a significant company such as Ta Ann needs certainty to invest and survive, and they won’t get it wholly from the private forests although those forests can certainly play a valuable complementary role as they have already done for a long time.
As the public forests have only one owner/manager, it is possible to conduct forest type mapping and inventory programs to accurately estimate what’s there and work out the sustainable yield – this is standard forestry practice that has been undertaken in Tas for decades.
However, the private forests are owned by probably thousands of different people, and so it is logistically difficult or impossible to conduct inventory programs to accurately estimate what’s there in terms of wood resource. Even if it could be done, its likely to be constantly changing as properties are bought and sold by owners with varying intentions as to their forests.
A management intentions survey conducted several years ago by PFT, found that only approximately half of Tassie’s private native forests were at that time owned by people who had an intention to sell wood at some stage. Whether this is still the case and how much wood is avialable and the products it could be used for remains essentially unknown in any accurate sense.
John Hawkina
May 27, 2014 at 22:01
Poynter #19,
Your note: supply is certainty from state forests versus the uncertain availability from private land.
You are correct that is the key.
A certain supply has a value; a lot of value and is worthy of a considerable premium in any business when granted.
Not so in your corrupt Tasmania.
Here the certainty of supply comes free, a gift, gratis, zilch, with a built in profit when the gifted quota is too great for our forests to withstand.
The result; the gifted Quota is sold back not to FT which is bust, but a third party … the taxpayer; for it has become in the hands of the holder what it always was – an asset.
The man who gave the Quota to Ta Ann as head of FT, one Rolley, then cashed in the chips for his new employer, as a result this company was gifted $26 million by you and I.
So much for certainty in Tasmania.
How can you keep defending the indefensible?
How simple can your coments be?
We was robbed!
PB
May 27, 2014 at 22:06
In response to Mark Poynter #19.
In March 2012 the Final Report on the work of the Independent Verification Group found that Forestry Tasmania was logging native forests at double the sustainable rate and that Ta Ann’s contracted annual volume of 265,000m3 for peeler billets could not be met.
http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/eefde0e6-0f83-486d-b0c3-8b1d25abc497/files/ivgcapstonefinal1-1.pdf
The report explicitly states that the sustainable peeler yield from native forests is estimated to be only 88,000 m3 per year (without any new reserves and assuming 30% headroom).
However, instead of both parties negotiating a reduction in volume, Ta Ann has used the Tasmanian Forestry Agreement as a pretext to extract $26 million in taxpayer funded “compensation†for a 40% reduction to the annual quota allotted to it by Forestry Tasmania in 2006 when Evan Rolley was Managing Director.
It should also be remembered that the market for Ta Ann’s products reduced significantly after its unethical practices were highlighted on the global stage. However, when it no longer wanted to take its contractual volumes the State Government conveniently arranged to suspend its take or pay provisions for peeler log supply at a cost to the taxpayer of $4 million.
http://prelive.themercury.com.au/article/2012/12/27/369095_tasmania-news.html
This brazen misappropriation of public funds demands independent investigation by the equivalent of an ICAC.
john hayward
May 28, 2014 at 00:13
Re #15, Garry. The Libs are merely following the lead of their new allies in Cambodia, who are about to make criticising that govt on social media, the only free press they have, an offence punishable by up to 3 years..
But lay off Canute. His command to the tides was supposedly to demonstrate the limits of his power. Tony’s defiance of science might be a better parable for imbecilic arrogance.
John Hayward
Steve
May 28, 2014 at 01:02
#19; That’s a typically plausible, yet ridiculous comment. Ta Ann is a private business. Your contention is that they need access to public forests for their security of operation.
It’s a nice thought, but how many other businesses would like State guarantee for their operations?
Simplot would probably be quite keen if the State grew all their potatoes and guaranteed the price they paid?
Poppies grown; price guaranteed? Cows milked, price guaranteed? Where does it stop? Lawns mowed, price guaranteed?
The simple reality is that Ta Ann is an overseas owned company, yet to make a profit in Australia. Their capital costs have been comprehensively subsidised by the Australian taxpayer. If they have to purchase their raw materials on the open market; ie private forest owners, what on earth is wrong with that?
Bit of uncertainty. Oh dear! That must have been what Auspine felt when their pine supply mysteriously vanished! We don’t owe these carpet baggers a living.
Gordon Bradbury
May 28, 2014 at 01:04
Thankyou John (#20) for stating the bleedingly obvious comeback to the old forestry furphy of “certainty of supply”. It’s a joke really the arguments that my peers use. Very few businesses have the luxury of “certainty of supply”. Most businesses just have risk, and how to manage risk. Supply is a risk. Price is one way to manage supply risk. Political protection is not. Neither is corruption.
Australia’s forest industry was until recently dominated by a duopoly of a handful of favoured processors and State Government growers. In New Zealand the forest industry is now dominated by private growers, not the processors. That makes it tough for processors, but so what! The growers are doing the job of growing trees for profit. If there’s a profit the trees get replanted. If not or other land uses are more profitable, then the trees don’t get replanted. That’s a real forest (plantation) industry – dominated by multiple efficient, commercially focused growers.
Not here in Australia. Here we still run the forest industry as an inefficient, loss-making, community-angering community service.
Can we please stop running the forest industry as a community service, and start running it like a business??
Mark Poynter
May 28, 2014 at 14:07
Oh dear …. I should have known better than to voice a measured and rational explanation of why it mightn’t be so simple to simply shift resource supply from public to a wholly private forest supply.
For my troubles, I’m now supposedly “defending the indefensible” etc etc…….. and the outrage seems to emanate from those who I suspect think that running a major resource use corporation is the same as running the local milk bar.
We are talking here about a major corporation that employs lots of people and must invest $tens of millions to come and set-up infrastructure before they even start operating. If we were talking about a tiny local sawmill which runs on the smell of an oily rag, then I could appreciate the argument about dealing with a far greater level of uncertainty – but Hawkins article was explicitely about Ta Ann.
#23 “It’s a nice thought, but how many other businesses would like State guarantee for their operations?”
Well how about tourism? Isn’t it the case that the Bass Strait ferries are supported by Govt subsidies on the realisation that if the service became unviable, Tassie would lose a service that delivers tourists who generate $hundreds of millions in economic activity.
My understanding is that the subsidy to keep that service going is an investment based on the recognition of the infinitely greater socio-economic loss if it was to fall over.
This is similar to supporting FT, in that it merely facilitates the supply of resource to industry that then generates the wealth. If the resource isn’t supplied to industry the socio-economic loss is infinitely greater than the cost of the subsidy.
The complicating factor with FT is that always undertook other services such as fire management, research, and road maintenance that provides no direct income stream, and my suspicion is that much of what is referred to as a subsidy by the TT mob is simply normally appropriated funding required to carry out such activities, which if not done also carry substantial socio-economic risks.
I’ve always been bemused by the TT attitude to Govt funding of forestry and suspect it stems from a complete lack of appreciation about what forest management is and how it can impact on the rest of society. For example, I saw a response last week from a female comedian about how huge numbers of people will flock to see the old growth forests in the TTWHA extension ….. if so, someone’s going to have to spend money on building and/or maintaining forestry roads. One wonders who the usual suspects on TT think will be able to so and how they will do it without drawing on Govt funds.
#24 Gordon
I suspect you’ve never been involved in native forest management if you don’t understand that much of it is indeed a community service from which no direct income stream can be derived.
I look forward to you investing in a blackwood sawmill soon, on the presumption that one day you’ll have a viable and sizable blackwood plantation estate. Good luck getting the loan from the bank.
abs
May 28, 2014 at 17:35
Mark states ,”Well how about tourism? Isn’t it the case that the Bass Strait ferries are supported by Govt subsidies on the realisation that if the service became unviable, Tassie would lose a service that delivers tourists who generate $hundreds of millions in economic activity.”
so Mark, no freight truck use the ferries? talk about ‘sins of omission’
Steve
May 28, 2014 at 18:07
#25; Mark, do I understand correctly, that you are saying that providing subsidised public timber to Ta Ann is equivalent to subsidising the Bass Strait ferries?!
abs
May 28, 2014 at 20:09
Steve, i believe it is “a measured and rational explanation” 😉
Garry Stannus
May 29, 2014 at 18:25
Well John (#22), the jury’s still out on Canute … at least three scenarios are possible. And I was was conscious of at least these three when invoking his name and legend. We can use his story in so many ways … Turnbull faced with his own party’s climate-deniers … Abbot defiant of the truth … Sea level rise … Climate change … Hodgmann and the decline of Tasmanian Forestry … Abetz and the rest. Would that we had a leader, perhaps like Canute, to show us the path. I believe that Gough and Bob H. & Bob B. were three leaders, and I mean no disrespect to those that preceeded/succeeded them. And John, permit me to include you in that list of leaders. You went where not many others would dare to go.
John Hawkins
May 29, 2014 at 18:56
Poynter #25.
Do not be so pained or mealy mouthed about the logging industry that “generates the wealth”.
Your paragon of virtue far from being a major corporation employs less than 80 people, with I believe some 30 of those on work visas from Malaysia.
Since 2007 Ta Ann has been gifted over $45 million in public money via our corrupt pollies and has never seen fit to pay tax.
We deliver to their door the finest veneer billets cut and selected from our public forests for just over $60 a cu metre, you would get more for firewood.
It is a scam, it is indefensible and you call yourself a professional forester. For the supplier and the supplied to incur a loss on a free public resource can only be considered a national disgrace.
The cargo cult mentality of Tasmanian forestry is third world and riddled with political corruption.
The Liberals will roll back the TFA and World Heritage listing fo political expediency and pure unadulterated hatred of the Greens.
The smell of bootpolish on the jackboots pervades the Tasmanian air.
Those Tasmanians who will stand against the Anchluss will be arrested, sued and harassed as our hate based laws are changed.
I for one will wear the odium of arrest as a badge of honour and curse the defenders of the logging faith till the day I die.
Mark Poynter
May 29, 2014 at 21:38
#30 Hawkins
I feel pained just reading your diatribe ….
I will admit to having no especially detailed knowledge of Ta Ann or its operations, but I will say that I have read so much BS on TT over the years about things that I do know about to be very sceptical of claims such as yours.
I don’t believe I referred to Ta Ann as a paragon of virtue. Unlike you it seems, I haven’t seen their Tax Returns!
I merely pointed out that its not so simple to assume that the private forests can meet the needs of such a significant company…… but you seem to prefer to ignore reasoned discussion.
You said: “The cargo cult mentality of Tasmanian forestry is third world and riddled with political corruption”
Perhaps you should get a dose of perspective – go to the Solomon Islands or Indonesia, or PNG and see how Tasmania is incomparably better off just in terms of forest conservation with around two-thirds of its total forest area never to be logged even before the TFA; and 20% of its land mass listed under World Heritage even before last years ‘minor boundary amendment’
By my understanding, that’s the greatest proportion of land mass under World Heritage listing of any jurisdiction in the world …. but its never enough it seems.
You said: “The Liberals will roll back the TFA and World Heritage listing fo political expediency and pure unadulterated hatred of the Greens”
Correction – attempt to roll back a 4.7% portion of the TWWHA that was listed only last year without any assessment of its values due to political chicanery by Env Minister Burke in concert with the Greens.
I wouldn’t doubt that there’s some hatred of the Greens…… but I suspect that this is largely because of the deception they’ve engaged in for many years over forestry issues, including last years WHA extension.
William Boeder
May 30, 2014 at 02:24
Hello Mark Poynter, how is the logging of whatever remnant remains of Victoria’s Highland Forests, have you got rid of the few remaining pesky little Leadbeater’s Possum habitats over in your part of Australia yet?
Do you allow people from each of the other State’s of Australia to tell you how to go about your methodical destruction of Victoria’s Highland Forests?
Oh by the way, can you tell me how many wrongs must be committed before they can be called a right?
If you want to start comparing the eradication of State forests, or crown land forests that occur in other parts of this World, that this should then become the template for what happens here in Tasmania, you are being irrational and fatuously ridiculous.
There are a number of individuals that believe they have an entitlement to ransack that which is not their own at any stage of their proceedings, yet they go on and assume these forests to be their very own when it comes to the destruction and ultimate ruination of these said forested lands.
(Ala John Gay and the board of Gunns Ltd, then more of this assumed ownership crap from Forestry Tasmania and their board of director persons that seek to plunder and profit from this State’s forests.)
How each of you, jack lumber, Robin Halton and you Mark Poynter, can make these brash assumptions that the people’s forests are for the exclusive use and benefit of those few in Tasmania and those others in Victoria who claim to operate a logging outfits, is something that I will never ever reconcile myself to, for it is an idiotic and irresponsible presumption on the part of those that hold to this belief.
phill Parsons
May 30, 2014 at 12:26
#32. Besides being an exemplar, working in international fora and using the aid budget Australia can do little about other countries management of their natural resources. The one thing we should promise is if you loose a natural resource through your own incompetence we will not give aid to compensate for that loss.
Otherwise trying to claim we are so much better off because we don’t crush wharfies when loading whole logs for export [Solomons] or that officials receive corrupt payments [PNG] or endanger the whole planet whilst destroying millions of tonnes of stored carbon [Indonesia][ and to a lesser degree Tasmania] is simply an attempt to create a straw idol to knock down.
We control what we do and thus the outcomes.
When the TFA is replaced and if the forestry industry collapses under the weight of market foresee and loss of social contract I hope all conservationists have no sympathy. Saving its bacon once is as much as it deserves.
I assume in referring to Canute Hayward is linking the irreversible melt down of the cryosphere to the fate of the forestry industry.
Mark Poynter
May 30, 2014 at 14:23
#32 William
We’ve had this discussion so many times …. and you obviously taken no notice of the fact that around 70% of the Mountain Ash forests of the Central Highlands are in reserves or water catchments where timber harvesting is not permitted.
That fact alone invalidates most of your nonsense such as that I and others supposedly believe that “the people’s forests are for the exclusive use and benefit of those few in Tasmania and those others in Victoria who claim to operate a logging outfits”
But like a broken record you keep on regurgitating the same old stuff. You might be a nice bloke, but I’m afraid that this behaviour does no credit to you and others who are zealously pursuing this cause …… it simply demonstrates that you are almost insane in your irrationality and that there is no point in listening anymore.
#33 Phill
Attempting to create a straw idol for knocking down?? ….. I merely responded to Hawkin’s ridiculous claim that Tasmanian forestry is the same as the Third World when clearly it is not.
“When the TFA is replaced and if the forestry industry collapses under the weight of market foresee and loss of social contract I hope all conservationists have no sympathy.”
If you are suggesting that conservationists ever had sympathy that is almost laughable and is ably illustrated by the ongoing campaigning aginst forestry both during and after the TFA.
If you are suggesting that Tasmanian native forestry could ever get a ‘social contract’ you are again being disengenous given that this requires its opponents to begin supporting it …. that would have to include the leader of the Greens Christine Milne, and the spiritual leader of the conservation movement Bob Brown who have vocally opposed the TFA from Day 1.
Unfortunately, the concept of a ‘social contract’ is reliant on the community being reasonable, but it falls down in the face of irrational zealotry which typifies opposition to forestry …. Exhibit A – WB #32.
John Hawkins
May 30, 2014 at 16:51
Poynter #34
Re my ridiculous claim that: “Tasmanian forestry is the same as the Third World”
I said:
“The Cargo Cult mentality of Tasmanian forestry is Third World and riddled with corruption.”
If you are going to quote me please do so correctly.
I deal in facts … you in sleight of hand and nasty innuendo.
Ta Ann is owned by a family who have become richer than any Australian family other than that of Gina Rhinhart This money has in the main been made by the former Chief Minister of Sarawak from a scratch start at the expense of his very poor indigenous people by clear felling and burning their forests.
We are similarly enriching the select few who conduct forestry business in Tasmanian for example by gifting unsustainable quota’s for clear felling and burning the peoples forests at no profit.
Like a cargo cult , the money State and Federal just falls out of the sky at great cost to the taxpayer all to keep the rats in your sinking ship solvent.
I am sure this concept is beyond you and yours but in the real world outside Tasmania proper people are not so simple nor are they so forgiving?
TGC
May 31, 2014 at 02:02
Why don’t these guys (above) just ring each other?
phill Parsons
May 31, 2014 at 14:34
#34. One exhibit does not a movement or community make as Boeder may write [#32]. Clearly you missed the TFA compensation payments and have lttle to do with the general feeling in the community which it may also surprise you contains more conservationists than political parties or NGO’s.
Their is sympathy for one level of the forestry industry and an understanding for the need for one but when it behaves as though it owns a common. makes deals with special intests such as Gunns and Ta Ann and treats the community with contempt it has no chance as the wreckage on Gunns land down the Tamar testifies motre than one post.
40 years has created long memories on both sides and you cannot expect one side to give up if the other remains unbending. Forestry in native forests would have achieved a social contract if there had been no cheating and the pointy heads had stayed in their box.
What you sow you will reap. Terry Edwards knows there will be no second chance and its why he is trying to salvage something. Whilst Hodgman etal was up front about what they would do many more now feel sure that the foretry industry can never ever be trusted.
Once FT goes back on the government teat and the soodsupply is subsidized again it will close the case of evidence anddd no further proof will be necessary. It’s a scandalous take from taxpayers for the benefit of a selct few, many now in Malaysia.
Those taken in by Gunns may see some of their investment back but they will be remembering for a long time their losses and the lies.
I am not suggesting there can be a social contract becuase the pointy heads in the industry convinced Hodgman that raw power wins and thus they have destroyed any chance of one emerging again.
On the point that Hawkins makes about which world Tasmania forestry lies in it certainly isn’t first world. It may not look like third world but it sure has features of it with the links between one logger [a diffent one from time to time] and the government determing policy. That you may think you are ensuring a supply of trees into the future with managment was shown by West to be false. It may not be total forest destruction but it is over exploitation.
No Mark, the practitoners made their beds and they must lie in them. That there is only one truth is the biggest lie.
William Boeder
May 31, 2014 at 18:00
Thank you Trevor G Cowell for your usual comments that add very little of substance and are little more than oblique generalizations that carry very little of merit in them, especially when contributing to specific dialogues between others.
Mark Poynter, In reply to your ‘own version of events’ that you allow to roll from your tongue, even if it be that the Forests you refer to in your usual defensive manner be those forests in water catchment regions have that have already been logged, ‘even those forests that formed part of the Maroondah Dam Catchment from the higher regions of the Toolangi region in Victoria.
This Toolangi region was one of the few remaining habitats that I referred to in my earlier comment, the very same region that has had wild-life experts and animal protectionists in lathers of rage to what your logging people are doing to speed up the demise of Victoria’s State Fauna Emblem.
The mere fact that you hold some form of membership to the Australian institute of Foresters should not allow you to take the high hand and try to domineer over the unscrupulous events that are alive and happening across Tasmania.
My former researches into the ‘Victorian logging industry’ as you people would term it, is just as much a rogue industry as are any other State government supported environment destructive government departments, it is well known that
each of the applicable government departments are being forced in their attempts of trying to satisfy the people of your ilk and others to address that of which is ever the same age-old conflict-riddled festering’s in Victoria State logging, that forever creates their major problem.
That problem being that you and your loggers forever seeking entry into wherever there remains to be any untouched Central Highlands Mountain Ash Forests.
This link below may help you to better understand your logging people’s depredations and destructions that you lot inflict upon and across all Victoria, and you are actually all about.
http://theconversation.com/victorian-forestry-is-definitely-not-ecologically-sustainable-11392
After your having read my above comment, you then reply claiming that my comment is a nonsense: that I and others firmly believe that “the people’s forests are for the exclusive use and benefit of those few in Tasmania, then of those others in Victoria who also lay claim to operating a logging outfitâ€
(your words) But like a broken record you keep on regurgitating the same old stuff. You might be a nice bloke, but I’m afraid that this behaviour does no credit to you and others who are zealously pursuing this cause …… it simply demonstrates that you are almost insane in your irrationality and that there is no point in listening anymore.
My reply to that is that one needs to study in depth all the facts contained in this supporting link of what you will then claim also to be complete nonsense?
The well upholstered people that are appointed as the directors of Forestry Tasmania would dearly welcome a person of your mind-set into their boned-out ranks, (of what we can only presume to be their detrimentally arcane form of failing leadership) to further pursue their profitless destructive activities in this State’s constantly reduced realms of Tasmania’s Native Old Growth Forests.
Sorry Mark, I am not taken in by your forever stealthily calculated and purposely misleading claims.
Best you clean up your logging actions in Victoria before moonlighting into Tasmania’s Forestry machinations.
William Boeder
June 1, 2014 at 04:02
Mark Poynter, I have just finished off from reading a great many of your comments submitted to The Conversation forum, your comments thereto are very contentious and are more about creating an image of immense Mountain Ash proliferation throughout the Central Highlands of Victoria.
One comment has you claiming 70% of Victoria’s Mountain Ash Forests are held safe in reserves and water-catchment designated areas.
One is left to presume these Mountain Ash species of forest are those alone that direct their surface water run-offs into the Victorian dams and reservoir’s here there and everywhere to provide for your State’s city and suburban domestic water supply, are something wonderful to behold.
Now then Mark, how much of ‘something unknown in actual hectares’ (eg; a nebulous quantum) can so quickly become 70% of that same nebulous quantum of hectares?
Do bear in mind that the article content in the link I posted in my comment above is from a highly respected academic professional and is rather stronger in substance than from someone engaged in simple unsustainable logging.
One must be devilish careful when trying to fathom fact from fiction in your widely circulated pro-logging comments, especially with you using your ‘percentages system’ that gives no actual hectare volume of forested area, nor does it ever provide the true extent of forested areas that have been so ruthlessly exploited and plundered by the likes of yourself and those others of your so-called sustainable logging industry, say during the past 15 years.
Sorry Mark, you may be a keen friendly sort of bloke at a BBQ or even a sausage sizzle, yet when it comes to you and your so-called logging industry exploits, you may suddenly become someone altogether outrageous in the extreme and may quite easily become a strongly opinionated defender to the immensity of harms caused through such ecologically destructive and wholly unsustainable logging pursuits.
Dare somebody introduce to you the subject matter of the harms that result from your State’s frenetic logging activities’ that person would indeed be wise to surround their self with a goodly crowd of minders/supporters to counter what may become a loud enfilading blast of factually misleading refutations.
The facts and truths so often missing from your comments do not serve you and or any of the other Victorian logging enthusiasts with any visible percentage of quantifiable favour.
William Boeder
June 1, 2014 at 19:05
Mr Mark Poynter, I note that you have not responded to comments that I have directed to your comments earlier in this forum topic.
Perhaps the content of the link to the David Lindenmayer article does not suit your purposes or practices, ‘however he has filled his article with its facts and truths as he has found these to be,’ when we I look at your comments and read the content therein, there is absolutely no comparison whatsoever.
There is a possibility that he has just dreamed up his writings, though that would be a parlous journey for this person to embark upon.
Please feel free to refute his qualified claims and have you continue to assert your own misleading logging claims and opinions, as this sort of forensic undertaking by you would certainly add fuel to the despicable attitudes and opinions that you continue to direct to the Greens party and or their individual ministers.
Now a question for you Mr Mark Poynter.
What is the actual hectare volume or area of Victoria’s untouched Central highlands Mountain Ash forests at this present moment in time?
(Please, let’s not have anymore of your 70% curlicue inventiveness’s as are so regularly given by you in your critical responses.)
One may also direct the major thrust of this particular comment toward Robin Charles Halton and Mr George Harris, (also to jack lumber) in the matter of your personally held views directed toward the Greens party.
Your failure to reply to this question will have me believe you owe me an online apology for your claims that my comments are regurgitated nonsense and that I am almost insane in my irrationalities.
Over to you now Mr Mark Poynter.
Mark Poynter
June 1, 2014 at 22:24
#37 Phill
“One exhibit does not a movement or community make as Boeder may write……”
Except of course its not just WB is it – perhaps you’ve forgotten about Brown, Milne, Gibson, Webber, Putt, etc etc – all zealots with no intention of abiding by the TFA.
“Their is sympathy for one level of the forestry industry and an understanding for the need for one but when it behaves as though it owns a common…… and treats the community with contempt……”
Please explain how the forest industry ever acted as though it owned a common …. I mean even before the TFA, 28% of the forest was privately-owned, and a further 36% was in formal nature conservation reserves, plus a further 14% was in State forest reserves.
So, it had access to a minor portion of the forest and was being regulated by Codes of Practice etc …… much of this sort of claim is simply myth to justify an ideology.
“Forestry in native forests would have achieved a social contract if there had been no cheating and the pointy heads had stayed in their box”
Take off the blinkers and have a look at the decades of ‘cheating’ by ENGOs who’ve totally misrepresented the overall situation in Tas by strategically ignoring the facts about proportional extent cited above….. and still it continues through the likes of those mentioned above.
What you’re really saying is forestry could have achieved a social contract if it allowed itself to be reduced to a tiny cottage industry using a couple of trees a year.
“Terry Edwards knows there will be no second chance and its why he is trying to salvage something.”
Perhaps he’s right, perhaps he’s not, but it is interesting that he was opposed to the peace deal until Minister Burke dangled an extra $100 million just as it the negotiations were about to fail for the last time.
I suspect he and other supporters are being pragmatic and hoping against hope that the TFA will end conflict, when this is highly unlikely given the stance of leading Greens and ENGO leaders who have no intention of stopping their campaigns.
At least by revoking the TFA and maintaining a decent area of State forest there is a chance the industry can eventually rebuild even if it takes decades, but under the TFA with it’s forest resource limited to just 12% of the public forest, the industry will probably die anyway after a few relatively trouble-free years.
“Those taken in by Gunns may see some of their investment back …….”
I thought we were discussing native forestry.
“That you may think you are ensuring a supply of trees into the future with managment was shown by West to be false”
I recall at the time that FT fiercely disagreed with this ‘finding’ by West and that it was at odds with the actual analysis done by the IVG.
Sorry but I’ve got no more time to engage is such a tit-for-tat as I have to earn a living.
Steve
June 2, 2014 at 00:42
#41; Sorry Mark, I know no politer way to say it. You are talking crap.
I first visited Tasmania in 1995, I came back again in 1998, moved here in 2000. The difference your industry has made to this State is visible everywhere I go.
The vistas of forest are now vistas of clearfell and plantations. There is virtually nowhere you can go where you are not being impacted by forestry activities. When I first visited, you still encountered forestry devastation but it wasn’t everywhere.
The MIS madness did huge damage to Tasmania. I don’t believe anyone has sat down and fully assessed the extent of this damage, although plenty have done it for their individual areas of interest.
The best thing that could happen at this stage would be for all native forest logging to cease on public land. Walk away for a few years. Sort out the politics and the vested interests. In the meanwhile private forests and market forces will take up the slack and when the question is re-visited, some honest discussion might occur.
Curiously, although many might disagree, I’m quite a strong supporter of native forest logging but I simply can’t stomach wholesale devastation for limited returns that rapidly drop into the wallets of those who already have more than they need!
Garry Stannus
June 2, 2014 at 22:44
Mark’s comment at #34 is a good example of what I’ll remember as The Poynter Paradox: that is, that as unprotected forests are progressively logged, the percentage of protected forests necessarily increases.
His “70% of the Mountain Ash forests of the Central Highlands are in reserves or water catchments where timber harvesting is not permitted†fails for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the paradox that a high protected figure (70%) actually indicates the extent of the loss of the old growth Mountain Ash elsewhere. By the time that the (theoretical) last Mountain Ash outside the reserves/water catchments is logged, Mark would be able to claim that 100% of the Mountain Ash forests were protected.
Secondly, the total area of Victoria’s Central Highlands old growth Mountain Ash forests is – critically – just 1886 hectares.
( https://theconversation.com/why-victoria-needs-a-giant-forest-national-park-18452 ).
Thirdly, that article’s author, David Lindenmayer, says of this 1886 hectares: “This is estimated to be 1.5-3% of the historical area of old growth forestâ€. In other words, only a miniscule amount of the original survives … but … Mark thinks that’s okay, and brandishes this ‘70% of a miniscule’ as if it’s something to be proud of.
And in the other 30% of that miniscule, as each tree falls, the figure of 70% protected … increases. I call that process The Poynter Paradox.
William Boeder
June 3, 2014 at 06:12
Thank you Garry Stannus for providing the summary of this beguiling logging caboodling conundrum, by awarding it the title of The Poynter Paradox.
The Institute of Foresters of Australia, (a rather imposing sobriquet) is better defined as a group of tree-choppers having got together then made a sort of gawkish attempt at combining ‘every specie of the plethora of Australia’s Indigenous or Native Species, be it Flora and or Fauna, that is to be found alive throughout our Australia’ will thus be governed over and under via the auspices of this smoke and mirrors loggers institute.
Nope, no way, I cannot accept the smoke and mirrors opinions and views as have already been liberally scattered across all Australia by the above institute member.
One Flying-Swallow does not a Summer make.
George Harris
June 3, 2014 at 15:10
Well, it looks like the evidence submitted by some of the consultants engaged by the Independent Verification Group has been shown to be wrong, and some of the evidence submitted by one of them to the recent Senate Environment & Communications Committee Inquiry has been show as a pack of lies when compared to this article by a respected historian: http://www.petermacfiehistorian.net.au/essays/misleading-maps/
Garry Stannus
June 3, 2014 at 21:09
Disinformation from George Harriss (#45): MacFie’s article on the ANM Concession implied that it was all logged in the ’60s. This was not the case: An expert in World Heritage, Peter Hitchcock, states that
“the great majority (about 90%) of what is proposed to be removed from the TWWHA has not been disturbed, and that only 5-6% of the area has been logged since 1960. Any logging that may have occurred prior to 1960 has been selectively logged and can hardly be noticed. The World Heritage committee was aware of this past disturbance when the area was approved in the boundary extension to the TWWHA.”
I thought MacFie’s article failed because it did not provide any details of all the areas with the ANM Concession which hadn’t been logged, nor did it attempt to itemise/match up such details with the individual components comprising the WHA extensions.
John Hawkins
June 3, 2014 at 21:41
It always surprises me that George Harris supports an unsustainable industry, an industry based on wood chips clear fell and burn of a public asset for a known loss.
Selective logging of natiive forests by skilled foresters for special timbers would keep him and his acolytes in wood for ever.
This leads a thinking person to consider him as no more than a plant for a decidedly unpleasant group of shysters.
William Boeder
June 4, 2014 at 04:03
George, your many years of support for Forestry Tasmania and their logging felonies will come back and visit you when Forestry Tasmania is forced to be made redundant, the same as happened to that Tote Tasmania GBE we used to wonder what the hell they were up to.
This band of well paid GBE executives were found to be most inept in their judgements and decision making. (Not unlike the history of Forestry Tasmania.)
Free access to this State’s forests along with taxpayer subsidies and they did not have to suffer or bother about any interference by any State authority or any kind of regulatory authority.
Bryan (the giggler) Green was one of the 2 persons that were its only form of accountability, the other recently was the State’s Premier.
I now refer to the time that Lara Giddings was the other person that Forestry Tasmania were beholden to, this Premier person could not know the difference between a plantation tree and a Native Forest tree.
It was ever always everybody’s maaate, (the giggler) that could have reined in the larceny committed upon this State’s forests yet he never raised a finger of regulatory or even ministerial responsibility.
Twas under the watch of this ‘giggler’ that saw our Native Forest logs (plenty of Blackwood and Myrtle) improperly graded then bargained off to China for less than the cost to harvest and transport these logs to the Burnie holding yard, where they were being carelessly stored until they could be loaded onto some China bound freight ship.
Despite the fact they had been stored for so long they began to form dry star cracks and further deteriorate in whatever else manner.
This insanity was allowed to go on until finally Kim Booth said ‘hold the bus with your sending a combination of A grade logs and such at below its production cost to the Chinamen.’
Now how much intelligence is required to work out that this kind of business can only go down the gurgler as it cannot go anywhere else.
The same goes for Ta Ann, they actually cost this State and its taxpayer revenues just to have them in Tasmania, better if they were shut down and directed to go back to their corrupt owner of this Ta Ann graft-riddled veneer peeler outfit.
So post election along comes the former MIS champion Senator Eric Abetz who has rather foolishly decided to try and gain the delisting of our World Heritage Listed Forests, presumably so that there will be a whole lot more booty for the non-positive revenues that Forestry Tasmania are supposed to be all about.
You may think that this is all OK as long as you see a bit of speciality timber craft-wood finding its way into the market-place, the whole logging madness does very little for the State revenues but you of course don’t mind what goes on in the reality of the insane ways beloved of Forestry Tasmania.
This kind of madness has been overseen and permitted to continue its happening by the State’s forestry minister, ‘the giggler’ for a great many years yet you would be happy for it to continue.
OK George, it high time that somebody has had to call a spade a spade in relation to this wanton denudation of our Native Forests, so I have elected myself to so do.
Selective well regulated harvesting is considered OK for saw-log timber, not the continuing insane bash and burn madness that to this day is still perpetrated by your mates at Forestry Tasmania.
George Harris
June 4, 2014 at 12:23
There are some amazing misconceptions and untruths and some weird points of view being put forward here by a small number of people. Hopefully few are reading their comments, and even fewer are taking any notice of them. I did respond to comment #47, but it seems it was unsuitable for posting.
I now switch back to ‘ignore’.
Garry Stannus
June 6, 2014 at 15:13
Can anyone explain why the Peter MacFie website (referred to by George Harris at #45) has now become inoperative? It appears that the document in question is no longer publicly available.
Ed: the article referred to will publish on Monday on TT.