Anderton’s Personal Attacks Can’t Disguise Crisis

MEDIA STATEMENT

Wednesday 7 March 2007

For Immediate Release

Anderton’s Personal Attacks Can’t Disguise Forestry Crisis

Forestry Minister Jim Anderton’s strategy of continual personal attacks on the forestry industry does not obscure the political and deforestation crises his policies and approach to the job have caused, the Kyoto Forestry Association (KFA) said today.

“Nearly 2,000 forest owners and forestry investors have already turned out to MAF consultation meetings and passed near-unanimous resolutions condemning Mr Anderton’s confiscation of their carbon credits and his plans for massive new taxes on the industry,” KFA Spokesman Roger Dickie said.

“These are the people Mr Anderton is meant to be working with as Forestry Minister and their lack of confidence in him represents a political crisis in the portfolio.”

Mr Dickie said criticism of Mr Anderton was intensifying through the consultation round, partly as a result of him not attending a single meeting.

“In Mr Anderton’s home town of Christchurch yesterday, the 300-plus forestry investors passed a resolution calling on him to resign. Personal attacks on one individual are really a bit politically silly when our industry is speaking with one voice like never before,” Mr Dickie said.

However, Mr Dickie said that more important than the political crisis Mr Anderton faces is the deforestation crisis he has caused.

“The forestry industry operates over 30-year timeframes and the most important factors in investment decisions are stability in Government policy and confidence that property rights will be respected over a quarter century or more,” Mr Dickie said.

“Mr Anderton has provided neither – despite the forestry advisor in his own office being one of those who used to tell forestry investors they would gain financially from sequestering carbon, which encouraged new planting in previous years.

“Until Mr Anderton restores forestry investors’ ownership of carbon taxes and drops his talk of massive new taxes on the industry, we will not see the return of confidence we need to get planting underway again.”

Mr Dickie said Mr Anderton seemed to think that people other than the forestry sector could plant trees to reverse the deforestation crisis.

“Mr Anderton seems not to understand that the people who are most likely to plant trees in the future are those who have invested in the industry before. There is not a new generation of forestry investors waiting in the wings. How he deals with issues from the 1990s and early part of this decade will therefore determine what happens next year and beyond,” Mr Dickie said.

“Mr Anderton cannot continue to put the boot into the forestry investors of the past and expect someone else to plant trees for him in the future. That is not how the industry works.”

Mr Dickie said it would be useful for Mr Anderton to get out of the Beehive and attend one of the MAF consultation meetings in Auckland, Wellington or Dunedin to see for himself the depth of feeling on the issue.

He said that KFA continued to work closely with the rest of the forestry industry in urging all political parties to endorse the six-point plan to get forest planting underway again, which was agreed last year by all key players in the industry, including the New Zealand Forest Owners Association (NZFOA), the New Zealand Farm Forestry Association (NZFFA), the Federation of Maori Authorities (FOMA) and KFA, after work with Government officials.

ENDS

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