Fund our hospitals instead of subsidising logging. TAP media release

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.

Not only does the pulp mill threaten the health of many people in the Tamar valley, but the subsidies that it requires will continue to impoverish our hospitals and schools for decades.

The community wants to know…

  • If the mill is such an economic boon, why does it need any taxpayer subsidies at all? …and
  • If the forest industry cannot make money in the free market, why should we subsidise them at the expense of our essential services?

We say… “Enough is enough. Governments must make sure that our essential services are properly funded before even considering any form of corporate welfare.” The community is calling for an immediate cessation of all logging subsidies in Tasmania so that our essential services of hospitals and education can be properly restored to full health themselves.

 

 

Why the community does not want the pulp mill

Public money diverted from hospitals

At a time when people in pain are lying on trolleys in hospital corridors, while others wait years for operations and public dentistry patients are forced to pull out their own teeth with pliers, the Lennon and Howard governments are transferring hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the Tasmanian timber industry.

That is money that could fix our hospitals and help to equip our kids for their future with a superior education. This is a state government that proposes to sell public hardwood to Gunns for $16 tonne, thereby setting a floor price that will virtually guarantee plantation investors big losses. They will be lucky to get $2,400 per hectare, slim pickings from an initial ‘investment’ of nearly $7,000 with $3,200 from the taxpayer!!

That’s right, the taxpayers subsidise the transfer of farm ownership from Tasmanian families to giant corporates like Gunns…and it costs us about $3,200 per hectare. Gunns has about 200,000 ha and so has received around $640 million dollars from the taxpayer. Small wonder they want to keep the gravy train rolling.

That’s the SAME $640 million that our hospitals, doctors, nurses, fire fighters, teachers and dentists could have to operate a properly funded public system.

To rub it in, the public must pay our politicians’ private health coverage so that they don’t have to use the same system that they are creating for the rest of us.

Public money used to buy out farmers and subsidise plantations

Meanwhile our farmers are doing it tough in the drought and what do they find? Tax subsidised plantations up river from them that are stealing far more water from the catchment than would be required by agriculture They know that plantations deliver far fewer jobs and leave rural communities suffering a severe cash flow drought as farmers are forced to sell and unproductive trees take over. We are rapidly losing our food producing land and people. All this at a time when there is world shortage of food and prices are at all time highs.

Instead of helping our farmers, our government is using our money to convert our dwindling supply of food producing land into tree plantations to hand more public money to their political donors! So our rural communities lose cash flow and foodstuffs from local farms and suffer reductions in tourism revenue as tourists go to destinations that aren’t clearfelled and burned; the roads aren’t busy with unstable log trucks and water supplies aren’t contaminated with a carcinogenic cocktail of plantation chemicals.

When you connect all of this to the lack of money and care for our essential services, you can understand that the communities’ clear concern is that their governments are representing party donors at the expense of taxpayers.

The US war of Independence was fought on the basis of “No taxation without representation”.

Politicians deny the people

People rightly feel very strongly about playing a meaningful role in deciding the quality of their own future. Offering more tens of millions of taxpayers dollars for pulp mill support infrastructures does nothing to regain public trust.

Our politicians have betrayed us by taking our money to represent us and then refusing to countenance our needs. It is for these reasons that so many are adamantly opposed to the pulp mill proposal.

We ask:

  • If the mill is such an economic boon, why does it need any taxpayer subsidies at all? and
  • If the forest industry cannot make money in the free market, why should we subsidise them at the expense of our essential services?

The people of Northern Tasmania are seeing their property values, futures, health, hopes and dreams shattered and they will not take it lying down. The government is going to have to fight the community every step of the way to complete and operate this overblown pulp mill. It’s a ruinous investment for Gunns, a huge loss maker to the public purse, a threat to public health, a threat to our food production industries and rural communities, and a destructive idea in a world facing climate change and a crisis of oil availability.

We say “Enough is enough. Make sure our essential services are properly funded before considering any form of corporate welfare.”

Some indicative costs of subsidies to logging industry

  • Creation/upkeep of roads & bridges, about $20 million/year
  • Work done by FT for Gunns benefit, about $50 million/yr
  • Cash payments over last 10 years, average of $50 million/year
  • MIS worth about $3,200 /ha, average $60 million/yr
  • Non payment for water used by tree plantations, @ $100/Ml = $40 million/yr
  • New infrastructures for mill, over $100 million
  • Deliver timber to pulp mill (fuel risk), $10 – 50 million per year

TOTAL SUBSIDIES per YEAR = $270 million plus infrastructure