Abetz still in the woods, fighting a lost war.... On August 7 this year, unemployment figures showed a rise to 6.4% - the highest in more than a decade - and, in the Employment Minister, Eric Abetz’s home state of Tasmania things were even worse at 7.6%. Despite this Abetz vociferously advocated for the destruction of the 2013 Forestry Agreement even though it ended decades of fighting between loggers and conservationists and brokered a deal that could have led to the conservation of half a million hectares of forest AND guaranteed logging companies access to a set number of sawlogs from plantations. “It made good market (and employment) sense.” Says former Tasmanian Labor minister for the environment Andrew Lohrey. “It came about because of the market. Logging is an inefficient industry and inflexible, and had been subsidised for a long, long time.” Regardless, during the 2013 federal election campaign, Abetz said the agreement was ruinous to Tasmania’s growth and vowed to tear it up in government. “Ripping up the silly forest peace deal will also help grow jobs in Tasmania.” He said. “Abetz is seeking to revive an industry he thinks was made lame by the anti-development dogma of the Greens, but in reality has been stricken fatally by inefficiency, greed and the vicissitudes of global development.” Said the Saturday Paper’s Martin McKenzie-Murray who went on to say that Abetz is continuing the unsustainable belief that Tasmanian prosperity springs from forestry. “In my home state of Tasmania over 50% is locked up,” Abetz says, but - in 2012, just 1% of Tasmania’s workforce was employed in forestry. “The economic potency of Tasmanian logging has long been imagined, exaggerated by political convenience, myth-making and the sincere anxieties of loggers.” Says McKenzie-Murray and, Lohrey agrees. “We spend so much time talking about the forest industry but it’s so tiny. It’s been subsidised so much, but employs so few people.” In contrast, he added, Tasmania’s climate makes it uniquely placed in Australia to produce world-class wine and dairy and, it’s blessed with natural beauty, lending itself to tourism. “The underlying problem is simple but intractable – there has been a failure to take the action required to bring opportunities to reality, either in forestry or other areas.” Said Professor Jonathan West, of the Australian Innovation Research Centre. “The island has been stricken by a failure of imagination – a sober declaration of the importance of education, and the subsequent benefits of economic diversification.” thesaturdaypaper.au/news/politics/2014/09/13/abetz-still-the-woods-fighting-lost-war/14105304002530ad66-eaea-45c9-ad94#.VBN_9f0cSUl
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 00:00:34 +0000
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