OUT OF THE SHADOWS

Out of the shadowy depths of the ‘Stop the Mill’ campaign there is an emerging threat to the pulp mill’s orderly progress. Once again, up pop these naysayers who are intent on stopping the mill’s progress and this time trying to stop the pipeline that is vital to everything crossing their land. How Un-Tasmanian can you get?

Apparently Paul Lennon has allowed things to proceed in such a way as the pulp mill is no longer a Project of State Significance, which in turn means that access across private land cannot be guaranteed. Not good enough Paul!

The logging industry is very concerned about this and many of its members are beginning to think that Paul has let them down and very badly. He should have seen this coming and since he hasn’t he should move immediately to fix the problem.

Private landowners just cannot be allowed to stand in the way of this pulp mill or the progress it represents. Certainly there will be ways in which the pipeline will be able to bypass these naysaying idiots but the cost will be enormous. That is unless Paul Lennon delivers the laws he needs to in order to recover his credibility.

We are disappointed in you Paul … very disappointed!

OUR FUTURE IS HANGING BY A THREAD

When a bunch of photographers go out into our forests the logging industry wonders just what it is they look at. When they produce books, photo essays, (whatever they are) exhibitions ect. talking about sentiment and emotion, well you really have to wonder.

This notion that our forest are “wild places’ is unadulterated nonsense. These forests are workplaces and they are there to provide the logging industry with income for the benefit of Tasmania. Loggers are not trained to make things out of timber, they are there to get it for those who are. Forests only become “wild” when these misinformed naysayers go into them and sit on platforms up trees and so on.

The very idea that forests are there for any other purpose than for the benefit of a community’s economy and that is undeniable. If these people manage to curtail the logging industries activities everyone will pay. It is not only our future that is hanging by a thread, the rest of Tasmania’s economy hangs right there with it.

AND, as for this so-called “Global Warming”, doesn’t anyone realise that the logging industry is out there doing its bit in cleaning up in Tasmania. All the trees we take will be replaced with carbon dioxide sucking trees if this thing is real anyway.

It’s definitely time to get real Tasmania. Its also time that people came down to earth and realised that angels up trees, or books about them, must not deter the logging industry from keeping on with its work.

DICK THE GOLDEN BOY!

We are doing a series of ‘In the Frame’ pieces here and Dick Adams is the next in line. Dick is out and about doorknocking and the logging industry needs to lend him all the support it can muster.

Dick Adams is one of Tasmania's most enthusiastic and active supporters of the logging industry. Before the 2004 federal election Dick Adams said he would be demanding either a change of policy or a change of leadership because of Mark Latham's proposal to phase out old growth logging in Tasmania. He complained that Latham's $800 million dollar forest package was selling out Tasmania on behalf of "a few city dwellers". Too right!

Adams has accused Ben Quin of being weak because he quit the Liberal party because he just could not hold the party line on the pulp mill. Politician must hold the line. Dick Adams knows that the interests of political parties and their financial supporters come before all else in election campaigning.

Dick marched with loggers at the Pro-pulp mill rally in Launceston in July 2007 and has been working very hard behind the scenes to secure the Gunns' pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. His strategists have made a conscious decision to put some space between him and Gunns as they are aware of all those negative naysayers out there who want his scalp.

However the pulp mill and everything associated with it are but one of the local community concerns, Dick Adams has chosen to ‘disengage’ with wrong thinking electors and is instead working behind the scenes to secure the mill's approval.

Clearly Dick Adams needs to be rather silent on the pulp mill in his election campaigning. Misinformed electors in Lyons opposed to the pulp mill must not be allowed to use this opportunity to attack Dick. He is a big man doing a big job. It is up to the logging industry, and all those who depend upon it, to get out there and support Dick if he cannot do it himself.

Phone Dick Adams' northern campaign office and find out when he is going to be in your area and then raise awareness in your local area in any way you can about his enthusiastic support of the pulp mill. Email and calls to the ABC’s radio programs and raise awareness as well and take these naysayers on.

This is how this election will be won or lost for the logging industry. There is only a few weeks to go before the election and the logging industry needs all the help it can get from our parliamentary representatives. And, Dick Adams is a gilt edged industry supporter and all good loggers must stand behind him.

A BLACK DAY

October 31 will be known BLACK WEDNESDAY in the logging industry for a long time to come. To think that Ivan Dean could possibly be voted out of office as Launceston’s Mayor is a disgraceful situation. He has been a champion for our jobs and clearly Launceston’s voters have totally misread the situation.

The thought of Ivan Dean spending time with his grandchild when he could have been out there fighting for the logging industry’s future, and to save jobs in the industry, well it is very disappointing and it is an enormous loss. Ivan himself does not blame “the pulp mill” for his demise and all we can do is to hope that it wasn’t.

Ivan Dean has come out and said (paraphrased) the system is all wrong when mayors only have a two year tenure. He is right, when you get someone in such a position, and someone like Ald. Dean who has worked so hard for the pulp mill ... and other right minded issues. It is so wrong to allow people like Ivan Dean to be removed by a fickle, and wrong thinking, electorate. He is so right and it is so, so wrong that he has no longer there.

In the meantime, the industry has a lot of work to do in winning more subsidies to help many workers leave the logging industry as the resource becomes more plantation based ... and Tasmania is increasingly cleaned up. Thankfully Ivan Dean will still be a member of the Legislative Council and Launceston’s Council. So he will be able to keep on fighting for more subsidies and for loggers to continue to have access to Tasmania's resources.

Nonetheless, none of this makes this day any the less BLACK. In fact it is a BLACK RIBBON DAY and a sorry day for Tasmania.

A BEAUTIFUL SKY?

Occasionally you can look up in Tasmania and see the vapour trail of a north bound jet. It would be reassuring to know that there was a good number of blowin naysayers on board and travelling on one way tickets.

The logging industry needs for them to be there so that it can get on with cleaning up Tasmania’s forests and making them more productive. Without question Tasmania is here for Tasmanians and the industry knows that we have their support.

We can only hope for a future where it is recognised that the logging industry actually holds Tasmania’s future in its hands. Those who cannot see this, and all the evidence that supports all this, need to be elsewhere so that the industry can work efficiently and deliver on the Tasmanian promise.

The logging industry is open for business and always ready to deliver. It has one thing to say to blowin naysayers, please buy a one way ticket and head north. Enough already!

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

The logging industry awaits the day when this kind of pathetic photographic propaganda is stopped. Burnt wilderness, devastation and God only knows what. It has to be stomped on, and from a great hight, before it all gets out of hand.

Usually these pictures are taken in some very remote place and of a very small section of a harvested area after a burn off. The reality is quite different.

These pictures are feeble attempts at truth by assertion. Anyone who is seriously in touch with what’s actually going on in Tasmania’s forests knows that all this humbug is sheer embellishment.

They would also know that when Tasmania gets its promised pulp mill all the left over forest will be fed into a power station next to it. All wastage will be avoided!

That will also save a lot of water stored in Tasmania's dams and also, it will make much more energy available to be fed into the national energy grid. And what is more to the point, it will be clean and carbon neutral, and it goes on from there. Isn’t that the sort of thing these tin pot picture takers are looking for?

It’s fascinating isn’t it that the so called “autumn atomic clouds” will not be there anymore. And Tasmanians will have access to cheaper electricity too. This will be a new way for the logging industry to make a difference and one that will touch every Tasmanian.

If the logging industry didn’t clean up after itself all hell would break loose. The industry has simply found a more productive way forward and enough is enough. The industry is simply committed to a tidier Tasmania and creating more jobs in the process.

When will all this nonsense end?

MELONS THE LOT OF THEM

It’s all getting a bit too much. All these naysayers are starting to get underfoot. The logging industry is simply trying to do its best to clean up Tasmania and they just keep on popping out of the woodwork.

If you drop one you will soon discover that they are pink in the middle – or ‘pinko’ communists for those born after the Cold War ended. These melons just have no place in today’s Tasmania.

Now we understand that the Premier has offered his services to (paraphrased) ride shotgun on the bulldozer that scrapes the Greenies out of the way as work begins on the pulp mill. That would make the news. But the logging industry expects that it can count on an expremier, a couple of legal advisors, a banker or two and others to cover him from behind.

Its all working out OK really and its good to know that the logging industry has won the support that it has. It is time to move on!