*Pic: Same old malfeasance, just a new logo …
July 1st witnessed the transition from FT to STT but what does this mean regarding operational reform and financial management of our state forests beyond the usual smoke and mirrors? Nothing really! It’s just another version of the same old horror show with simply a new logo!
So here we are in mid 2017, and the public forest management agency in Tasmania continues on with its self-acclaimed oxymoron-statement of “ Sustainable”
Zilch has changed within Tasmania’s forestry. Nor can a claim of sustainability be anything further from the truth. A cursory glance at the STT’s Three Year Wood Production (disaster) Plan clearly demonstrates it is business as usual with more ‘World’s Worst Practice’.
https://www.sttas.com.au/sites/default/files/media/documents/plans/three-year-wood-production-plan-2017-18-2019-20.pdf
With STT void of FSC there is no guarantee of new markets, so invariably it seems that the heavily-subsidised woodchip driven industry is set to continue into the foreseeable future!
What happened to the government’s statement that STT will be free of subsidies?
Regardless of what Guy Barnett has claimed, taxpayers are now locked in to an ailing, stone-age industry, which will only ensure that FSC for STT will remain forever a pipe dream.
Here are STT’s primary objectives …
Verbatim from their own fact sheet, and where have we heard this before?
• Planning ahead for 90 years or more based on sound science to provide accurate and up-to-date knowledge of our forests.
• Identifying and protecting important natural and cultural values.
• Harvesting and regrowing native forests.
• Actively engaging with our customers, neighbours and the broader community to inform our planning and decision making.
• Seeking and then maintaining independent internationally recognised forest certification (AFS/PEFC and FSC).
Lets’ dissect these objectives …
A 90 year rotation based on sound science.
What do they base sound science on?
If past ‘World’s Worst Practices’ are any gauge, then continuing with more of the same is ludicrous!
Identifying and Protecting natural and cultural values.
The entire concept or understanding of threatened species habitat retention still hasn’t permeated between the insular and vacuous ears of this corporation.
Actively engaging with our customers, neighbours and the broader community to inform our planning and decision making.
In one word of refutation – Lapoinya.
Seeking and then maintaining independent internationally recognised forest certification (AFS/PEFC and FSC).
This ‘pie in the sky’ quest is rapidly becoming an unobtainable, ridiculously expensive, and embarrassing joke in Tasmania.
Harvesting and regrowing native forests.
A notable percentage of the state’s northern wood production replanted areas are saturated with exotic trees on land that was once covered in native vegetation.
2 Years in the making and going nowhere fast!
The transition from Forestry Tasmania to Sustainable Timber Tasmania has been exposed as an expensive, desperate and embarrassing PR stunt.
Sustainable Timber Tasmania, aka Forestry Tasmania, is yet to sell its plantations more than two years after the sale was flagged, and the government is remaining tight-lipped on the sale of the state’s public assets.
The STT restructure was part of the Liberals’ promise to make the new entity sustainable and free of public subsidies, and a key element of that was the sale of FT’s pulpwood plantations.
This was flagged by resources minister Paul Harriss back in April 2015 as a means of keeping FT /STT solvent without continued public subsidies, and now Guy Barnett said the Government would not prop up state forestry with subsidies after July. But how is this possible?
Guy Barnett has outlined the financial turnaround of the corporation based on –
* STT will charge more for timber harvested from public forests because Tasmanian wood products could no longer be treated as a low value commodity.
* Sawlog plantations won’t be sold, but the sale of pulpwood plantations will continue to be pursued.
* The Government will absorb FT’s superannuation liabilities.
We all know that the sale of the pulpwood plantations will only keep the greasy wheels turning on the state’s entrenched gravy train for a short period. Beyond then it’s only a brief matter of time before the monumental implosion eventuates!
Ted Mead has been following the transition of FT to STT with some bemusement regarding how the dramatic turnaround of a corporation that loses mega $ millions annually, suddenly becomes a profitable entity merely by changing its name and logo. Ted admits he is baffled by this creative pursuit, which he considers must be the remarkable work of a pure genius, or an outstanding magician.
• Andrew in Comments: How on earth can FT change their name to STT when they have destroyed 80 percent of leatherwood resources and crippled the speciality timber industry with their clear felling practices. They went in hard before the world heritage extension to log as much as possible before it was taken out of their hands and every year they have operated they have never planted one speciality species for the future. Massive joke, is it even legal?
