What are we doing to ensure forestry doesn’t follow Ford?Friday 7 Jun 2013 An opinion piece from Ross Hampton, CEO, Australian Forest Products Assocation."The Government moved quickly to offer financial support to our fellow Australians after Ford’s announcement last week. It might do equally well to consider some calibrated and creative intervention at the top of other cliffs rather than awaiting other trade exposed industries to fall off. The forest products industry is a profound case in point, where a sensible dose of prevention can, and should, easily outweigh the costly cure. This is not to advocate anything like tariff barriers or other simplistic devices - which kill innovation. But even some of the driest economic purists acknowledge it is sensible for a nation to tweak policy settings to help their industries transition to a new operating environment. The long term cost to the economy of losing whole sectors, or capacity, is far greater than the short term cost of straying from the purely rational script. Forestry and forest products need that sort of thinking now. The comment I heard recently on radio that forestry is a ‘sunset industry’, is rubbish. But I do have to admit it could be true in years to come if we continue to ignore our local businesses whilst our competitors, with all sorts of assistance, vacuum up our markets." More >> |
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