Farms die for Rudd’s trees
Stapleton, John. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 06 Jan 2009: 5.
Show highlighting
Abstract
“I’m angry,” Mr [Graham] said. “We’re seeing rural communities lost, schools and services closed down.
“Labour are talking about changing the entire face of rural Australia,” she said. “From northwest Tasmania to the Northern Territory, rural communities have suffered because the Government decided to give a greater tax advantage to Collins Street investors than to people who are trying to make their living from theland. Rural Australia will revolt.”
“Plantations destroy everything, the visual beauty of man-managed landscape, native bush, towns. Tasmania’s rural landscape is utterly beautiful, and it’s all being turned into plantations.”
Full Text
CATTLE farmer Neil Graham can see the landscape changing around him as his neighbours sell their properties for plantations, unable to compete against theRudd Government’s generous tax concessions for forestry companies.
The passing of legislation by the Government last year to provide tax concessions to spur the planting of carbon-sink forests has created disquiet in many farming communities, including around Mr Graham’s picturesque cattle property at Dairy Plains in the Meander Valley of northern Tasmania.
It has also forged unusual political alliances, with the Greens and Nationals combining to condemn the climate change initiatives.
“I’m angry,” Mr Graham said. “We’re seeing rural communities lost, schools and services closed down.
“The Government has tunnel vision: they think planting trees will solve everything. Both farms and native vegetation are being replaced by plantations, all driven by federally funded tax schemes. It’s wrong.”
With the Rudd Government proposing the conversion of 34million hectares of Australian land into plantations as part of its climate change strategy — more than the 28 million hectares currently farmed — leading voices predict that dozens, if not hundreds, of rural communities will disappear.
Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce said the legislation would turn prime agricultural land into forests, and was insane.
“We’re taking out the capacity of Australia to feed itself or to export food products,” he said.
Greens senator Christine Milne said the Government was proposing to transform land use across Australia. The Greens’ unlikely alliance with the Nationals reflected a mutual concern over the viability of farming communities.
“Labour are talking about changing the entire face of rural Australia,” she said. “From northwest Tasmania to the Northern Territory, rural communities have suffered because the Government decided to give a greater tax advantage to Collins Street investors than to people who are trying to make their living from theland. Rural Australia will revolt.”
Sustainable Agricultural Communities Australia founder Robert Belcher said areas such as Dairy Plains could be destroyed.
“In Tasmania, lush diary farming valleys have completely gone under to trees, a direct result of the Government’s taxation schemes to establish a forestry industry which would never get within cooee if it was left to market forces,” he said.
“We’re changing the whole hydrology of the country, planting forests which were not there prior to European settlement.”
Bob McMahon — spokesman for Tasmanians Against The Pulp Mill, a lobby group set up to oppose Gunns’s $2billion plan for a mill in the Tamar Valley — said people across the state were fighting the plantations. “Farmland is being badly impacted by plantations, particularly in Tasmania,” he said.
“Plantations destroy everything, the visual beauty of man-managed landscape, native bush, towns. Tasmania’s rural landscape is utterly beautiful, and it’s all being turned into plantations.”
A spokeswoman for Climate Change Minister Penny Wong declined to comment.
National Association of Forest Industries chief executive Allan Hansard was unavailable for comment.
Opinion — Page 10
Editorial — Page 11