Last week the Greens, headed by Sen Bob Brown, passed a motion in Federal Parliament calling for a $20 million assistance package for Tasmanian Forestry Contractors.  On its own, this may not be a big concern for members, but unfortunately Bob Brown tied this request to a Forestry Tasmania and Gunns payback arrangement as well as a corresponding forest resource lockup. 

Therefore it was soundly defeated by the Government and Opposition. 

TFCA lobbied hard though for the recognition of contractor issues and suggested to both the Government and Opposition that outright rejection without some acknowledgment of contractor’s issues will not help anyone. 

That said, we all know that the previous forest lockups have significantly contributed to the problems and anything further in this area will not help our sector or the industry generally.

Furthermore, TFCA is extremely disappointed with the efforts of Senator Brown to exploit the problems of forest contractors for his own political gain.  If you consider that he has significantly contributed to the industry’s woes especially through his own overseas misinformation campaigning, which has contributed to market access issues,  it is certainly disgraceful for him to be taking this current stance.  Given his recent success at raising money to pay his own legal bills, maybe he can now raise money for the industry and the communities that he so readily kicks.

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Tagged as: Funding for contractors, Lock up of more forest area, Senator Brown