The Federal Government is pledging extra assistance for Tasmanian forestry workers to retrain. Sources: ABC News, The Examiner
Employment Minister Brendan O’Connor visited Wesley Vale in the state’s north-west to announce $2.4 million for a re-training program.
The money is on top of Labor’s $100 million Tasmanian jobs package and is contingent on the forestry deal passing State Parliament.
O’Connor said he has been working closely with the sector to ensure the investment will meet their needs and the funds are separate from the forest peace deal. He said it was not an election promise.
“This is something that we have costed for under the economic statement, it’s something that we determined before we went into caretaker,” the minister said.
The money will go to the training group, ForestWorks that has nearly 700 former forestry workers on its books. The funding is on top of a $4 million grant it received last year.
The Wesley Vale area has borne much of the brunt of the forestry downturn. When the town lost its paper mill in 2010, 250 jobs went with it. The wood panel business that remains at the site employed 35 people until October last year.
Wood Panel Tasmania’s David Loone is hoping to re-employ workers.
“With the downturn that has effected the whole industry across Australia and effected all our competitors as well, we had to start reducing our numbers, and now we’re down to six,” he said.
“We have guaranteed sales of a seven-day-a-week operation, and that’ll bring our compliment of people back to 35 or more eventually.”
While the funding is not tied to the forest peace deal, Tasmanian Liberal Senator Richard Colbeck, accused Federal Labor of trying to sway Upper House MPs who will have the final say on the future of the peace deal legislation.
“The Labor Party and the Greens are trying to blackmail the Upper House into passing this really, really bad forestry bill,” he said. “One that locks 52% of the state up, one that leaves the forest industry without a sustainable supply of timber for the future.”
But Senator Colbeck said the Coalition would consider continuing the retraining program if it wins government. He said the Opposition’s forest policy would be announced before the election.
This new announcement comes after two councils express concern about missing out on funding.
Break O’Day Council mayor Sarah Schmerl wrote to the municipality’s ratepayer base and to 59 state and federal members of Parliament to highlight the council’s dismay over its exclusion from the $100 million Tasmanian Jobs and Growth Plan project funding.
Only 31 projects were successful from 400 applications.
“The forest downturn has had a substantial impact on the municipality as we lost more than $400,000 in rates alone and that doesn’t include the figures of lost employment and what that means to the community,” she said.
“I would say there would be several hundred jobs lost in the past 18 months to two years as forestry was one of our main employment sectors in the area and is now not – this fact needs to be recognised.
“We had a large area of forest activity within Break O’Day with a lot of spin-off effect, not just for employees in the forest sector, but for surrounding businesses and communities.”
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows that the East Coast municipality’s unemployment rate sits at 10.2% – the highest in Tasmania.
Cr Schmerl said funding decisions were made based on September’s federal election to help politicians secure seats and that the much-criticised process needed reviewing.
“I think it is grossly unfair and what has happened is a result of an impending election rather than what is beneficial to communities and who has been hardest affected.”
Former Liberal Party organiser and Central Highlands mayor Deirdre Flint said two worthy projects in her area missed out.
She said that Mr Adams had not done enough to fight for local projects and ratepayers are fed up.
