“Why I love Tasmania”

A transcpipt of a speech by Ian Johnston from the City of Hobart’s Speakers’ Corner series last week.

Ian’s views are not necessarily the views of the SWS editors, but we do believe the issues he raises are vitally important, not only to Wooden Boat enthusiasts or the Tasmanian population, but the Australian public more widely.

Ian Johnston aboard JULIENNE. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

I would like to talk today to the reasons why I love Tasmania and then, put forward some pragmatic solutions to some crucial problems unique to Tasmania that are not as yet being resolved. 

I should declare myself –I am a fifth generation Tasmanian, a direct relative was the first child born at Cape Wickham Lighthouse, my father worked for the Hydro Electricity Commission as an engineer helping to build our nation. I had an 11-year bout as a professional sailor racing for prize money, across oceans around the world.  I am one of the 3 founders of the Australian Wooden Boat Festival; I have worked as boat builder, teacher, Ships Master, author and sculptor.

I love our unique evolving culture, environment, the wildlife, our arts; we make a multitude of world class products, our friendliness and hospitality are world renowned; we have great theatre, our festivals are as good as anywhere in the world; our quality of life is fabulous.

I acknowledge and respect the Palawa people who as the first people of this land and who we have treated so badly.

It is a relief being a Tasmanian as the rest of the world withers in a multitude of problems. We haven’t completely buggered this place yet, but some of us are working on it.

Our brand image is very important but the bureaucracy of Brand Tasmania sometimes lies with the despoilers.

Although we are far from perfect, we are blessed with a society with free education, medical aid and many other social services. Largely, it is a safe place to bring up children and live a good life. Look at how many came to search for Shayla that lost child on the Tasman Peninsula last week. Opportunities abound.

Hands up if you think that living in Tasmania is the best place on the planet (unanimous).

Hands up if you think we can do better (unanimous).

However, we are supposed to be part of the Common Wealth of Australia, but there is a widening gap between the rich and poor, the educated and those who are less so. This huge problem needs to be addressed. 

I would like to focus on two subjects that are close to my heart that we can easily change with solutions that will greatly benefit we as Tasmanians. The 3 F-words: ‘Forestry and Fish Farms’. 

Even though I regard myself as a conservationist, I do not agree with the current Green political positions of ending all native forest harvesting and of completely removing all oceanic fish farms. 

Firstly, Fish Farms.

I am in favour of an appropriately sized, vibrant, profitable, healthy, fish farm industry in this state. I worked for some weeks on a fish farm in Macquarie Harbour, also as Ships Master on a marine research vessel measuring the benthic environment in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel. We have records going back 40 years, so we know what was there before the fish farms dominated our inshore waters.

I can remember the Channel teeming with fish and bird life. At this time of the year (early autumn) there used to be vast shoals of mutton birds feeding on krill frequently seen in many places in the Channel. How long has it been since you saw 10,000 birds in one mob sitting on the water in the Channel? My answer is, since the fish farms became established, zero. 

There used to be kelp growing right through the Channel; it was the richest scalloping ground in the world—now there is barely a decent-sized fish in mid Channel and the scallops are unable to recover. Where has it all gone?

Now, because of 1000s of tonnes of raw fish sewerage being dumping in our channel, what seaweed survives is covered in a choking mass of brown algal slime. I try to swim in the channel, but I feel disgusted by the denuded benthic environment.

This obscenity of pollution is the equivalent of every person living along the channel dumping their untreated sewerage directly into a waterway that sloshes back and forth with little tidal movement. It defies comprehension that this is allowed to continue. IMAS has attributed more than 90% of excess nutrient in the channel to fish farms.

These highly profitable businesses pay 10% of the license fees of European fish farms, plus they make unknown amounts of political donations and lobbying activities to our current government, and the opposition. 

Here are some achievable, pragmatic solutions:

 1.     Lift license fees to being on par with Europe. The millions of dollars raised would enable a new, well-resourced, refreshed, fully-independent, powerful Environmental Protection Agency that would enforce sustainable environmental standards. Any monies left over could be used to clean up the damage that has already been done.

2.     Reduce by half the tonnage of salmon in all inshore waters, plus put nappies under all nets, plus make the huge wash-boats dump their toxic waste water in offshore waters, rather than in the channel as they do now. I acknowledge that this means a down-sizing of the industry which will cause job losses. But it does enable job creation that will come from a clean attractive environment.

3.     Put an immediate moratorium on any expansion, anywhere until fully independent science is completed and achieves social licence. --Which it definitely does not have now.

With the pandemic, our politicians actually followed the advice of our scientists—and that worked pretty well. Why don’t they follow the science with fish farming? I would like to commend the well-researched book, ‘TOXIC’, written by Richard Flanagan. It should be read by every politician and concerned citizen in the state. Although many Tasmanians support some sort of aquaculture activity in the State there is almost unanimous agreement that the size of the industry is too large and is damaging our environment.

On a side note, it would greatly benefit our brand image if we grew high quality, free-range salmon instead of battery fish. Let’s grow the best, rather than the cheapest. I won’t eat salmon for the same reasons that I don’t eat at fast food outlets, I value my health too much.

My other great concern is current management practises in our production native forests. I do not advocate, as some do, an end to all native forest harvesting, rather a change to low-impact, selective harvesting. We can harvest the interest without destroying the capital.

We started the Australian Wooden Boat Festival primarily to draw attention to the need for resource security for our boat building communities. The festival now brings over $20 M to the state every two years.  However, we failed in our goal of achieving resource security.  Government funding of the Festival seems to be linked to the Festival not being critical of government agencies. The current state of our boat building resources is absolutely appalling and desperate.

I have been fortunate to have worked with high quality timber all my life. In this state we have some of the best timbers in the world. 

At this very moment Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT) is still clearfelling Old Growth Forest, although they claim they aren’t.  (Photo of clearfelled OGF,) they have invented new words so they don’t have to use the word ‘clearfell’ even though that is what they are doing. Also, they have changed the definition of Old Growth so they can exclude mature high quality native forest from being called Old Growth which they see as a justification to clearfell.

Often, less than 10% of what is clearfelled ends up as sawlog. There are some wood chips, but most of the destroyed forest is dried out, piled up and hot burnt. This releases vast amounts of CO2, half of which comes out of the burnt, sterilised soil. Destroyed are immature special species timbers, habitat trees and a formerly healthy, diverse, fire-resistant ecosystem. 

STT replaces this with a single-aged, single species highly flammable crop that can never yield category 1 sawlog. At best it can yield 2nd and 3rd grade sawlog and high-quality pulpwood.  Our wharves are piled high with whole log exports; because the quality is so low the local sawmills cannot use it.  Our sawmillers want Category 1 sawlog, the best eucalypt timber comes from trees 100-200 years old, but our unique, beautiful, highly valuable special species timber needs several hundred years more to achieve their maximum economic value. STT does not seem to regard much of this timber. They have NEVER had a management plan for Celery Top Pine. And their cheapest, lowbrow, knuckle-dragging way to get to the eucalypt is to clearfell, and to hell with the knowledge that in less than 5 years it will be essentially gone from our normal production forests. All that we will have left in production forests is large amounts of much lesser quality regrowth.

I worked part-time with Forestry Tasmania over 10 years trialling alternate harvesting methods in Old Growth. Long story short, yes, we can safely harvest using site-specific, low-impact selective harvesting. This would yield small quantities of world-class timber for local value-adding, forever, without destroying the environment. The buffoons at STT cannot even get Forest Stewardship Council certification—although flawed this is the best, independent international certification for forestry management. 

An example: Celery Top Pine, one of the best boat building timbers in the world. In 2011 STT released 2300 cubic metres timber for local value-adding, in 2015 it was down to 130 cubic metres, and they are projecting that in 2026 onwards it will be less than 10 cubic metres pa.

Last week representatives of AWBF, boat builders and 8 STT staff (including the manager, photographers and PR people) attended the milling of a singe mature celery top pine that may yield boat building timber. Such is the rarity of this event. This single tree could yield $200,000 of local value-adding and yet, in the last 30 years, 10s of 1000s of immature celery top pine has been cut down, piled up and burnt.

What has happened to “sustainable” forest management? How can STT use the word ‘sustainable’ in its title?  It is truly oxymoronic. 

The Solution? 

1.     Call an immediate halt to any further clearfelling or its close equivalent in all Old Growth and any native forest that has the potential to mature into Old Growth. Unless we do this in 5 years it is essentially all gone from our normal production forests.

2.     Adopt site specific, low-impact selective harvesting to the standard of the best the successful trials that have already been completed in the state, at a rate that can be maintained in perpetuity. If they say they cannot afford to do it (I concede that it will cost more, but we can afford it), then don’t do it, yet. The value of the timber will only increase. I would like to think our grandchildren can have the same opportunities as us.

We can do so much better. We need politicians who are prepared to make difficult decisions on behalf of our children and grandchildren, rather than focusing on the next election.

Reduce the power of lobbyists and political donations

Decisions need public scrutiny rather than ‘commercial in confidence’.

Enable a strong independent ACCC.

Ian Johnston