Tasmania’s peak farming organisation, the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association, today welcomed the Legislative Council select committee’s scathing findings on the Tasmanian Forests Agreement and the government’s enabling legislation that it sought to steamroll through the Upper House.
“The unanimous findings vindicate the weight of evidence that the committee heard,” TFGA chief executive Jan Davis said today.
“We would now expect that they throw the Bill back to the Government for whole process to be done properly – or abandoned.
Ms Davis said farmers, who manage 26 per cent of Tasmanian forests, take particular note of the principal finding:
The Government has remained outside of the TFA process to such an extent that the signatories have had undue influence over a range of Government policy areas affecting the broader Tasmanian community.
And the main finding that goes to the heart of farmers’ concerns:
The private forestry sector was not consulted during the course of negotiations associated with the TFA, despite various underlying assumptions being made in relation to the future use of private land for timber harvesting.
“The whole thing has been a travesty,” Ms Davis said.
TFGA chief executive Jan Davis
