'Forest removal' is big business in Tasmania. The monopoly player, Gunns
Ltd is also the islands largest land holder and employer. Their
shareholders have benefited massively by systematic forest removal and the
ex****t of wood chips from high conservation native carbon sinks. The state
has declined dramatically at the same time with Australias highest poverty
rate, lowest wages and virtually non-existent health care. The once huge
native forests belong to all of us but with the help of compromised
politicians, the monopoly wood-chipper gets it all for themselves. So what
does everybody else get in return for their stolen forests? Nothing.
Somehow the huge profits from forest stealing just disappear. FOI requests
reveal that the state is giving them away at a price per tonne that is
less than firewood and barely enough to keep Forestry Tasmania solvent. So
nothing is being returned to the public treasury. One thing that does get
left behind after a forest is stolen is an unhealthy, water-guzzling 'tree
orchard' that has become private property. Now that carbon sequestration
and oxygen production are universally recognised as byproducts of the
native carbon sinks, it's time Kevin Rudd, Penny Wong and Peter Garrett
held an immediate criminal investigation into the stolen forests of South
Eastern Australia.
