An invitation to participate in the Special Species Timber Management Plan

This email arrived in my inbox on Friday from Minister for Resources Paul Harriss. This may be interesting. Or else it will be the same old stuff we’ve seen before – or worse!!

I am not holding out much hope.

But I do pity the poor consultants who sign up for these jobs. Imagine helping to justify logging the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area at taxpayers’ expense whilst we are sacking teachers and nurses. How on earth do you keep any sort of professional integrity or reputation in all of that?

I’m looking forward to having a discussion with “Mr Blair Freeman or one of his team”. I wonder if they understand that forestry is a business not a division of Centrelink Australia?

This management plan is not due to be completed/released before 2017 in time for the next State election.

One thing is absolutely guaranteed. This management plan will not contain any discussion of commercial issues. Nor will it consider the possibility of Tasmanian farmers growing special timbers.

The idea that Tasmanian farmers are already growing and harvesting special timbers, and would likely grow more if given the right market signals, will be completely ignored in this management plan.

The fundamental assumption will be that special timbers can only come from taxpayer-subsidised Tasmanian public native forests.

In other words it will not be a business plan but a glossy political/marketing document, like the 2010 Special Timbers Strategy.

I shall keep you informed as this proceeds.