Earlier this week, I was watching television late at night. Well, actually, it would be more correct to say that the television was on in the background, while I was beavering away on my seemingly never-ending to do list.
I’m a TV executive’s nightmare – I only ever half-watch; and I tune out or channel surf during the ads. However, I looked up from what I was doing when an ad from the environmental group Planet Ark came on the screen.
The not-for-profit organisation’s ‘Make It Wood Campaign’ promotes the line: Make It Wood – Do Your World Some Good. It highlights both the renewable nature of wood and its capacity to store carbon.
It was great to see this promotion of the benefits of wood products by an environmental group, in contrast to the continual demonisation of our forestry industry by other groups.
In fact, it was something I could have written myself.
It is funny how sometimes things just line up, isn’t it? The next day, I was catching up on some reading, looking for something to provide inspiration for this column.
An article on the farming website Farm Online stopped me in my tracks – and this was certainly not something I could have written, or at least written with a straight face.
It was headed ‘Can’t see the wood for the trees’ and praised the Planet Ark campaign. “Substituting wood for energy intensive products like steel, concrete and bricks is good for our planet. Hard to argue with that!” the author wrote.
The author went on to say “this campaign is good news for Australia, where we want to continue to be a country which makes things. Australia is well placed to be a major provider of wood and fibre products to an increasingly wealthy and product-hungry Asia. But it will only happen if we are smart about it. We can compete where we have advantage over our key competitors. In the wood products industry, these advantages are significant.”
These are all sentiments that I wholeheartedly endorse. So what was my problem?
The author was Joel Fitzgibbon.
Do you remember Joel Fitzgibbon? He is the federal member for the NSW seat of Hunter: a former Labor defence minister, who quit in sensational circumstances in 2009.
However, for two months before the federal election last year, he made a reappearance as the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.
I am sure you remember the government in which he served. They were the ones behind a secret deal to close down Tasmania’s forest industry, driven by an unrepresentative and unelected group meeting behind closed doors, which refused to listen to the craftsmen who use our special species timbers, and which totally ignored our private forest industry.
His take out message was that “… it’s past time we had a new plan and a new strategy which builds on and consolidates us as a supplier of high-value wood-based products to the world”.
I was gobsmacked, lost for words, when I read this little gem. (Yes, yes – I know – it really can happen.) I had to stop myself from poking a hole in the computer screen to make a statement of the bleeding obvious: wood products come from trees – trees that many Tasmanian farmers grow.
So where were you, Mr Fitzgibbon, when we needed you?
It appears that our former forests minister has belatedly had a light bulb moment. He has learnt that forests regrow naturally, in the wild as well as in plantations; that they are a renewable resource; that we are the best forest managers in the world; that we grow some of the best timber in the world; and that we can supply wood products that are in demand by customers across the globe.
While I was hyperventilating, other readers gave him what for in the comments.
One wrote “… governments, mainly Labor, having continually ‘locked up’ these naturally re-growing forests and made them never-to-be-touched-again national parks. That certainly hasn’t helped local timber supply and has caused the closure of many profitable timber businesses. On top of that, private native forestry has been made so restrictive, again by ‘lock up’ policies.”
Frankly, I think most people tune out when the forestry debate comes up yet again.
We’ve all got our own views on the issue; and, in most cases, these are unlikely to change. That’s fair enough. But blatantly trying to rewrite history and your part in disruption of so many people’s lives is simply beyond the pale.
I don’t know how some people sleep at night.
TFGA chief executive Jan Davis
