A sad day when extremist protesters cost Tasmanians jobs

Labor Party adherence to radical views is costing jobs, says Guy Barnett

CAN anyone remember the election where the people decided that groups like The Wilderness Society and Markets for Change should have the power of veto over which forests can be harvested in Tasmania?

I’m very confident that such a decision has never been made by the Tasmanian people. Quite the opposite, the Hodgman Liberal Government was elected with an unequivocal mandate to rip up the job-destroying LaborGreen so-called peace deal.

Why then are we still in a situation where the Labor Party’s policy is that we can only harvest forests which the Greens, The Wilderness Society and Markets for Change say we can?

The clear message from Labor when they blocked the reopening of production forests in the Legislative Council last week was that they were doing so at the behest of Green protest groups.

It is an extremely sad state of affairs for Tasmania when having had their so-called peace deal comprehensively rejected by voters, Labor is still attempting to implement it by supporting the threat of protests by extreme Green groups.

Let’s remember that the forests in question are categorised by Tasmanian law as Future Potential Production Forest.

Aside from a brief period when the previous LaborGreen Government attempted to lock them away, these areas have always been considered part of Tasmania’s production forest estate and harvested accordingly.

It’s also important to remember in the face of constant propaganda from Green groups that want to end all native forestry that Tasmania has one of the best and most rigorous forest practices systems in the world.

The Hodgman Liberal Government took to the election a commitment to unlock the production forests locked up by the former Labor-Green Government because doing so will create jobs for Tasmanians.

We know that jobs will be created because we have heard from participants in the

industry who have customers for the wood and contracts being offered to supply the wood.

But according to Labor, we cannot use production forests to create jobs because extreme Greens say so.

According to Labor, the ability to access Tasmanian timber in reasonable volumes should forever be confined to the handful of businesses who supported the forest peace deal.

Anyone else who could be creating jobs by working with Tasmanian timber is out in the cold.

The effect of this policy by Labor, which has three votes in the Legislative Council that would have seen the legislation pass if they had voted for it, is that small sawmillers who have customers for the wood and Tasmanians waiting to be employed can’t create jobs because they don’t have enough wood to work with.

The iconic and incredibly important special species timber sector don’t have the supply they need.

Andrew Denman from the Tasmanian Special Timbers Alliance has repeatedly warned of the serious danger the industry is in if our legislation is not passed.

If Tasmanian timber isn’t utilised to the fullest extent possible then Tasmania is missing out on jobs at the expense of other countries with inferior forestry practices. The hypocrisy of Green groups who target Tasmanian timber even while illegally harvested timber from other countries continues to find its way into Australia is extraordinary.

The Wilderness Society and other Green groups have repeated in recent weeks their position that they want all native forest harvesting banned and they want to lock up a huge swath of the NorthWest in a new national park.

It is incredibly short sighted of the Labor Party to think you can encourage growth in the forestry industry while being captive to every demand of anti-jobs extremists.

That’s why the Hodgman Liberal Government remains absolutely firm in our resolve to unlock production forests to create jobs in Tasmania. Guy Barnett is the Minister for Resources.