Welcome to my Blog, the diary of a conflicted Labor voter.
It is Tuesday, May 24 and the second day of the third week of
the 2016 Australian federal election campaign, and I am taking what is for me a
significant step, and that is to publish some comments and reasons as to why I
am feeling such a conflicted ALP member, and to try and influence the debate,
and most of all, to try and extract some solid commitments that can't easily be
denied or transgressed after the election result.
I have grave fears about what would happen, especially to my
industry, the timber industry, if there were to be a hung parliament, or a
government where Labor is effectively in minority, and can only govern at the
behest of the Greens.
This has happened before, in fact it is what happened in the round
of elections in 2010.
In March of 2010 the Tasmanian state election returned a hung
parliament, as the 25-member House of Assembly returned 10 Liberal, 10 Labor
and 5 Greens. After weeks of stalemate, the incumbent Labor Premier David
Bartlett formed a government with an arrangement with the Greens, which
included two Greens members serving in government as cabinet ministers.
A few months later the federal government under Labor Prime
Minister Julia Gillard lost majority in its own right, and only continued with
the support of Independents and new Greens member Adam Bandt. It was a
triple-whammy, as the Greens also won the balance of power in the Senate. This
led to the Greens pursuing their own agenda, and causing Labor to not only
abandon some of the policies they took into the elections, but to completely
reverse them! Nowhere was this more stark than in the timber industry, and the
area I am most closely associated.
Labor has previously held all five seats in the House of Representatives,
but by the wipe-out of 2013 had lost all but one, and at the state level the
previously popular and successful Labor team lost government in 2014 in the
biggest landslide in its history. Much of this was caused by the impact and
fall-out from the 2010 results and their consequences. There are important
lessons from the period 2010 -2013, and they should not be forgotten, but there
is also a lot of detail about exactly what did happen during that period that
has not come out, and it would be a significant scandal if it did.
Neither of the major parties seem to want to discuss the timber
industry, or other resource-based industries to what I feel is any level of
adequacy. That is a shame. Labor seems to have become an urban party, and in
some areas it is in a tight battle to hold seats against the Greens, and some
are high profile seats. What about workers in rural areas, and in
resource-based industries? The Liberals do have some marginal seats in areas
where the timber industry is significant, but what is Labor doing to try and
make up the difference to win them?
The Liberals have been in government long enough to own the
situation, even if some of it wasn't of their making. We have seen World
Heritage Area extension used inappropriately in Tasmania as a weapon against
the timber industry, but the current state government did compile a Draft
Management Plan in accordance with the policies it took to the 2014 state
election. This prompted green groups to bring about a visit by a Reactive
Monitoring Mission from the World Heritage Centre in November 2015, and a
subsequent report in March 2016. The response by Liberal state and federal
environment ministers has been disappointing to say the least, and causes us to
wonder if there hasn't been some higher level dealing along the lines of: "if
we cave in on the Tasmanian forests, will you go a bit easier on us over the
Great Barrier Reef?" Well! If that is what happened, it is no way to treat
a major resource-based industry in Tasmania.
Meanwhile, combined environment groups have been flexing their
muscles, claiming to represent 1.5 million members, and about $80 million
between them collected annually in subscriptions and donations. How can any
industry defend itself against that?
So, what do I want to hear? I want to hear some rock-solid commitments
by both Labor and the Liberals on support for the timber industry, both for
regenerated native forests and plantations, both in the public forest sector
and the freehold sector, and I certainly want to hear support for the Special
Timbers sector in Tasmania's native forests. I want to hear clear opposition to
that stupid Great Forest National Park nonsense in Victoria. Rather, I want to
see support for the forests being managed carefully and properly for multiple
use, which includes conservation, recreation, bio-diversity and resource access
and use for income generation.
An issue I am keen to publicise is just how dishonest, deceitful,
malicious and destructive the Greens and their supporters in the ENGO's
(environmental non-government organisations) can be, especially The Wilderness
Society. The recent history of this needs to be brought out. Unfortunately
it is not a new development. Some of the
same individuals have been engaging in this for decades. The more recent
behaviour of some past Greens leaders has been damaging and disgraceful.
A little about me: I am a furniture designer and
manufacturer in southern Tasmania, using Tasmania's unique Special Timbers. I
have been self-employed as such since 1982. I have been a Labor voter since
1974, and an active party member since 1996, although after the Tasmanian
Forest Agreement debacle and the corrupt and dishonest Tasmanian Wilderness
World Heritage Area extension of 2013, I could not bring myself to vote Labor
in the state election of 2014. I could not stomach the bullshit that was on
offer. On that occasion I voted Liberal for the first and only time in my
life.
Two weeks after that election, party memberships came up for
renewal, and I mulled over what to do. I decided to renew, and put my efforts
into correcting what I saw was the policy mistakes in timber industry policy,
and I have to say I am pleased with the way the state branch has responded. I
am much less certain now about where the federal party is at, and what it might
do if Labor and the Greens have more seats than the LNP if counted together. It
is these questions to which I am seeking public commitments by the parties
before election day. You can imagine how conflicted I felt when a senior timber
industry figure said this to me recently: "The best thing you could
do to help the timber industry is to ensure Labor does not get elected
federally." So how do I vote? I really want to see a Labor government, one that sticks up
for workers, one that will preserve Medicare, invest properly in education, and
end the torture of indefinite and unspecified detention of asylum seekers, but
does it have to be at the fate of certain and further destruction of my
industry? My own vote might not mean much, but I am keen to raise the debate as
widely as possible.... Please help this along by tagging and sharing.
Coming up: Deceit, dishonesty, duplicity,
bullying, and significant and undeclared conflict of interest in the process
that led to the Tasmanian Forest Agreement and the 2013 extension to the
Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area by Minor Boundary Modification;
perverse environmental outcomes from misguided Green policies; and how an
enlightened, well-managed timber industry can help achieve objectives in a
carbon-conscious future.
In the meantime, check out a couple of links:
Send me stuff...! Message me at this page, Facebook, email, or Twitter... content gets vetted...
ReplyDeleteHi George, you know and have heard my plight as a tree fern hwrvester. I had my business destroyed and my assets liquidated. I for this I received nothing in compensation, not even 10g from the last round. I have not even been accepted as a forest contractor by the governments application criteria, when clearly I was and clearly derived my whole income from a native forest resource while holding an Australian Business Number. No one has cared about this and due too scheduling this public resource is continuing to be destroyed before harvesting can take place. Both the major parties have lied to me directly and both parties have taken know responsibility for my loss of income and debt.I am guttered. But hey who cares,... Not harriss, not gutwein and not hodgeman ... And when Labor green was in power no one gave a rats, all they were interested in at the time was spending the 240mill from Julia on new business ideas and sweeping people such as myself under the carpet.
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