Saw it here. Build with it here.

I am not against logging. I am against logging done badly, and against a forest industry that cuts Tasmania and mills the money somewhere else.

Old growth that is not regrowth stays standing. Regrowth, managed properly, is a crop and a job. Nothing wrong with logging when it is done right. Selective logging can help a forest. Clear-felling — slash and burn that destroys the soil — is the real problem. Anyone who will not tell those two apart is not arguing in good faith.

Sawlogs should be milled here. I called it a rort when laden log trucks were heading to Victoria while Tasmanian millers were short of work and the state was losing the revenue. Why aren't we supporting Tasmanian millers. Why aren't we building with Tasmanian timber.

Sustainable Timber Tasmania has, at times, said the right thing. Private forestry is still doing the dirty work while Tasmanians miss out. A foreign veneer plant using our forests, and mostly foreign workers, is not a Tasmanian housing industry. Ellis can say millers take priority. How many affordable Tasmanian houses have actually been built from that timber.

The Black Hills were logged and planted out to pine. Pine plantations kill biodiversity and acidify the soil. Then the chemicals go on from a helicopter near a waterway, a school and homes. That is not a forest industry I will defend.

Bring back a plain housing-commission house and build it. The timber should be Tasmanian. A bigger local milling industry is how you get cheaper houses, not another log on a boat to the mainland.

Working forest should stay open to licensed hunters. Locking STT land does not help farms on the boundary, and it wastes a resource. And STT should be looking at plantation hemp. The restrictions on that crop are ridiculous. The hemp detail is on this site already.