Blatant market manipulation

This article appeared in The Mercury newspaper last Saturday the 15^th July.

It’s a monster!

Terry Edwards is the old Tasmanian forest industry warhorse now retired. But old warhorses never really retire.

And here is Terry back beating the war drums once again.

This time it’s not “The Greenies” he is raging against but the State government!

How dare the Tasmanian State government not continue to subsidise the very welfare dependent forest industry.

How dare the Tasmanian State government sell it’s forest products onto the open commercial market, and not give them to local sawmillers.

It’s an outrage!!!

No! It’s the forest welfare industry doing what it has always done – cry poor and play politics!

It doesn’t say but I assume the sawlogs being discussed are the first harvest of Regional Forest Agreement pruned hardwood plantation sawlogs, that the local sawmillers said they weren’t interested in 25 years ago when they were planted.

My how times change! And old behaviours and attitudes don’t!

What Terry Edwards is saying is that the Tasmanian sawmillers don’t want to operate in a competitive commercial marketplace. They haven’t for 200+ years and they certainly are in no position to be competitive now. Two hundred years living on forest welfare has left the Tasmanian industry a complete basket case.

Subsidizing sawmillers has been government policy in Australia since 1788, which is why our forest industry today is now at deaths door.

The other message from Mr Edwards is about sawlog price control and manipulation. The forest industry does not want an open competitive market operating in Tasmania.

That is a very clear message to Tasmanian farmers to never plant a tree for the forest industry because you will never ever get a fair market price!

Terry Edwards wants the forest industry to wither and die.

I could also point out that what Mr Edwards is proposing is in breach of numerous commercial and trade practice laws. Those cashed up Victorian sawmillers may very well take the Tasmanian government to the High Court, and bring the whole facade crashing down.

Now that would be fun to watch!

Until we get all the welfare recipients and their supporters (like Mr. Edwards) out of the forest industry there will no future.