No to plantations? And the Greens want no more native forest harvesting and more from plantations. But to get investment in a 'crop' that takes a long time to produce requires some sort of incentive - i.e. up-front deduction (economics 101). At the same time we continue to import significant timber from overseas countries with poor governance and significant illegal and environmentally damaging harvest practices. Welcome to the real world Greens! It is difficult to get a balanced outcome and if you are stuck in dealing only with philosophy (here NO active management of native forests) then Australia will slowly come to a stand still! And meanwhile environmental destruction continues internationally. Keep on fiddling - I can smell, see and hear Rome burning. Then again that is likely what is to happen to our locked up native forests!!!

I agree with what Barry Dingle says, but in Qld we have extra problems with the Vegetation Management Act on top of it all, plus the conversion of State native forestry areas to national parks. A new rule brought into the VMA prohibits the destruction of trees or regrowth within a 50 metre zone of a waterway. The farmers' perception is that if they cannot harvest a tree in this zone, they are not going to pay for a seedling and plant it there. Also at the moment, taxation law allows the deduction of input costs in the year they were incurred. Take this away and there will be no harvestable windbreak or woodlot plantings ever! About 4 years ago the Qld Govt closed the forestry tree seed centre which was a world-class seed bank that made available germplasm of the best provenances of all the high value timber species, like northern silky oak and Qld maple for instance. It is almost impossible to obtain commercial quantities of this type of seed now. The greenies have a policy of not harvesting any native rainforest species even on freehold property. OK, tell me where the hell can I get seed for these species to grow them in plantations with all these restrictions ?

The MIS schemes are portrayed as tax rorts because they produce an upfront tax write off. The reality is that if the schemes were managed to produce a profit for the investors then eventually the investors would pay tax. They would just be a productive tax deferral. This is how all business runs. Unfortunately the people who promoted the schemes just saw them a means to enrich themselves knowing that they could escape any consequences by lying and devising business structures that were so convoluted that their victims could not legally touch them. The investors and government lost a lot of money. The promoters are rolling in it. As usual the greens are barking up the wrong tree.

I very embarrass to admit that on the issue of MIS Schemes that I concur with the Green's