Miranda’s Daily Blog: Day 315
Celebration of Forestry Tasmania’s corporate relations executive resigning a few days ago have been short lived. Yesterday the shocking news hit that Managing Director Bob Gordon has remarkably been reappointed for a further five years. At the same time it was revealed that the Government Business Enterprise made a loss of $27.6 million over the past year. How can it be that Bob Gordon has been put in charge for another five years, when it has been on his watch that so many millions of tax payers money has been lost? Well, not entirely ‘lost’ – it can be found in the remote wilderness of Tasmania’s most valuable assets: our ancient forests. It can be found in the form of torched and burnt landscapes, stumps of 400-year-old trees and roads that carve up once pristine ecosystems. It can be found in the shot paddymelons left dead after “browsing management operations.” And in the Tasmanian devils left homeless in the wake of fallen trees. It can be found in the hundreds of clearfells that sprawl across hillsides. And in the rotting piles of wasting wood left in limbo, as logging continues irrespective of the market declines.
While our health and education systems struggle to make ends meet, the government has put all of Tasmania’s eggs in the wrong basket. The stubborn digging in of the heels by Forestry Tasmania is getting this state nowhere. Entrenching native forest logging as they have so blatantly done will be of no benefit to the environment, the community or even the forest industry itself! It is time for a change and reappointing of the same old guard at Forestry Tasmania is not a good place to start.
Posted on October 25, 2012, in Daily Blog. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
T h e O b s e r v e r T r e e 
Yes, Miranda. Some of us are simply shaking our heads at this latest news. They admit that Forestry Tasmania will make a loss for the next several years. The management announces that their wise decisions prevented their annual loss from being quite bigger and they make important decisions without the Minister, apparently, being aware of them.
What is the way forward?
Hello,
the five years is supposed to show how stable Forestry Tasmania is after all their ongoing issues, it’s supposed to give a clear message to the community, all it shows is how worried everyone is around a business operation that is unstainable. Nobody can predict what going to happen in 6months let alone 5years, Tasmanians keep having confidence in your ability as a state to attract visitors to see your natural beauty.
The other clowns will keep digging their own holes in the ground, remember Gunns, wow they were really helping the economy of Tassie.
This confirms Tasmanian forest corruption is as bad as Indonesia’s.
As Forestry Tasmania sets its course for another 5 years of business as usual, the rotting boles of once magnificent trees, the dead and expiring wildlife and the vistas, which typify Tasmania’s pristine heritage, lie in the detritus with our health system, education and police force. All this death and decay appears lost on the very people who claim to act in Tasmania’s best interests. The suffrage has not benefitted the suffering, nor improved the lives of those who gave of themselves to the industry that now sheds them like leaves. It is a poor system that serves only foreign interests, while ignoring the rights of its own people. So obviously driven by avarice and the vested interests of a few, the subtlety no longer obscures the truth and peels like spent bark. Questions remain unanswered: How will this continued destruction meet carbon reduction targets? Where does it create wealth for all Tasmanians? And why is FT more valued than every other state government department? These questions are, of course rhetorical, as they will never be answered. Suffrage should be exorcised to benefit the populous and not the privileged. Tasmania needs a true change, away from two-team politics. Vote for policies, which affect change that benefits sustainable growth and clean the dust from the shelves of Tasmanian governance for good.