LNP win in Tasmania

[Ducatiboy stu]

Hippies.

Takes drugs from strangers at parties...wont drink fluridated water

 

[Airgead]

The tas timber industry thing -

Let's be brutally honest. That industry has been an economic basket case for decades. Its essentially an export woodchip industry (85% of tas timber is chipped for export) and 15% is "speciality timber". Woodchips are simple not viable as an export product the way they were harvested any more. The dollar is too high and even without that they were priced out of the market 20 years ago by plantation products from asia. Plantation timber also has straighter, longer fibres due to the growing conditions which makes for better chips. The reality is that no one wants Tasmanian woodchips any more. That's even without taking into account the recent (last 10-15 years) move by consumers and large paper producers (particularly in Japan) towards certified sustainable timber products. No one wants tasmanian woodchips.

The woodchip industry survived for decades on government subsidies and collapsed when the money spout was turned off. Tasmania is better off without that industry.

The 15% of the industry that is speciality timber. that can stay. That's a nett economic benefit and can give the state some great value add industries (like making stuff out of the timber... other than woodchips that is). Its a high value product and we will always need quality timber. Felling for speciality timber is also more selective (big old straight trees only thanks) whereas woodchipping tends to be clear felled.

We should expand the high value timber part of the industry (making sure its sustainable) and shut down the woodchip side of things.

I may be a lefty/hippy/.greenie but I know what my house is made from (I should do... i built the frickin thing with my own two hands) and I'm also a woodworker so I know thew beauty and value of good timber. I have a bunch of beautiful WA jarrah in the garage at the moment being slowly turned into a bed. And a stack of bluegum that will be a new entertainment unit to match the coffee table I built last year.

I have no problem with a well managed high quality timber industry. I'm even looking at getting into timber growing as a sideline - grow high quality timber for the craft woodworking market. Its not timber workers I have a problem with. Its dinosaur industries being propped up with massive cash handouts.

Cheers
Dave

 

[dago001]

As a born and bred 2 headed Tasmanian, I appreciate all of your comments regarding the Tasmanian economy, the timber industry the Liberal party and Tasmanian politics. May I now ask you to look at your own backyard for a while and kindly f*ck off.
Take note of what TasChris said in his post, as he is pretty spot on the mark with his comments.
I can assure you all, that the majority of Tasmanians do not want to see new forests opened up for timber industry, but on the same hand, why lock up an area that has been previously logged. We all support sustainable forest practices, and yes, some past practices may not have been the best. But times change and the majority of timber harvested in Tassie is plantation timber.
Similarly, the mining industry has changed significantly over the last 20 years. The propaganda that has been put forward by various green groups is generally not worthy of the press that it receives. Like TasChris, I will be straight up here and say that I am involved with the downstream processing of mining.
As far as the Tarkine is concerned, generally, we dont accept that there is such thing as the Tarkine.
Yes Tasmania is not in a good place at the moment, but generally, we voted not only fpr change, but to get away from a minority government, and to get the greens out of government.
The best part of this thread has been the enlightening talk of cooking Roo meat.
Remember, not everything you read in the Newspaper and on the net is actually true.
You decide what you want to believe.
LB

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

WTF...are you saying stuff in the internet isnt true....damn it....back to a papyrus based text translated from 10 or 11 old stone tablets that some beardedd bloke dragged off an old wooden boat

 

[TasChris]

The tas timber industry thing -

Let's be brutally honest. That industry has been an economic basket case for decades. Its essentially an export woodchip industry (85% of tas timber is chipped for export) and 15% is "speciality timber". Woodchips are simple not viable as an export product the way they were harvested any more. The dollar is too high and even without that they were priced out of the market 20 years ago by plantation products from asia. Plantation timber also has straighter, longer fibres due to the growing conditions which makes for better chips. The reality is that no one wants Tasmanian woodchips any more. That's even without taking into account the recent (last 10-15 years) move by consumers and large paper producers (particularly in Japan) towards certified sustainable timber products. No one wants tasmanian woodchips.

The woodchip industry survived for decades on government subsidies and collapsed when the money spout was turned off. Tasmania is better off without that industry.

The 15% of the industry that is speciality timber. that can stay. That's a nett economic benefit and can give the state some great value add industries (like making stuff out of the timber... other than woodchips that is). Its a high value product and we will always need quality timber. Felling for speciality timber is also more selective (big old straight trees only thanks) whereas woodchipping tends to be clear felled.

We should expand the high value timber part of the industry (making sure its sustainable) and shut down the woodchip side of things.

I may be a lefty/hippy/.greenie but I know what my house is made from (I should do... i built the frickin thing with my own two hands) and I'm also a woodworker so I know thew beauty and value of good timber. I have a bunch of beautiful WA jarrah in the garage at the moment being slowly turned into a bed. And a stack of bluegum that will be a new entertainment unit to match the coffee table I built last year.

I have no problem with a well managed high quality timber industry. I'm even looking at getting into timber growing as a sideline - grow high quality timber for the craft woodworking market. Its not timber workers I have a problem with. Its dinosaur industries being propped up with massive cash handouts.

Cheers
Dave

comments in red!!
The tas timber industry thing -

Let's be brutally honest. That industry has been an economic basket case for decades. Rubbish, the Tasmanian timber industry was generating turnover of in excess of $1.2 billion dollars until it was undermined by State and Federal Labor as pay off for their unholy alliance with the Greens. Green ENGO’s such as Markets for change etc have been attacking the timber industry by blackmailing their customers. These are the reasons that the industry is in decline
Its essentially an export woodchip industry (85% of tas timber is chipped for export) and 15% is "speciality timber". Wrong wrong wrong. Native forest clearfall generates 40-60% chip material. Most of the harvesting, (whether measured by tonnes or by hectares) is selective logging of one type or another and produces sawlog, peeler feed, special species timbers etc etc
Woodchips are simple not viable as an export product the way they were harvested any more. Yes they are, Australia has not decreased the amount of wood chip exported even with the decline/sabotage of the Tas industry. Vic, SA, WA and Qld took up the shortfall.
The dollar is too high Yes and even without that they were priced out of the market 20 years ago by plantation products from asia. Asian plantations are cheaper as the freight is considerably less as they are on the door step of Japan, China and India however they have cut their plantations faster than they have replanted so the market now has to look further afield such as Tas again. The plantations of asia are normally planted on poor soils so that subsequent rotations will not perform as well.
Plantation timber also has straighter, longer fibres due to the growing conditions which makes for better chips Rubbish I have no idea where you got this pearl from. Native forest chip requires more bleaching to get to white than plantation based chip however it produced more fibre /tonne of chip. Most customers blend native and plantation chip together.
The reality is that no one wants Tasmanian woodchips any more. Yes they do, Tas exports are climbing back to the levels pre Gunns demise.
The major issue is that the evil Graeme Wood ( founder of Wotif not the former West Australian batsman and run out king ) and Jan Cameron (former owner of Katmandu) purchase a chip mill on the east coast and then closed it down despite promising to reopen it. This has resulted in the loss of an important piece of Tasmanian infrastructure. I hope Jan Cameron goes broke and Graeme Wood soon follows
That's even without taking into account the recent (last 10-15 years) move by consumers and large paper producers (particularly in Japan) towards certified sustainable timber products. Almost all of Tasmanian chip is certified under AFS and PEFC.
No one wants tasmanian woodchips. Yes they do!!

The woodchip industry survived for decades on government subsidies and collapsed when the money spout was turned off. Tasmania is better off without that industry.The Tasmanian industry has had 4 major reviews in the last 30 odd years, the Helsham Inquiry, the RFA, the CFA and the IGA. Each time area has been locked up until more than 50% of the states publicly owned forests are in reserves. Each time area has been locked away it means that what is left will be logged more intensively and is less financial viable to due economies of scale etc. Most of the grant from gov came as compensation for the lost area and in the belief that it is better to log locally than import timbers from third world countries. Ironically Labor/Green tried to turn Tas into a third world country.

The 15% of the industry that is speciality timber. that can stay. That's a nett economic benefit and can give the state some great value add industries (like making stuff out of the timber... other than woodchips that is). Its a high value product and we will always need quality timber. Felling for speciality timber is also more selective (big old straight trees only thanks) whereas woodchipping tends to be clear felled. Many forest types such as Wet Sclerophyll forest cannot be selectively logged due to safety, regeneration issues and cost. Clearfall burn and sow is the best method to achieve full regeneration as it is mimicking natural wildfire events in the wet forest of SW and NW Tasmania. Industry is unlikely to build roads at $50,000/km to log one tree here one tree there..The market would not pay the harvest price. Harvesting is sawlog driven in Tas with the residue or material below sawlog grade going to chip. There is no logic to chipping high value sawlogs
We should expand the high value timber part of the industry (making sure its sustainable) and shut down the woodchip side of things. There are better things to do with the forest residue than wood chips, such things as bio fuels were sabotaged under labor , nano cellulose, laminated timbers, orientate strand technology etc etc, however there need to be confidence in the industry before companies will invest. Hopefully we will have that with a progressive Liberal Government

I may be a lefty/hippy/.greenie but I know what my house is made from (I should do... i built the frickin thing with my own two hands) and I'm also a woodworker so I know thew beauty and value of good timber. I have a bunch of beautiful WA jarrah in the garage at the moment being slowly turned into a bed. And a stack of bluegum that will be a new entertainment unit to match the coffee table I built last year.

I have no problem with a well managed high quality timber industry. I'm even looking at getting into timber growing as a sideline - grow high quality timber for the craft woodworking market. Eucalypt trees have by their nature a high incidence of defect, ie rot, borers, gum vein, branches etc etc hence the high levels of residue that goes to chip. It is not easy to grow a field of pure sawlogs, a paddock of Tiger Myrtle or fiddle back blackwood.
Its not timber workers I have a problem with Oh thats alright then. Its dinosaur industries being propped up with massive cash handouts.

You need to broaden your reading and not rely solely on the ABC, the Greens website, the Australia Institute or Matthew Denholm’s scratching in the Australian.
Just because an article agrees with your beliefs doesn’t make it true!!
Tasmania is tired of mainlanders wanting to lock up vast swathes of Tasmanian forest as some kind of environmental penance for their wasteful city based mainland lives.

 

[browndog]

Well well well, a bit of green propaganda shot down, who would have thought? Thanks for the facts TasChris.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Yeah...the greens love a good story.

I remember watching a documentry about greenies v loggers in the vic high country. Is was pathetic. The " activists" where delebratly, in full veiw damaging logging equip to render it inoperable. In one scene they where chaining themselves to equipment that the loggers actually wanted to remove because they didnt want to log on environmental grounds as the logging would have caused to much damage and achieve nothing....didnt stop the hippes acting like the missinformed idiots that they where.

 

[Airgead]

*sigh*

Guys... you should know by now that when I quote figures its because I have done my homework and they are real figures. I don't just pull them out of my arse.

My primary source for the last post was http://www.forestrytas.com.au/assets/0000/0993/Forestry_Tasmania_StrategicReview_-_Extract_of_Stage_1_Report_Redacted.pdf. Prepared in 2012 for the TAS government. Yes I did read all 52 pages of it. There are other sources but I won't bore you with them all. Most of them were just looking up the redacted figures from the primary source.

You should stop just reading industry sources and start getting, I dunno... some real facts...

Just because its on the ABC doesn't mean its wrong.

Or maybe I'll just **** off back to the mainland to let you guys keep pissing our federal subsidies away on uneconomic dinosaur industries because "that's the way we have always done things down here". I mean you guys clearly know how to run an economy down there given that you are the beggar state and have been for 50 years.

Enjoy your banjos. At least they are easier to play with the extra fingers.

 

[browndog]

Your comments are a bit "holier than thou" Airgead. I'd challenge you to prove TasChris comments in red wrong rather than dissing him. Here is your chance.

 

[Airgead]

Read the sources... couldn't be arsed... bottling 15kg pf pears.

 

[dago001]

Or maybe I'll just **** off back to the mainland

Much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[pk.sax]

I met a guy once, he freakin hated figs.

Turned out he grew up on a farm and had a fig tree by the gate of the farm and his mum made the kids eat figs every day. He loves living in town.

Go figure.

 

[shaunous]

How dare they? You'd barely had time to exploit the land after stealing it from the natives! The horror!
Or better yet, you could listen to evidence and stow the schoolyard name-calling. 'Common sense' is usually political shorthand for 'what I already believe,' which in turn is usually shorthand for 'what makes me feel better.'
The truth couldn't give less of a flying frak what makes us feel better, or what jibes with our intuition.

You clearly shouldn't be living in Narabri, you'd be shot for talking that absolute jibberish around there.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Or Morree

 

[shaunous]

Yeah...the greens love a good story.
I remember watching a documentry about greenies v loggers in the vic high country. Is was pathetic. The " activists" where delebratly, in full veiw damaging logging equip to render it inoperable. In one scene they where chaining themselves to equipment that the loggers actually wanted to remove because they didnt want to log on environmental grounds as the logging would have caused to much damage and achieve nothing....didnt stop the hippes acting like the missinformed idiots that they where.

Protesting hippies. Get a job u dole bludging loons. (bring on the redneck comments)

I don't know if u seen it Stu, but the travelling CSG Stop The Gate supporters, most of whom are from no where around here with no interests here, just bludging around setting up eye sore squallers and locking themselves to gates and what not. (I'm against CSG on prime farming land and national parks, shitty deserts with no other use, well I'd rather a few wells and pipes than a colossal hole in the ground like a coal mine. ANYWAY, the protesters were camping on the edge of a guys dairy farm just out of town here, they wouldn't leave his boundary, so he dragged a dead old rotten cow right up to them to try stink them out. That took a little to long to move them on, so he skeet shooted right by them until both the noise of shotguns and the smell of rotten corpse together moved them on down the road. There was a blurb about it in the paper, but my Grandmother was the one who called me to tell me as her old sister watched him do it from across the road. Holy Fuk I laughed until it hurt to laugh anymore.

If you are against something, go through the right channels to voice your opinion. Camping on other peoples land, or in the edge of the road, not showering and pissing and shitting behind tree's and leaving rubbish everywhere isn't a good way to prove a point. The gas company did pull out, for now, but the local mp's against it and majority of the community voicing there opinion in a professional fashion against it done that, not some stinky prick with fire sticks living in a bongo van on the edge of a road. Clearly City protests are probably more organised though.

 

[shaunous]

Hippies.
Takes drugs from strangers at parties...wont drink fluridated water

Pure gold.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Yeah...that rabble where about 1km from my place in Glenugie where they where doing a test bore. There where prob 5-10 locals, the rest just a rent-a-crowd. They started camping on the TSR by the creek doing there washing and so on in the Coldstream River. RLPB kicked em all out for polluting the water and un authorised camping. A laughed hard at that. Thought it was a classic csse of actavist double standards. Driving down from byron in there smoke blowing shit boxes, camping and poluting the river. But the kicker was that the Tucabia store had never sold so much alcohol when the protestors where there. They shop made a killing.

 

[schrodinger]

.

You clearly shouldn't be living in Narabri, you'd be shot for talking that absolute jibberish around there.

OK, son. More bullshit name calling. Explain why it is gibberish or shut the **** up.

 

[Airgead]

Arrrggghhh... fark. Just read back my last few posts. Arguing with people on the internet really brings out the best in people doesn't it.

I shall stop now. Before I turn into more of an arsehole.

Taswegians - if you are ever on the mainland drop by. I'll pour you a beer and we can discuss the best way to run your state. I'll give you some free advice on the best way to raise your kids too...

I will now stop participating in this internet argument.

Cheers
Dave

P.S.... just because I'm not arguing doesn't mean I'm wrong...

 

[shaunous]

1. You'd barely had time to exploit the land after stealing it from the natives!

I'm not aware of land stolen from natives by farmers, men and women who returned from war were given land in places no one wanted to live, these men become farmers to live day to day and thus generations after them are farmers, your friend bob car then stole some of that land back in 1996 I think it was, turned it into state forest and national park. No where did a farmer steal land from aboriginals, we as a country fucked that up, so blaming farmers for exploiting land and local aboriginals = utter jibberish. You bob car mate had the chance to give it back to the aboriginals if it was stolen, he did not.
Just so you are aware, aboriginal's were very good at managing land, they cleared land, and they selectively burnt land, they same farmers do. They didn't all live in rain forests under tree's like Papua New Guineans.

Or better yet, you could listen to evidence and stow the schoolyard name-calling. 'Common sense' is usually political shorthand for 'what I already believe,' which in turn is usually shorthand for 'what makes me feel better.'
The truth couldn't give less of a flying frak what makes us feel better, or what jibes with our intuition.

Your arse must be jealous of your mouth with the shit coming from it in this quote. What evidence are u referring to. You want a fact, common-sense is a lost art form.

Clearly a country has spoken, and most of it now is Liberal, voice your opinions on the ballot papers if you want to change something.