This misguided minister compounds state’s forestry mess
An urgent rethink is needed, but Guy Barnett does not seem the one to do it, says Lyndon Schneiders
IS there is anyone left in Tasmania who doesn’t believe that the Government is putting rank politics before common sense when it comes to vexed issue of forestry?
Then Resources Minister Guy Barnett’s latest contribution (Talking Point, Mercury, July 4) should clear up any remaining ambiguity.
In response to the decision by the Tasmanian Legislative Council to reject the Government’s latest effort to fan the fading embers of the decades-long forest wars, Minister Barnett has been forced to resort to a parallel universe of good guys and bad guys, which bears little relationship to the real world.
In this alternative reality, the bad guys are clear. They are nasty, job-hating and hypocritical greenies, led by the Wilderness Society.
In Minister Barnett’s mind, we stand like a mean-spirited colossus, pulling strings all around us and doing all sorts of evil deeds.
The good guys, well that’s a little murky, but clearly includes the good minister himself and one long-standing critic of the consensus driven Tasmanian Forest Agreement.
In the real world, of course, there are some uncomfortable facts for the minister, the most significant being that literally no one else in the Tasmanian forestry industry backed the minister’s failed plan to reopen logging in forests of outstanding conservation value and which had been offered interim protection as part of the Tasmanian Forest Agreement.
No one supported his plan for a vast array of reasons, including that Tasmanians from all backgrounds and all walks of life love the magnificent forests and the myriad creatures that call these forests their home.
At a more practical level, no one in the marketplace wants to buy the wood being offered up by the minister, and no one wants to invest in an industry that cannot meet the highest standards of management, represented by the achievement of Forest Stewardship Certification (FSC).
Not so long ago, the achievement of FSC was an article of faith for Minister Barnett himself, though this seems to have quietly disappeared from his rhetoric in favour of a renewed focus on some old-school greenie bashing.
The really uncomfortable truth for the minister is that at the end of the day, real-world participants in the Tasmanian timber industry, who have real businesses and employ real Tasmanians, simply did not want a bar of the Government’s plan.
Respected leaders of the industry, such as the Forest Industry Association of Tasmania (FIAT) and the Tasmanian Regional Sawmillers Association, were vocal in their opposition to the Government’s plan and were instrumental in the decision by the Legislative Council to reject the Hodgman Government’s proposal to allow logging in forests earmarked for future protection.
They took this position because they know that in the 21st century the areas of real and demonstrated job growth
The bad guys are clear. In Minister Barnett’s mind, we stand like a mean-spirited colossus, pulling strings all around us and doing all sorts of evil deeds.
and economic value are in the plantation sector and in native forest operations that achieve the international gold standard of sustainability, FSC.
Achieving FSC opens up markets across Australia and the world for high-value products that don’t rely on low prices and mass volumes.
This model of development has been the foundation behind the success of other sections of the Tasmanian economy such as tourism and hospitality, the arts and cultural industries and highvalue agricultural products.
It was, and it still remains, this opportunity to create a genuinely sustainable, respected and job-creating forest industry that was the foundation of the Tasmanian Forest Agreement negotiations between the Tasmanian timber industry, the union movement and environment groups.
It was this shared commitment to work together to see new jobs created, forests of outstanding conservation value protected, the achievement of FSC and an agreed and well-managed transition to a secure plantation resource base that provided a better future for forestry in Tasmania.
And it still can. But not without vision and leadership from government, and that is sorely lacking in Tasmania at the moment.
Minister Barnett makes much of the now rather decaying mandate that he believes the Government received to destroy the Forest Agreement at the 2014 election. His decision to attack the consensus reached by the Forest Agreement and to promise a completely undeliverable land of milk and honey was undoubtedly good short-term politics.
Yet as Tony Abbott proved, a cynical scare campaign from the opposition benches is no substitute for good leadership and policy-making once an opposition party becomes the Government. Governing should be the realm of grownups, not empty slogans.
Three years on from the last election, the track record of the Government in respect to forestry is diabolical. We now have the third failed forestry minister in the three years of Premier Hodgman’s Government, relations between the Government and timber industry are at an alltime low, Forestry Tasmania is in deep and ongoing financial crisis, FSC is still light years away, and now the Government cannot even pass its own forest policies through the usually conservative Legislative Council.
It is time for an urgent rethink from the highest levels of the Government, but it is hard to imagine how that rethink will be possible with Minister Barnett continuing to call the shots. Lyndon Schneiders is the national director of the Wilderness Society.