Ah the unions and the vested interests are cooing with delight over the massive $20 million injection promised by Rudd to keep the industry propped a little while longer.
But what has become of the love lost bruvver Johnny from the last Federal election?
Is he no longer an honorary “orange shirt”?
And the “Ghost of Latham”, a radical visionary, how dare he think to over rule the local Ayatollah with a miserable $800 million dollars to restructure a failing industry.
No, $20 million will be fine and all the trees we can chop down or blow up.
Business as usual in Tassie.
I am convinced, not one iota of doubt, Tasmania is run by retards.

MEDIA RELEASE 23/7/2007

FORESTRY UNION HOLDING LABOR FOREST POLICY TO RANSOM

Environment Tasmania, Tasmania’s conservation council, has expressed extreme disappointment today at what is, in effect, a reneging of the Federal ALP forest platform. 

“The Labor party platform, adopted earlier this year, commits the ALP to the further protection of identified Tasmanian high-conservation value old-growth forests, rainforests and other ecosystems,” said Dr Phill Pullinger, Convenor of Environment Tasmania, “That is a good platform – one that would be supported strongly by most Australians.” 

“With today’s announcement, however, it appears that Mr Rudd is unfortunately allowing his policy to be dictated to by the Forestry union, a union which does not represent mainstream Tasmanians and their concerns about the future of the state,” he continued, “We would urge Mr Rudd to rethink his approach to Tasmania’s forests – and to stand by the Labor party platform, which clearly commits Labor to further protection of high-conservation value forests including old-growth forests,” he continued. 

“Annual logging of native forests in Tasmania emits the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of an extra 4.6 million cars on the road – so, in effect, closing the door on protection of native forests is also closing the door on a credible climate change policy.  The unmitigated broad-scale destruction of those forests, propped up by vast amounts of taxpayer’s money, along with a failed regulatory regime, represents some of the worst logging found anywhere in the Western world – and is an absolute national scandal.  We need strong leadership across the political spectrum to solve this crisis,” he concluded.

Environment Tasmania is Tasmania’s representative conservation council.  It represents more than 20 Tasmanian environment and conservation groups, collectively representing more than 5000 Tasmanians.

MEDIA RELEASE     23 July 2007

RUDD FOREST SELL-OUT BLOWS OPPORTUNITY TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE

Wilderness Society slams Rudd for caving in to union over ALP forest policy

Today’s sell-out of Labor’s forest policy in Tasmania by ALP Leader Kevin Rudd shows that Mr Rudd is not serious about combating climate change, according to the Wilderness Society.

“Mr Rudd has caved in to pressure from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) and allowed that union to dictate the Labor Party’s forest policy,” said Wilderness Society campaigner, Geoff Law.

“In selling out the forests, Mr Rudd has ignored the opinion of millions of Australians and squandered an opportunity to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,” Mr Law said.

“Locking up carbon by protecting forests is the quickest, simplest and cheapest way that politicians can reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, yet Mr Rudd is putting taxpayer funds into destroying forests.”

“Mr Rudd has to explain how condemning areas such as South-West Tasmania, the Great Western Tiers and the Tarkine is consistent with ALP policy, which calls for ‘further protection’ of such forests.”

Mr Law said that the policy announced by Mr Rudd today was a disaster in the following ways:

It puts Australian taxpayer funds into logging, and therefore into creating more greenhouse-gas emissions;
It breaks the ALP policy platform determined at the ALP Conference in April which calls for ‘further protection of Tasmanian high-conservation-value, oldgrowth, rainforests and other ecosystems’;
It allows the destruction of forests of World Heritage value in South-West Tasmania (valleys such as the Florentine, Styx, Great Western Tiers and Weld) and the Tarkine;
It gives more taxpayer handouts to the logging industry. Mr Rudd’s $20-million handout today comes on top of nearly $250 million in May 2005 which came on top of $76 million in 1997.

Today’s forest decision – announced with full-blown approval from the CFMEU – resurrects speculation that Mr Rudd did a secret deal with the CFMEU’s Michael O’Connor at Labor’s National Conference in April.

“Mr Rudd said he was in Smithton to underline in clear-cut terms his support for Tasmania’s Regional Forest Agreement”

Clear-cut terms? Worst choice of words for the week, if by Rudd. Best choice if by the journo.

Dave Groves - as for Tasm being run by retards:
1. I think that’s harsh on people who are actually retarded (Pedro for Premier!!)
2. It seems you guys officially don’t have exclusive domain.

How completely stupid is this - Labor federally have the most credible and potentially dynamic human in the history of Australia to ever take a crack at the Environment Minister’s job. Unfortunately, Garrett has been trimmed to a one man show, with no support and increasingly carved-down ability to influence outcomes.

Meanwhile, people still flee from Latham’s forest policy just like they do from Keating’s economics - only worse. Keating has at least proven repeatedly that when he could be a useful political historian, all he is really about is insisting that he was the best PM ever. Which is a shame.

Here, what really sucks, to my mind, is this: Latham’s comprehensively spelt out and funded transition policy was brave, sincere, innovative, groundbreaking and had the potential to work. Unfortunately he didn’t break any balls to get the industry and state-level bitches onside beforehand, and only gave himself about a week to sell a complicated package that needed time to understand. More’s the shame.
Rudd’s announcement doesn’t need 3 months to be understood, yet it has exactly that. It’s a nothingism at a time when anything but is needed. This election, the CFMEU would be committing suicide if they funded or supported Howard over anything - simply because of WorkChoices (and yes we should still be calling it that). Anyone who understands basic climate science understands that ancient forests are not disposable. What a stupid election to choose to ignore this aspect of local and global reality. Unless Gunns and Forestry Tasmania also pay people for their vote on election day, a stronger policy would not harm Tasmanian prospects for Labor (certainly not worse than the Lennon maladministration).
Sadly this campaign continues to be about points of indifference. Federal Labor has seen 10 years of being ambushed over ‘non-core’ policy positions. They’re simply making themself a smaller target. Let’s at least hope that nuclear waste dumps, human rights, and international law somehow still make it into the ‘core policy areas’ basket this poll.
Dammit.

Rudd is 4 years behind the eightball. Much has come to pass since then, many more have realised the negatives of how this industry is set up, many more have been affected by it.
But, obviously federal labor is as much a dud as Tassie state labor and the liberals. And couldn’t care less about the states environment or its people who rely on it being healthy. Lots a feel good spin on climate change, protecting the cut, burn, poison, forest industry, and big brothering on other countries, but what about the impact these archaic practices have on the states water supplies, the soil, air quality? Peoples health? What about pulp wood plantations taking over high rainfall productive food producing farms? What about the corruption that has let it all get this far? There are more plantations on private land alone, than has been protected in state owned forest. Where is the balanced approached in this package Mr Lennon? How has anything changed? It’s still a set up for the boys. But maybe you can lay off spending public money to push vested interests now? Maybe you and Rod Scott and Martin Gilmour can take a break for awhile? A job well done eh!

Island paradise for sale, going, going, gone, sold to the pulp mill and MIS investors. Paid in full by the public.

Surely people had the brains to realise there would be no difference between the lib/lab faction in this state or anywhere else in Aus, when it comes to corporate control over the future. The environmental traitor Garret slunk into Tas and snuck out again without saying anything, other than more subterfuge deceit and lies. People have to realise they have created a monster by supporting these religious right wing nut cases who are destroying the state, to feed their greed and keep the status quo and power in the hands of the elite.

You can be sure that it won’t end here, the next trick may well be to disenfranchise the people entirely, with more lies and deceit. I wrote a small piece a year or two back on this forum, that was named “A cry from the heart”, which I wish I could find as I believe it set out what would happen and it has. There are no differences between either party here, they both have the same agenda and that discounts the people and the future. What makes me both laugh and feel very sad is, what happens during the next few years as oil prices rise and oil becomes even scarcer. This will raise the cost of forest destruction, making it impossible for wood chipping, except with mechanical methods, reducing labour requirements even more. It will also force small trucking businesses out, as they won’t have the clout to purchase large amounts of fuel like the multi nationals will. But the brain dead union and their equally brain-dead followers, can’t see past the noses on tier faces, so will suffer. After all there appears to be less than 20 years of fuel left on the planet at our current rate of consumption and that is rapidly growing daily.

It’s a pity there aren’t enough humble people who have influence to change things, coming up with polices or supporting agendas that will swing the political direction to a positive future. But those in power on all sides are to egocentric to make positive contributions, they all just bleat nothing of substance.

The grinning photo on the front cover of the Mercury could certainly play in to the Liberals strategy of painting Rudd as the ‘toady of the union movement’. One must wonder why he bothered coming down at all, given the policy had already been announced at the national conference.

It seems that Green preferences are being taken for granted, which has to be the first sign that Rudd is feeling cocky. A weakness perhaps, but given that the Fed Liberals are already standing so far to the right on environmental issues he will probably get away with it. C’est la vie.

If the Green Senators win the balance of power in the Senate will they have the guts to play hard-ball?

No changes to Howard’s IR laws until old-growth logging is banned.

Hey Nonny Nonny

This is the biggest case of appeasement since Chamberlin and ‘peace in our time.’
Do those clowns directing ALP policy really think it was the forest policy that sank Latham?
Take a look at the polling in Bass, booth by booth, and you will a big swing against O’Byrne in urban polling stations such as Sandhill. This had more to do with interest rates not forestry.
It seems to me that the ALP has decided that insead of trying to find their own way out of the electoral wilderness they will simply hand it over to Gunns and let them bulldoze a path.

HOW DARE that little egghead traitor get up at environment and rock concerts and pretend to be green,he has sold out to the corporations and should be thrown off the next stage he appears on.also don burke is the new harry butler.

Don Burke isn’t the new Harry Butler, he’s the old Don Burke. There just wasn’t much opportunity for him on a gardening show to spruik for Monsanto, Bayer, Gunns, and BHP.

As far as Garrett goes - i feel really disappointed. He’s not doing or saying what we might have expected by this point, but just looking at the language and thinking about it… he hasn’t actually betrayed anything yet. He isn’t yet ministerial, nothing he says or does yet makes an actual difference. Example: Howard and Costello’s line about ‘what have the ALP done for the economy? Nothing!’ is a truism. They’re the opposition, of course all they do is talk.

Garrett hasn’t yet sacrificed the environment. So far he has sacrificed his standing with most environmentalists, a significant part of his lyrical legacy, his sense of humour, and surely part of his self-respect. His logic seems to be, as it always has, that if those are the hurdles he must clear to get into a position where he can make a difference then so be it.

The trouble is that even if these actual sacrifices do get him through the door, his only apparent ideological ally in the ALP is Anthony Albanese who doesn’t seem to have allies lined up to take the significant and relevant portfolios.
For Garrett, these would be mining, natural resources, transport, energy, and forestry.

Under Hawke, for example - but more particularly because the culture was in fluid motion on these matters in the 80s - the environment minister was not only respected, active, and empowered to a much greater degree than has happened in a long time in Australia, but also had cabinet support and credibility. However, now we can see, for example, the Australian Greenhouse Office as symbolic of what has happened.

The AGO is worn as a badge by Howard and his anti-Kyoto politicronies. Yes, Australia hasn’t actually made any contribution to the slowing of climate change, BUT we did have the first dedicated department. Trouble is that the environment minister - even if they could act autonomously - is just one minister in the ministerial council. When the AGO puts forward policy (which it rarely does now that it is so Howard-infested), it is voted on by the ministerial council. If it isn’t killed there, it has to get past Cabinet. All of this is laid out by Hamilton in Scorcher.

It may well be that Garrett’s ministerial mountain-to-climb will not actually be saving anything, but rearranging the admin infrastructure so that the environment can again have a voice. My hope is that Rudd and Garrett are being ‘conditionally supportive’ of the pulp mill because they know that it must fail at one of the many hurdles which Alex Wadsley has spelt out elsewhere in the TT forums.

And btw, i’m not wearing the rose-coloured lenses. It may well be that all of them are just puppets in the thrall of corporate will, but i don’t yet think Garrett is The Hollow Man. And I hope to see that put to the test one way or another once he gets into cabinet. . . although it would be pretty damned sweet to see an ideologically progressive ALP government putting Natash Stott-Despoja as foreign minister, Bob Brown in charge of Forestry, Ian Lowe in charge of transport, Barnaby Joyce in charge of Agriculture. . . and Gerard Henderson in charge of cleaning toilets.

t.i.n.a.
      everywhere Rudd goes Garrett is close behind and why.? in order to gain the under 30 vote.           
      just another crude and cynical attempt to gain power as was his use of a family historical events which were patently untrue
                      d.d.

What a relief!  As a woodworker using Tasmania’s unique special timbers to create value-added products for sale to tourists through local retailers, my spirits were lifted high upon hearing the Labor Party’s forest policy for Tasmania. It confirms the common sense of the Community Forest Agreement that was negotiated between the Federal Government and the Tasmanian Government between October 2004 and April 2005. Latham’s plan would have sent us to extinction, and Howard’s response would have almost sent us there as well. The salvaged situation meant that our Special Timbers Management Units were ultimately reduced from 143,000 hectares to 71,000 hectares, but other areas remained available. Meanwhile, the area of actual old growth in reserves swelled to over one million hectares! How much is enough?
Hooray for consensus! Now we don’t need to be constantly looking over our shoulders. Now we can get on with managing our forests carefully and properly, and in the knowledge that future generations of woodworkers can also experience the joy of working with these beautiful timbers. (incidentally, the last piece of deep red Myrtle harvested before the Tarkine lock-up passed through the four-sided moulder in a saw mill in Smithton earlier this week.)
The Wilderness Society has never hidden its preference for ultimately no native forest logging, (total annihilation for people like me!). Notice how the Wilderness Society and the Greens never seem to disagree? Doesn’t this make the Green’s forest policy look fraudulent? And how can they claim to want to increase the value adding while simultaneously wanting to decrease the volume of timber being made available? How could you vote for that?
Finally, we will continue to have a timber industry, whether they like it, or not! Get used to it, and get over it.

George Harris
(R. G. Harris)
South Hobart
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Some fair points, George, and I can’t help but think that if the government were remotely interested in investing in the value-adding you provide—rather than the lowest-common-denominator variety the proposed pulp mill will churn out, to the vast detriment of Tasmania’s native forests and its clean green image—we would all be much better off in the long run.

That, however, requires outside-the-box thinking which this government can only aspire to.

(13)“Now we can get on with managing our forests carefully and properly…”

That would be nice! Enough years have gone by with complete disregard and waste. Though don’t hold out much hope considering who runs it all.

By the way, if you go up to the highlands, near the Navarre river system, between Lake St Clair and Lake King William there is a whole forest of myrtle that was purposefully trashed and left to rot, some trees were quite large, you might find some useful logs left lying around there to use. Though the contractors where instructed to completely trash it. Apparently the gum trees where worth more to keep growing, in this wet area, than the specialty timber was to harvest.

And maybe if YOU asked this forest industry nicely they might stop destroying the future generations myrtle, which is destroyed when clearfelling to feed the woodchipper.

Maybe if so much timber wasn’t wasted, and instead value added, whole ecosystems wouldn’t have to be destroyed for the lower end of the woodchip driven market.

But hey living next door to the destruction, being avid bush walkers and trout fishing guides who travel around to out of the way places, using our own timber for building and furniture making, knowing a number of millers and wood craft artists who aren’t happy with the industries practices, maybe we just haven’t been brainwashed enough yet?

I don’t want to vote for the Greens (although the other mobs are looking worse by the day), and I don’t support the forestry policies of them, the Wilderness Society or anybody else that I know of, but I do want to know that the rest of the Tarkine myrtle is growing in forests, not passing through four-sided moulders.

Sorry, George, but I reckon you oughta find a job in a Chinese plastics extrusion plant if you want to keep making things for tourists.

George Harris, you forgot to mention, selective logging and multi species forests and plantations, are the answer to best practise value adding. They also allow industries like tourism, bee keeping, flora utilisation and marine species to co exist and compliment each industry.  It also achieves ecological and biological sustainability of our forests and native life forms. Reduces chemical contamination of rivers, lands, water supplies and coastal areas. We need change that’ll enhance our environment, yet not destroy our farming, forest, tourism and bee keeping industries and keep rural communities together and in work. The current approach certainly can’t be demonstrated to do achieve that goal.

13.
  well ! george,  the last time i was in Salamanca
90% of tourist product was made in f—ck—g China
and what little is made here is so goddamn expensive and “precious” that few can afford to buy it ! now ! i am no Greenie or wilderness society representative , i am exactly the guy whose name appears on this thread and i know that this mill is an abomination, perhaps may i suggest the build it in sandy bay , that,d make you and your fellow southern think a likes squirm ,but no!  they want to build it in the worst possible place where it is going to kill people , (not fucking likely) as long as i have a say ! (!) 
                  d.d.