I wish to offer some points of expansion and clarification in relation to several of the issues raised in response to the initial post (HERE).
The roadmap presented is biased towards the development and maintenance of Tasmanian native working forests, against the short-sighted onslaught of competition for land and water resources and commercial investment from subsidised plantations.
It is untenable in any industry for the environmental steward/regulator of the code of practice, to be the same organisation as the commercial operator. There is too much conflict of interest. Whatever future policy is enacted, FT’s role as part of the stewardship/regulatory regime must be completely separated from the role of the commercial operator. The public and industry would have more confidence in the outcome if these responsibilities were separated.
The Tasmanian forest industry is on its knees now. It clearly needs to attract significant new investment. Business as usual is not an effective policy response. Nor is the proposed solution of the roundtable of “payouts for lockups”. We need a completely new policy framework that will incite significant new investment in marketing and R&D in the native forest species sector and in holistic management of our native forests.
A Lazarus act by the Gunns pulp mill will not solve the problems facing the wider Tasmanian Forests industry, no matter what claims to the contrary are made by Mr. L’Estrange or the Premier. Gunns don’t want to invest in native forests any more. However, they do want to benefit from the “payout for lockups”. This is simply a replay of the monopoly strategy Gunns has been working up to date – manipulate the policy environment to squeeze out the competition.
Transitional arrangements would need to be implemented to ensure continuity of supply for existing viable operators. However, terms of credit must be tightly controlled to avoid the public paying to support unviable operators. No money – no logs.
The proposed tendering for rights to manage and harvest coupes proposed in the roadmap are intended to transfer the ownership of the coupe for up to (say) 20 years. Detailed argument will be required regarding the period of time that the coupe remains in the hands of the successful buyer. However, the intention is to provide long term property rights over that parcel of forest, not just harvesting rights. At the same time, if the market is slack, the public has a right to decide that a forest coupe has more value left standing in public hands.
Operating details within the policy framework need to be rigorously debated. The idea of a roadmap is to stimulate public debate, not gag it.
In developing the policy, we should reject the propaganda that old growth native forest is somehow more environmentally precious than new growth native forests, or grasslands, or any other form of our natural capital.
Where Tasmania is uniquely positioned to lead the world, is by developing an economic framework which recognizes that every natural thing remaining in Tasmania has a high conservation value, and should not be used frivolously.
