Category Archives: Tasmanian Forest Products Association

Tree Alliance – MIS revisited?

Posted on October 30, 2020 | 3 comments

https://www.treealliance.com.au/

Does anyone remember the Managed Investment Scheme (MIS) disaster of the 1990s?

It was the biggest corporate fraud in Australia’s history.

There was no Royal Commission and no one went to jail.

Billions of investor and taxpayer dollars disappeared, and thousands of Australian lives were ruined.

And the forest industry, which started the MIS schemes, refused to accept any responsibility for their actions!

It was a complete disaster!

And it had its beginnings in much the same way as the Tree Alliance is now starting off.

The forest industry has been very quiet the past 10 years as it has rebuilt from the ashes of the MIS disaster.

The MIS was a near-death experience for the forest industry. A few people made extraordinary wealth, but left the industry a smoking ruin.

Below is a list of those who support the Tree Alliance:

Supporters of the Tree Alliance:

The Tree Alliance aims to bring together a range of organisations to collaborate to achieve the tree planting and communication objectives. Current supporters include:

  • Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association
  • Tasmanian Agricultural Productivity Group
  • Tasmanian Timber
  • Tasmanian Forests and Forests Product Network
  • We Act
  • Climate Friendly
  • The Centre For Sustainable Architecture With Wood (University of Tasmania)
  • CSIRO
  • NRM South

Note that the above list contains no sawmillers, wood processors, log merchants,  exporters, or retailers. No one in the real forest industry supports the Tree Alliance!

Does that make you suspicious?

It should!!!

I wander through the Tree Alliance website and I see history repeating itself.

I see the forest industry (or at least public servants, scientists, NGOs and politicians) big-talking! Lots of promises and potential, just like the start of the MIS disaster.

BEWARE!

As I tell all my clients and those who make enquiries about growing blackwood:

“No one wants you to grow trees for future wood production!”

The real forest industry (including the marketplace) has not the slightest interest in your tree-growing dreams!

I get phone calls and hear stories of people who are bulldozing their trees they once planted and can now find no markets for!!

The Tree Alliance has all the features, promises and rhetoric of a giant fraud, just like the Managed Investment Scheme disaster.

BEWARE!

I support a real forest industry! New Zealand has a real forest industry; Australia does not!

In New Zealand the forest industry talks about prices, costs, supply, demand, markets, etc.; all those things that farmers understand and deal with every single day.

No one in the forest industry in Australia talks about such matters!

Looking at the Tree Alliance is like watching Dorothy and the Tin Man skipping down the Yellow Brick Road.

BEWARE!

Until the real forest industry (including the wider marketplace) WANTS a future I would steer clear of any hyper-marketing “forest industry” b***shit.

Cheers!

3 Comments

Posted in Plantations, Politics, Private Forests Tasmania, Tasmanian Forest Products Association

Tagged ,

Tasmanian Forest Products Association – a new beginning?

Posted on May 28, 2020 | 1 comment

Hayes

It seems many people are hoping that the new Tasmanian Forest Products Association (TFPA) will offer the forest industry a chance for a new beginning. I have to say after 40 years in the industry that seems unlikely.

But never mind! As someone famous once said “There is always hope!”

Here are a few of my thoughts about what the TFPA is facing and what the challenges are (in no particular order):

  • The biggest issue facing the REAL forest industry is the WELFARE forest industry – everyone who works or depends upon public native forest wood. Public native forestry generates bad media like there is no tomorrow. It starves the real forest industry of oxygen!

It’s not as if the real forest industry has been working hard to create positive media, but they don’t stand a chance whilst the public and marketplace perception is dominated by WELFARE forestry.

Public native forestry is the stinking albatross around the industry’s neck!

  • The TFPA needs to think differently, speak differently and project a completely new message to the community. Speak and behave like you mean “business”. Whatever you do, do not keep repeating the tired boring messages of the last 50 years!!

You need to get the farming and broader community onboard.

The community is not your enemy!

This means keeping a visible and significant distance from politicians. In Tasmania that will be difficult! Tasmanian politicians are like leeches. They climb up our legs and bleed us.

If the community sees you playing politics, you are dead!

  • Cutting down trees, sawing up or chipping logs has always been the easiest part of the forest industry. The hardest part is getting people to plant, grow and manage trees for future wood production! That means the focus of the industry must be on PROFITABLE TREE GROWING! And it must be a planned, collective approach to expand and grow the industry. Individual businesses cannot do this.
  • The forest industry in New Zealand is one of the most successful in the world. We can learn much from them.
  • Competition, level playing fields and market transparency are fundamental to the future of the industry! Numerous reports have been saying this for decades! JUST DO IT!!!
  • If you adopt any of the above ideas you will come under intense pressure from your mainland colleagues who regard all of these ideas as anathema. Nevermind! Stay strong! Someone has to break the cycle of failure that has cursed our industry.

All of the above makes for a very long hard road ahead for the TFPA.

But the only alternative is extinction.

We are in the fight of our lives.

1 Comment

Posted in Commentary, Tasmanian Forest Products Association

The Cat Herd

Posted on May 26, 2020 | 2 comments

CatHerd

The other day Forico CEO Bryan Hayes described the Tasmanian forest industry as a Herd of Cats. I would add very FERAL cats!!

And just the other day Private Forests Tasmania released the first ever Tasmanian Forest Industry Directory.

This is your guide to THE CAT HERD!!

https://www.pft.tas.gov.au/home/home_articles/directory_of_tasmanian_forestry_services_2020

I should say that it is a great leap forward for the forest industry. I am astonished it has taken so long to produce such a directory.

At least everyone now knows who the cats are.

Very few of these cats are cooperating to build and grow the forest industry.

None of them have a plan for the future.

That will be the job of the new Tasmanian Forest Products Association; to sort out this herd of disparate feral cats. Some will need to be euthanased! Hopefully the better ones can be tamed and brought into line.

Go to the PFT website and checkout the new directory.

Mind you don’t get scratched!

PS. I should say that not all of the Cat Herd is in the new directory, because the Herd definitely includes wood traders and retailers, manufacturers and craftspeople, builders, cabinetmakers, luthiers, etc. It even includes us all as consumers. 

So if we want a new beginning for the forest industry then we all need to change our thinking and behaviour.

Cheers!

2 Comments

Posted in Private Forests Tasmania, Tasmanian Forest Products Association

Tasmanian Forest Products Association

Posted on May 25, 2020 | Leave a comment

Hayes

Bryan Hayes, Forico CEO

The forest industry remains quite for months and then BANG! News stories everywhere!!

This article appeared in the media the other day:

https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/6767207/new-forestry-body-to-represent-industry-plagued-by-conflict-and-old-issues/?fbclid=IwAR1nZ_BpPTnxqz7EalGl-006syfKk1J3EQ-g6OzAG8ebcwg6km0tvL26n-g

The article formally announced the death of the Forest Industries Association of Tasmanian (FIAT) and the formation of yet another forest industry representative body, the Tasmanian Forest Products Association (TFPA). Tasmania is now back to having two forest industry representative bodies, the other being the taxpayer-funded Tasmanian Forest and Forest Products Network (TFFPN).

https://www.tffpn.com.au/

The TFPA as yet has no website. Hopefully soon!

I’m not sure where the TFGA sits in all this confusion:

https://tfga.com.au/farming-enterprises/forestry

Do they represent forest growers? Its hard to understand!

If Tasmanians are confused this is perfectly understandable. The forest industry in Tasmania remains deeply conflicted and divided.

The main theme of the article is to give Tasmanians very rare insight into the history of the forest industry; the truth being that for the past 20-30 years the forest industry has been very deeply divided!!

Driven by ego, power and greed; and as the article says “doing things the same way over and over is not a good strategy”. Who would guess?

Tasmanians have never had this insight into the inner workings and conflict within the forest industry. This is indeed a rare moment in Tasmanian history.

Few people in Tasmania were aware of this. Most Tasmanians thought the issue was “The Greenies”, when in fact the story was more complex.

“We want to depoliticise the conversation, we want to speak with an apolitical voice … take in the balance of social, economic and environmental concerns.”

Mr Hayes said the task ahead was enormous, particularly taking into account years of highly political activity within the industry and with professional protesters.

“There’s that old saying, herding cats …” he joked.

“But I hope it is able to act like a glue to bind the industry together.

“It’s going to be a long road.”

A long HARD road ahead!! Has anyone in the Tasmanian forest industry spoken with such candour before?

Not in my 40 year career as a forester!

Never mind!

The Tasmanian forest industry remains deeply conflicted and divided – between the taxpayer-sucking forest-destroying welfare forestry people, and those who believe that growing wood is a commercial activity.

My limited dealings with Mr Hayes have been very positive. Can he bring the peace and resolve to this long bitter divisive destructive period in Tasmanias history?

Time will tell.

Good luck Bryan herding those Feral Welfare Cats !!!

PS. Note to Bryan: You know I’m going to give you guys a hard time but you wouldn’t expect otherwise would you??

Leave a comment

Posted in Commentary, Politics, Tasmanian Forest Products Association