MIS

The next TAP public forum in the series will be on alternative futures for our forests.

When 7pm - 9.45pm Monday 25 February 2008.

Where Riverside Community Centre, off Brownfields Lane behind the Riverside High School, West Tamar High way, Launceston.

Speakers
Speakers
Mike Scott (engineer) email - Mike_Scott@acl.com.au
Frank Strie (master forester) email - schwabenforest@connect.net.au
Kim Booth (Greens MHA) email - kim.booth@parliament.tas.gov.au

Decisions by Forestry Tasmania about the State's forests centre on producing one main low value product – pulp wood, but at what cost?

This is the first forum in a series jointly organized by ABA (A Better Australia) and TAP (Tasmanians Against the Pulpmill) to examine current and future problems confronting Australia and to develop strategies for dealing with them.

The format is an open public forum, democracy in action you might say, led by guest speakers with the emphasis firmly on public participation. If you have something to say, you will be heard.

WHERE: Community Centre behind Riverside High School, West Tamar Rd, Launceston (entrance off Brownfield Lane)
WHEN: Monday January 21st at 7.00pm

Pulp mill apologists have represented the mill as an economic boon to the state but they have concealed the huge public subsidies currently being paid, and still to be paid, to help the project be ‘profitable’.

Our governments are paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to prop up our unsustainable pulpwood industry, money that is sorely needed by our essential services, particularly health and education. If the subsidies being paid to support the pulp mill and the logging industry were used instead to properly fund our hospitals and schools, then we would have worthwhile health and education services populated by properly paid staff and equipped with modern technologies.

The Tasmanian Government has not investigated the financial risks of the mill to the State and documented the subsidies. The economic viability of the pulp mill has not been tested in public.

Below are three studies of the financial impact of Gunns' proposed pulp mill from individual members of the community, presented in an attempt to redress this important gap in the assessment.

Are MIS plantation operators and finance industry donations to major political parties driving the conversion of farmland to trees at taxpayers expense?

Here is how it works.

Wood for biofuels; a missed opportunity

Summary
Throughout the pulp mill saga, the politicians have assumed that there is no alternative use for Tasmania's plantation resource. But the rapid change in concern for global warming and greenhouse gas emissions has brought biofuels very much to the fore.

The only source of renewable biomass capable of replacing the amount of fossil fuel required to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets without detracting from food production is plantation forest grown on low value land.

A forest biofuels industry to produce fuels from wood in Tasmania would be substantially more beneficial than pulp at every level, economically, environmentally and socially. However, no one is going to invest in biofuels when the forests have already been promised to a powerful monopoly.

Ignoring the prospects for a biofuels industry exposes the failings of both major parties and demonstrates how short sighted the 20year contract with Gunns is.

1. Fact sheets and charts showing the essentials

TAP and SAS is producing a series of fact sheets and charts describing significant impacts of the proposed pulp mill and its wood supply on the economy, environment and population of Tasmania. These impacts are largely being ignored by the Government and the proponent.