Pic: of Ken Jeffreys
Hag hears those silky dulcets of Forestry Tasmania’s Chief Spinner Kenny ‘The Golden Tonsils’ Jeffreys - which once described FT practices as worthy of a gold medal - will not be entirely lost to Tasmania. I was told last night Kenny will be offered the afternoon Drive Slot on ABC local radio Northern Tasmania, once briefly occupied by ex-Mercury editor Garry Bailey ...
• Bryan Green
Deputy Premier
Monday 22nd Oct 2012
Government committed to Forestry Tasmania reform
The Deputy Premier Bryan Green said today the Government was focussed on ensuring Forestry Tasmania is on a viable financial footing as the industry confronts unprecedented challenges.
“The Government’s decision to change the operating structure of Forestry Tasmania was based on independent advice and we are committed to implementing the reforms,” Mr Green said.
“We are working with the Forestry Tasmania board and management to move the business forward.
“There will always be a level of resistance to change but that will not divert the Government’s attention from implementing such important policy reform.
“Ultimately changes to the management structure of Forestry Tasmania are a matter for the board and the managing director.
“From the Government’s perspective it is not about individuals and these decisions are made without influence from the Minister.
“We will continue to do what is necessary to make sure Forestry Tasmania remains a viable corporate entity and in that respect it is no different to any other Government-owned business,” Mr Green said.
Pic: of Judy Tierney
• David Obendorf: Our Common Ground ethos responds to the Industry
For those who still peruse the pages of the local southern Tasmanian paper may have read a ‘Soapbox’ contribution from Judy Tierney, a well-known Tasmanian journalist and spokesperson for the 2009 forest reform group, Our Common Ground. [Reference: Mercury 20 October]
It followed the ‘Talking-Point’ contribution from Julian Amos, a well-known former Tasmanian politician and spokesperson for the Forest Industries. [Reference: Mercury 11 October]
’We need to turn our back on corruption and bribery, inappropriate favours, sloppy forest practices and political deals,’ Judy Tierney writes.
Ms Tierney’s experience in the history of the woodchip harvesting of Tasmania forests going back to early 1980s allows her to speak with some reflection on the just how this juggernaut industry has foundered in 2012.
’We were seduced by the spin at the birth of our woodchip industry. Back in the early 1980s, I was one of the assembled journalists at Forestry Tasmania’s headquarters where the head honcho proudly displayed a sketch of a tree with its limbs and stump surgically severed from the truck that would go to the woodchipper and the truck to the saw-millers. … The specifications for a chip log increasingly refined, demanding no rot, no bark, no burn no bumps. The ‘rubbish’ [wood] was burnt.’
Ms Tierney speaks of the change in global demand – chips from native forests in 1980s and 1990s are no longer acceptable in 2012.
The greedy maw that has swallowed up Tasmania’s forests and converted large tracts of its native forests and farmlands to silviculture plantations is the current legacy of what is referred to in the leader to Ms Tierney’s story –‘…corruption and bribery, inappropriate favours, sloppy forest practices and political deals.’
The premise of Judy’s argument and that of Our Common Ground is a fundamental belief that forestry must change.
The question remains: Is the Industry ready to change?
This latest Forestry Contest - for all its historical argie-bargie and spinning complexity – is again a clash between two polarising visions – Old Way versus New Way, Unsustainable versus Sustainable, Corrupt versus Ethical. Millions of self-justifying words from either side fill books, journals, newspapers, government reports and on-line websites.
As Leonard Cohen sings… Everybody knows!
‘Everybody knows’ the latest negotiation isa power-clash between [1]the annual Wood Supply the industry expects to be honoured under the IGA – 155,000 cubic meters of sawlogs; 265,000 cubic meters of peeler billets and up to 20,000 cubic meters of speciality timbers and [2] the quantum of up to 572,000 hectares of ‘high conservation value’ native forests the ENGOs expect to be protected in permanent conservation reserves.
A simple Contest about land and resource; nature and nurture.
Our Common Ground’s basic premise was that forestry needed to reform itself based on a burgeoning plantation timber estate.
The last few months of stalled negotiations was caused by the need for further modelling of projected wood supply from all forests – plantations and native forests on public land and private land. [That modelling task was again given to Forestry Tasmania.]
In trying to see through the fog of these secret negotiations, Ms Tierney’s and Mr Amos’ opinion pieces are useful. But the final contests remain around striking agreement on [1] a transition from the use of mature native forests toward silviculture for timber products (and possibly pulping wood); [2] how to sustainably use regeneration forests with high quality timber values; and [3] how to transition the current Eucalypt plantation estate from a dominance of pulpwood cultivars on short growing rotations [10-15 years] to timber-grade cultivars or an alternative higher value use for the land these plantations occupy.
Judy Tierney makes the claim Tasmania has ‘about 300,000 ha of healthy softwood plantations on private and state land in Tasmania’. If by ‘soft’ she means – pulping-grade wood she is, of course, correct; if by ‘soft’she means - high value Pinus radiata then she is incorrect.
The reason SA Forestry has a viable forestry sector - at one seventh the plantation size of Tasmania - is precisely because their plantations are pine-softwood not pulp wood; and they process that timber in South Australia through various timber mills producing a range of high value timber products.
Our Common Ground’s pitch had difficulty in gaining traction with Industry. In essence that pitch was the foundation of the ENGO’s proposal to Industry; a proposal that accepted the wood supply timber projections given by the State’s public forest manager, Forestry Tasmania, for a transition from native forests to silviculture; FT’s future projections. Those wood supply projections have now been shown to be undeliverable.
Therefore the proposal on the peace deal table cannot satisfy both sides … and we are told: ‘There is no Plan B’.
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Comments (19)
Lets face it Forests Minister Bryan Green is
drifting aimlessly, his media exposure is vague.
So what the government is in disintergration mode anyway, Ken Jeffreys did the right thing and warned FT staff of what was in mind for them.
I am of the strong opinion TCC tainted Green has no place in government anyway, how could anyone respect such a clown who cannot be trusted to understand right from wrong.
I best wishs in the future for Mr Jeffreys.
Perhaps Mr Jeffreys in a parting shot could politely tell us what was expected to happen to Ta Ann now that suitable Wood Supply from regrowth native forest peeler billet wood is not available at the current level of 265,000M3 pa / the West Report!
There is talk that things are not what they seem with Ta Ann’s viability* here in Tasmania.
Something is happening between the Sarawaki government and the operation in Tasmania! other than resource issues!
FT’s recent purchase of 40,000M3 of Gunns sawlog along with Neville Smith products investment in sawmilling and wood chipping at Bell Bay clears the path for ongoing use of the Southwood site in the event that Ta Ann either suspends/ reduces operations until its market place for global laminate products improves.
I am sure that we have not heard the last of the Green activist interference that was the the first nail in the coffin for the local operation now that global buyers require a FSC product! While the current product is eco friendly it may not comply with the brain washed global market in Europe!
I look foward to hearing from the two Bobs now in charge of FT media watch, Bob Gordon and Bob Annells who will have the task of figuring out a way foward to secure forestry jobs in the Huon and some in Smithton too.
*Ed: http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php/article/a-dog-the-financial-truth-about-ta-ann-tasmania
I admire Ken for his contribution, and the stand he has taken. I also admire Miles Hampton for the stand he took, and remind all of the enormity of his sacrifice. ( I realize that is lost on some of the grizzlers here.)
I believe Bryan Green is to some extent, deep in his heart, on the side of the industry, but most in the industry believe he has not stood up enough for it. That is not helped by the make-up of the cabinet, and the gutlessness of the government in general, but we could do without the treachery of some individuals. McKim should have been sacked for threatening to take his own anti-forestry delegation overseas, and we have a good idea who it was among the Labor members that rolled Bryan Green in Cabinet on the restructure of FT. Boy, are they in for a surprise when they ask for help to get re-elected!
Some of the True Believers are saying that this parliamentary party is trashing the Labor brand, and are working against the future electability of a Labor majority government, and that coalition with the Greens is driving the party down. They are saying such an arrangement should never be entered into again, and the existing arrangement should be torn up. I am with them on that!
We are in the final week available to the negotiations and the signatories before the process is abandoned. I suspect the modelling of the latest minor concessions by the ENGO’s will still result in a deal proposal that will be impossible for the industry side to accept. If it is starvation rations for timber supply coupled with unreliable peace arrangements, I will be looking for the opportunity to tell them how far they can shove it.
I seem to recall one occasion when Mr Bailey had the US Consul from Melbourne on his short lived show. I near fell off my chair when Mr Bailey suggested that should be a regular weekly chat. I didn’t bother ringing their ABC as they refute my accusation of ‘dumbing down’ via bias. If the ABC were to inflict the HR specialist onto listeners, I suspect I would have to turn their ABC OFF in the afternoons as I find I often have to do for the mornings. Mr Jeffreys would surely find a spot for his kit and caboodle at an interstate forestry outfit if he sees that as his forte. It was an infamous leak, too clever to be considered strategy.
Despite the al Assad flavour of the manoeuvre, it would give us a chance to ring Ken and ask him just what the story is on the 22,000ha of State Forest plantation that was reported by the ABC on 1 Oct as being “tied up” and “in limbo” from Gunns collapse.
We are talking big, and apparently squandered, money here.
John Hayward
Further to David Obendorf’s observations, Forestry Tasmania’s most recent Annual Report shows that there are 314,000 hectares of plantations on all land tenures across Tasmania comprising 237,000 hectares hardwood and 77,000 hectares softwood.
Refer Table 2.4 on page 5:
http://www.forestrytas.com.au/uploads/File/pdf/pdf2011/appendix2_data_tables_2011.pdf
The majority of the hardwood plantations are unmanaged or poorly managed e.nitens which are only fit for pulpwood but which the ENGOs were hoodwinked into believing would be suitable for peeler billets (Ta Ann) and sawlogs.
These figures compare with the State of the Environment Report 2009 which shows that as at 31 Dec 2005 there were 230,400 hectares of plantations in Tasmania comprising 158,900 hectares hardwood and 71,500 hectares softwood.
There has been a rapid increase in the area of hardwood plantations established over recent years but the vast majority of these plantations were converted from native forest after 1994 and should therefore be precluded from FSC certification, which is one of the reasons the industry rejected the globally recognised FSC and designed its own Australian Forestry Standard.
The fact these plantations have also been soundly rejected for use by Ta Ann and sawmillers is a damning indictment on the entire Tasmania forestry industry which has squandered tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers funds on research, development and establishment of a resource that was deceitfully intended for Gunns proposed pulp mill.
The SOE report shows the area of plantations in five-year age classes as follows:
Age Class Hardwood (ha) Softwood (ha)
Pre-1971 300 1,800
1971-75 400 2,300
1976-80 700 5,400
1981-85 1,900 9,700
1986-90 10,000 9,600
1991-95 28,200 10,200
1996-00 50,900 17,300
2001-05 66,500 15,200
Total 158,900 71,500
http://soer.justice.tas.gov.au/2009/indicator/4/index.php
(3) Oh George, your so cute if only we could plaster cast you and plant you in the garden.
Still waiting for your insider delivered view to Labor George. Did it get any traction? Seems your hinging your door on the failures. The ones who walked with the money. Doesn’t it bother you they ran with the money and left you high and dry?
Seems like you still want to push FT’s failures … very bright of you! You’ve been the best in highlighting FT’s fatal flaws … who/whatever you push, is best left for the scrap/underhanded deceit heap.
Look forward to hearing who you’re going to champion next … the next to fall!! Oh god don’t tell me you support bearded Bob … he’s pigeon toed isn’t he?
David Obendorf. Interesting claim by Judy Tierney.
Of the 300,000ha of softwood plantation estate, about 46,000ha of it on State Forest managed by FT with an emphasis on providing high value pruned wood for sawlogs.
FT traded off their best little earner in 1999 to global timber trader GMO Resources(Taswood) for around $46M at the time under JV arrangements.
The two Auspine mills at Scottsdale were flat out cutting large quantities of local softwood both pruned and unpruned, the rough stuff when to Korea as K logs, I cant remember the other outlets and the specs!
Norske Skog at Boyer later reverted from hardwood to softwood, a good move away from native forest but the latest is that NS want a handout from the government of $26 to change over from producing newsprint to gloss paper otherwise they will consididate to one mill in New Zealand.
In Jan 2012 New Forests a Sydney based firm on behalf of AAZFF paid $156M for 46,000 ha of the softwood JV, I cannot recall how much FT ended up with but FT had to retire its overall operating debt.
At least forestry rights expire in 2069
David I think what you are saying is the other 254,000ha of softwood plantation has not been managed to a high vale product standard as it was probably seen as a pulp crop.
I cannot substantiate your claim but it most definitely needs evaluating for its end product value and worth to existing industry!
If some of the remaining softwood estate has not been managed for a better quality product then maybe that is another nail in the coffin on top of the hardwood plantation estate.
Either the Chinese build a pulp mill or unwanted plantation estate is chipped and exported as both would be worthy of FSC rating.
Hello George,Sorry to hear of your upset at the departure of Miles Hampton from the board of F/T, (personal friend was he,) actually we are to believe the reason for this man’s departure is to be related to the urgent reduction of State government gifting to this particular under-performing and increasingly controversial State GBE?
However there is much betwixt what the eye wont see and the ear wont hear.
There has in the past been an enormous amount of non-accountable internal financial largess that must be bound to tickle the mind of the soon to be requested full internal auditing minds, also we await the outcome to the mystery of the cashless provision for employee superannuation which is yet to be investigated, the cash will have to be located somewhere about for this minor oversight, that is if our Auditor General has his sometimes blinded eye on the passing parade of Forestry Tasmanians?
I would suspect that Ta Ann Veneer Mills may try recruiting a few new-old dinosaurs unless the whole cosmetically pure Ta Ann log supply contretemps collapses in upon itself.
Furthermore George, it may be time to look for new sources of product supply in view of the imminent departure of even more of Forestry Tasmania’s major driving force of eye and ear impeded gentlemen of opportunity?
Some say the precipitated collapse of the Tasmanian economy was initiated by a certain ex treasurer, (sorry if he was another personal friend George,) who failed to keep the people of this State informed to his treasurer-ship’s precursive predilection to dipping and diving into the State’s Retirement Benefits Fund to support the false image of our State’s financial prosperity, (during the final stages of the acrobatically-skilled treasuring expertisements.)
As for your friend Bryan, he appears to have anointed himself, (does that mean splashed with some sort of oozing lubricant?) as the next State Premier or even Labor Opposition Leader, (subject to the next State elections,) thus he may have opportune determined it was time to wash his still oily hands clean from his past faithful allegiances in order to present yet another new-born image of his serial self?
George have you ever considered joining the advisory team of Bryan Green Deputy Premier during the transitional movement of this shining Tasmanian star?
I do not accept Judy Tierney as a credible commentator on the forest and timber industries. I believe that again in this instance she has had a whole lot of information sent her way by people of dubious backgrounds, and she is just a willing mouthpiece on a mission. Sad, really.
In doing this she has brought no credit on her former employee, the ABC. Not that they have much to crow about, their recent blunders in reporting on the timber industry would have been hilarious if not so bloody unhelpful. One was a real howler - they cobbled together a couple of speakers to comment on the fall of Gunns into the hands of the receivers the day after it happened. In line with their stringent adherence to the concept of balance they chose Geoffrey Cousins to speak as a conservation activist (!) and teamed him up with a representative of industry. Who did they choose? None other than the Manager of a woodchip mill, one Alec Marr!!!!! Seriously!!! This was aired on national breakfast radio by Radio National’s AM program… No doubt it was organised by the local News & Current Affairs Director…. Andrew, how secure is your position??? I would like to see you share the experience of so many in the timber industry, but unfortunately you would take an undeserved redundancy with you, funded by the taxpayer…
According to PB - thank you - post-1994 plantations developed of cleared native forest would not qualify as FSC certified timber.
The usefulness of the longer rotation plantation grown-logs for veneers - this transition wood supply for Ta Ann looks problematic as well. The really valued timber is in the HCV contested forests: mature mixed forests and >80 year old post-wildfire regeneration forest.
The thousands of tonnes of timber previously destined to be export pulp wood is now being left in these logged coupes to be incendiary fuel in a post-harvest burn off.
The way forestry is done will have to change but we hear SFA from the bargainers at the dealing table; this Friday is apparently another ‘D’-Day.
Robin Halton highlights a similar reality for the Tasmanian plantation estate.
The alternative to bulding a pulp mill in Tasmania to process these plantation pulp trees or exporting their woodchip at a considerable loss to investors and growers would be to do what’s happening in parts of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia - i.e. grow something else on an annual cash crop cycle.
The MIS plantation are being bull-dozed into wind-rows and burnt in these mainland states because some were poorly grown; sowen in the drought years; have no market; are deemed a potential fire hazard; poorly unmanaged and took up land that had value for growing or feeing something else.
Perhaps the ENGOs haven’t woken up yet to this reality.
With Bob Gordon reappointed on another 5-year contract; the good ship FT steams ashead after casting their media advisor adrift.
Thank you for your contribution, Claire. I am sure I will give it the consideration it deserves.
Meanwhile, you are welcome to continue your partonage of the political wasters of your choice, although they are not going so well in other places at the moment…..
Cheers, George
RE Obendorf’s “The reason SA Forestry has a viable forestry sector - at one seventh the plantation size of Tasmania…”
Hmmmmm. (click click)
http://adl.brs.gov.au/data/warehouse/pe_abares20110831.01/AustPlantationsStats_2011.pdf
http://www.forestry.sa.gov.au/
if you mean Forestry SA’s estate only, then 84000ha/309000ha ne 1/7.
But then you refer to the SA forestry sector of which FSA is one player, thus 188000ha/309000ha also ne 1/7. In neither case is the premise valid.
Hello hugoagogo,valid premise statements eh?
Now there is something that has popped up from time to time in our past, a valid premised statement, hmm, yes, how about this one, ‘there will be no more Old Growth Forest cleared land converted into single species plantations says Hans Drielsma, that was around 2008 was it not hugoagogo?
Our wood-supply products are sourced from our proven sustainable forests. Hmmm, might be a valid premise, on the other hand it may be another Ken Jeffries executive directored media and public relations CEOd furphy, might it not?
Aint that one a pisser hugo, especially now that we are advised that your mates at Forestry Tasmania have been going flat-knacker “to clear-fell our HCV Forests to supply some falsely termed eco-friendly timber, is this bullscat terminology a valid premise then?
Then we hear that there aint enough standing Native Forests on our little island to feed the World’s timber veneer markets by the timber gianted silver tongues of Sarawak, Mr Sahid Tahib and his small family of about 300 of ‘em?
I am reminded of a song from many years ago titled; climb down, climb down, from your ivory tower.
Do you remember this fine song of yester-year me old cobber?
Seems a few of the upper echelon are now leaping from on high of their Forestry Tasmania ivory tower, right all the way down to ground zero, down into the real world, why not come and join us hugogogo, now there’s a valid premise?
See you soon old cobber, eh, oh, what was that, “I said why not bring Greeny with you, the giggler is always good for something to laugh at?”
Just as well that tas forestry treated the tasmanian forests as a non-sustainable forest. ( look at what they do - not what their silky spinners say)
At least they got a few bob for it when it was cut which looks a lot higher than they will get for it now or in the next decade or so.
Expect costs of exploiting/cutting the resource are larger than selling prices now.
Hugoago [comment #13] thanks for the contribution - I was actually quoting what Judy Tierney had used in her original 20 October Mercury article that cited the relative size of plantation estate in SA and Tasmania.
#16 you based a key plank of your argument on something in the Mockery?
Cheers
#6 PB Thanks for the correction on Tas. softwood/ hardwood plantation estate figures.
I surprised myself that did not read closer into Judy Tierney poor reporting in the first instance!
I believe that all of the gloom and doom that you mention about the future use for the hardwood plantation ventures represents massive investment in a forest product that has failed by all accounts as having a defined future use of any kind now that the Pulp Mill is off the radar!
#3 By the way George just to let you know that I basically agree with you that Ken Jeffreys
made a reasonable contribution to forestry during his time with FT media watch.
I must admit that perhaps I have underestimated Bob Gordon as I have never seen him crack a smile or talk with any degree of authority as CEO of FT either with the media or in public?
I await him to strike out firmly and defend the organisation’s role within in the public arena.
Unlike Evan Rolley who could lay it on really well, he was entertaining to watch, and pretty damn defensive when pinned down by the media too!
Miles Hampton created enormous damage in the public’s eyes with the creation of the Three Water Authorities, I have never heard him once making any assertive commments on forestry as a Board Member?
As for Bryan Green he is not a good negioiator as a Forest’s Minister on difficult issues like forestry and really seems to be lost in the scheme of things, I think that he is sick and tired of the whole affair well for that matter, who isnt by now!
FIAT with Terry Edwards and Glenn Britton seem to have done a pretty good job so far in restoring some faith in forestry to avoid a massive bust up of FT and more job losses than necessary!
I hope that I have not spoken too soon as Tony Burke needs to make his announcement and then I suppose its back to Legislative Council for the final fling?