Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Plantation forestry is a vital component of the makeup of the social and economic fabric of many of our regional communities right around Australia. There is a debate within the community about the plantation sector, with varying views expressed. Those views, when expressed, should be put with integrity and honesty. People of integrity and honesty can, and do, disagree. They can even feel strongly about their disagreements. I, for one, hold to what now seems to be that very old-fashioned view that farmers ought to be allowed to determine which crops they grow on the land that they own. But one thing that should not be condoned is the deliberate placing into the public domain of information that is objectively wrong and false.

Those that support the farm forestry sector continually have to put up with fiction writers such as Richard Flanagan and Bryce Courtenay peddling their fiction about forestry. Their expertise and knowledge is about as relevant as a forester’s literary critique of their novels. People like the ill-informed Messrs Flanagans and Courtenays of this world are unfortunately encouraged in their campaigns of misinformation by elements in the media and some Green MPs. Just yesterday, Senator Milne, on the Tasmanian Country Hour, attacked the so-called ‘tax breaks’ that ‘have encouraged plantations to take over thousands of hectares of prime farm land’. Then she told the Country Hour listeners:

I’ve just done a case study of Preolenna ... in Tasmania, which shows that a whole farming district has been destroyed in terms of its social fabric because of what is an invasion of plantations. Not only have all houses been bulldozed, but the infrastructure is gone, the last of the dairy farmers were driven out because there weren’t enough of them left for the milk trucks to continue coming. People lost the school bus run. And all that is left of that community is a plaque.

The listeners were told, ‘all that’s left is a plaque’. It would be pretty devastating and powerful—if it were true. You see, the Greens just assert, then they reassert, repeat it ad nauseam and then expect people to believe them regardless of the facts. Well, what are the facts? Preolenna, allegedly with only a plaque to its name, is still actually in the phonebook, with a postcode. It has a community hall.