Forestry Tasmania posts $43m loss, minister blames peace deal

ABC News ,  Thu 30 Oct 2014

The minister blames the peace deal for Forestry Tasmania's financial woes.

PHOTO: The minister blames the peace deal for Forestry Tasmania's financial woes. (ABC, Jessica Kidd)

The Tasmanian Government is blaming the forest peace deal brokered under its predecessor for another big loss posted by Forestry Tasmania.

The Government-owned forest estate manager lost $43.1 million after tax in the financial year that ended in June.

That was despite the previous Labor-Greens government handing the company $37 million during the year in a bid to keep it solvent.

Resources Minister Paul Harris told Parliament the peace deal that led to the creation of new native forest reserves was to blame for the result.

"Forestry Tasmania has had another very challenging year," he said.

"It has advised me that the reduction in land area under the Tasmanian Forest Agreement (TFA) was a significant contributor to its difficulties."

Greens MP Nick McKim claimed the loss was the result of poor markets

Committees stacked to provide 'right' outcome

David Blair, senior research officer, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

The Age, letter, 28 October 2014

First the review into the renewable energy target by climate sceptic Dick Warburton; now an inadequate report on the Great Barrier Reef written by a committee lacking independent experts, but containing coal industry representatives ("Scientific academy slams government's Great Barrier Reef plan", 28/10). Both are examples of government handpicking a review committee to provide an outcome desirable to its ideology and backers, rather than doing what is best for the country.

In Victoria we see the same thing. The Alpine Advisory Committee, which is helping rewrite the Greater Alpine National Parks Management Plan, is stacked with cattlemen and those wishing to exploit the alpine parks rather than protect the sensitive environment.

Meanwhile, the Leadbeater's Possum Advisory Group has recently rewritten the Action Statement (which dictates management) for our state faunal emblem. Who was selected to provide expertise on saving this threatened species? VicForests' chief executive and timber industry support groups are on the panel, while the two leading ecologists who have studied the species for decades are not. Furthermore, the terms of reference set by the government explicitly tied the survival of Leadbeater's Possum to the health of the extractive industry that threatens it and VicForests will get a significant part of the funding earmarked for "saving" the possum.