Forestry Tasmania creates logging blueprint for state’s timber production zone: Mercury here, and: Forestry Tasmania here
It’s all a bit hum-hum, sad and pathetic isn’t it?
Forestry Tasmania is in absolute crisis and they go and release a 3 Year Wood Production Plan as if it’s business as usual – wasting Tasmanian taxpayers’ money and continuing the political dogfight logging our public native forest.
Maintaining wood supply is the least of Forestry Tasmania’s many problems.
Do we get a plan that details how Forestry Tasmania is going to become fully commercial and achieve profitability and by when?
No!
Do we get a plan that details how Forestry Tasmania is going to address its numerous significant political, financial and social challenges?
No!
All we get is a plan that tells us what areas of forest are going to be used to waste taxpayers money in the next 3 years. Forestry Tasmania continues to maintain the facade that as long as “good” forest management prevails and harvesting continues, then all is right with the world, and peace and happiness will prevail.
None of this has any relationship at all to business, profit or commerce. It’s just a giant political game and Tasmanians are the losers.
What utter nonsense!
It’s a Three Year Nonsense Plan that’s what it is. 7% of the planned native forest harvest is sawlog, 11% is Ta Ann peeler logs, 81% is woodchips and 1% is special timbers. All of this wood will be sold at a deliberately loss, funded by taxpayers.
This has absolutely nothing to do with good forest management or good business practice.
“Special timber users will “receive 11,300 cubic metres of blackwood, sassafras, celery top pine and myrtle”.
We already know that the special timbers resource, including the blackwood resource, is gone. There is very little left. So why is Forestry Tasmania continuing to overcut the special timbers resource?
Even the language is offensive. “Special timbers users WILL RECEIVE…” It’s like a charity. Taxpayer-funded handouts to the entitled few. I thought Federal Treasurer Mr Hockey said the age of entitlement was over.
Not in Tasmania!
In fact the whole Three Year Plan is presented not like a commercial business document. It’s more like a giant Three Year Entitlement List. 1.8 million tonnes of taxpayer-funded entitlement.
It is just a blatant lie to our faces.
“Forestry Tasmania chief executive Steve Whiteley said the three-year plan was a key part of FT’s commitment to responsible and professional management of public production forests”.
Nothing could be further from the truth Mr Whiteley!
The only commitment here is the commitment to keep the Tasmanian forest industry front and centre of the political and community conflict.
About the Author
Gordon Bradbury, 55, is a forester with over 25 years experience in the Tasmanian forest industry. In 2010 he completed a PhD at the University of Tasmania researching the effect of environment and genetics on blackwood growth and wood quality. Following a visit to Tasmania by New Zealand and Chilean blackwood scientists in 2011, and with the Tasmanian Forestry Agreement negotiations underway, he began promoting the concept of Tasmanian Blackwood Growers Cooperative. His vision is for hundreds of Tasmanian farms to include commercial blackwood growing in their business model as either native forest management or plantations. The current interest in Tasmanian blackwood by the international tonewood market provides an important opportunity to help realise this dream.
• PB, in Comments: There is a veil of secrecy over the pricing terms for Ta Ann’s peeler billets which Forestry Tasmania refuses to release. Former Greens MP Tim Morris applied for details under the old Freedom of Information Act on 3 August 2007 and the Ombudsman subsequently determined that Forestry Tasmania should be exempt from releasing price information on the grounds that it would be “likely to expose it to competitive disadvantage in international markets”.
• John Hawkins, in Comments: I am willing to take this matter of the Peeler Billet contract with Ta Ann further with a possible court action if evidence of malpractice can be gathered and collated. This action would be taken by me as a private citizen on behalf of the people of Tasmania regarding the possible misuse of a public asset by a GBE. How and if this can be done could be ascertained by good legal and inside advice all to be publicly expressed on this site …
• John Hawkins, in Comments: Thankyou for the above. You can immediately see the collective nous of the TT readership swinging into action. If Barnett can have a Parliamentary Committee enquiring into a private transaction at Triabunna conducted by a private company over an asset they actually own, surely we as a quid pro quo may use the private sector, employing the same rules of engagement to enquire into a loss making GBE that is hurting the state’s bottom line and costing jobs in our public service all to the detriment of the people. FT is a monopoly business who claim “Commercial in Confidence” as an excuse to protect themselves from external scrutiny. We can work out a plan based on Timelines, public documents and FOI over the granting of the Ta Ann quotas, those involved and the likelihood of corruption of due process. Add to this all the gifts under the TFA, where and to whom this money has gone, it cannot be gifted without documentation. We know the sum paid to Ta Ann to surrender the FT quotas, we know who granted the quotas, we know that they were impossible to meet without overcutting, we know the long duration of the contracts and we know the low price as tied to a now unsaleable woodchip product. From this it is obvious that those running FT were not acting in the interest of the public or their employees. Barnett and Triabunna may yet set a precedent that may be turned to the advantage of the people of Tasmania.
