Bob McMahon Tasmanians Against the Pulpmill
Mr Rudd,
You are stepping into danger and no-one is telling you. The pulp mill isn’t just about environment and climate, it’s about money … our money being used to fill logging industry pockets.
As first revealed by Harry Quick, the community now understands that John Howard and Paul Lennon have been subsidising the Tasmanian logging industry from the public purse to the tune of nearly 1/4 billion dollars every year, both as cash payments and as cost relief.
The concept behind the pulp mill is to lock these subsidies in place for two more decades.
Naturally, the beneficiaries of these monies are fighting hard to keep them. That is why none of the costs to the community were disclosed or assessed in Lennon’s truncated process.
Meanwhile, our hospitals and schools are starved of funds. People are even forced to perform their own dentistry, for lack of available services. Now we, the community, know why. It is because our money is being diverted into logging industry pockets.
As a community whose needs have been left from consideration our only option is to engage actively to show where our money is going. Each time there is a problem due to lack of money, that will be the opportunity to point out the insane waste of public funds with a blizzard of publicity.
The logging companies involved and their political friends, have shown the public no mercy in taking money needed by our essential services. How can the community be expected to show them mercy in exposing this outrageous example of corporate welfare, particularly considering the risks to our food industries presented by the rapid conversion of farms to plantations at our expense? The combined effects are devastating and acknowledged by all bar our political ‘representatives’.
The whole sorry situation has been stimulated by Howard’s 2020 Vision program and his generous federal subsidies for tree plantations (MIS)
We don’t want you to fall into the same trap. We know that you are being briefed by the same self-serving logging groups with conflicts of interest, from the unions to the logging companies to logging-friendly public servants. Please understand that we cannot back off while our essential services are foundering and highly paid logging executives are flying over us in helicopters and poisoning our waterways. If governments refuse to responsibility for our social welfare, then we, the members of the community, are the only ones left who can.
We ask you to show the community that you are responsible, by having the Auditor General publicly audit ALL logging subsidies BEFORE allowing any mill deal. Or eliminate subsidies altogether and let the logging industry work to the free market and under the same laws that apply to the rest of us.
Neither Tasmania nor Australia can afford to continue this government largesse for another 20 years – that could cost us more than $5 billion! Nor can we risk losing our ‘food bowl’ and our remaining native forests to tree plantations. Our forests are worth more to us as carbon sinks than exported as pulp.
Our community wants, and is entitled to have, a say in its own affairs, and we want our taxes placed preferentially on essential community services, not squandered on cosy corporate giveaways.
Mr Rudd, you could be this community’s only hope in this debacle.
We are relying on you.
Bob McMahon (Spokesman – Tasmanians Against the Pulpmill – TAP)
See also Tasmanian Times papers at:
Why don’t they tell us it’s costing us $250 million a year to destroy our carbon sinks
The Great Tasmanian Land Robbery
Maybe the final wake-up call for Tasmania
Please note that we intend to start our campaigns soon after the federal election so some indication of your intentions would be appreciated as soon as possible, so that our campaigns can be appropriately targetted.
THIS LETTER HAS BEEN FORWARDED TO MEDIA
Bob McMahon, on behalf of TAP,
Exeter,
Tasmania 7275
