I welcome the long overdue announcement that the Mussleroe wind farm is one step closer to being built.

The Mussleroe development is good news for a region that has faced a number of challenges in recent times including a downturn in the forest industry and the threat of school closures.

The development represents one of the best opportunities for renewable energy development in the country and has the potential to create hundreds of much-needed jobs and assist the Northern and North-Eastern economies during a time of uncertainty.

For too long, the Green-Labor Government has failed the North-East, and while the Liberals welcome the Mussleroe development, we recognize that there is still much to be done to get the North-East back on its feet again.

The Government must now work to ensure that there are future projects in the pipeline that will foster investment, create jobs and importantly keep families in the region.

Regional communities, like the many found in the North-East, are the lifeblood of Tasmania, and the Liberals urge the Green-Labor Government to stop focussing on shutting down industries like they have with Forestry and instead focus on growing our economy through attracting more investment and jobs.

I thought I would tell Parliament what I got up to between last week’s sitting and this week’s, because of course last Thursday was a day off for the southerners. The northerners quite properly went back to work, just not in the company of parliament.

I would like to draw the House’s attention to a few of the quite touching things that occurred in those four days between Thursday and Sunday of last week. I do want to touch on one in particular – the conclusion over the weekend of the North East Rivers Festival. It is actually an evolution of what was the Derby River Derby. I think that has been going since the mid-1970s. It only missed one year when there was a flood, I think in 2005. It has evolved in the last five years. The North East Rivers Festival is now a festival of 10 events. It was a great success.

It culminated, as always, in the Derby River Derby last Saturday, Mr Speaker. My modesty prevents me from showing off about the fact that the team I was a part of in the Derby River Derby – the super maxi category – won the 7 kilometre race, so I will not be able to skite about that but there you are, I have just dropped it in.

There were also nine other events – the Bridport 10 Fun Run; the Winnaleah School Fair; the Pioneer Trout Fishing Competition; the Men’s Shed Markets; the River of Life celebration, which a combined church service in the region; the Pipers Brook Vineyard Concert; the Golf Challenge; the art exhibition; and the Derby Bike Challenge. I wanted tonight to pay special tribute to Lynden Russell who is the coordinator of the festival. He has done a marvellous job with his committee and I think something around 100 volunteers as well who have given up their time – nobody gets paid – and it has been a great success. I also want to thank the sponsors tonight.

I have time for one other matter. On Sunday afternoon I had the privilege of accepting an invitation from the Door of Hope church. It was a gathering of people who had been involved in a homeless program that members of the church had organised. The vision which has been brewing now for about six years was to develop a family-based homeless shelter.

The Door of Hope is, of course, on the site of the former Coats-Patons Woollen Mill and it is a massive site with old derelict buildings and the vision was to build and establish a shelter. That vision has been achieved now, particularly with the support of Federal government infrastructure funds.

In the intervening years, Mr Speaker, because that committee of people could not afford to wait, such was the passion for supporting the homeless in Launceston, they actually set it up as a drop-in centre which meant that there was a bed for the night for many homeless people around Launceston. I was a volunteer for that cause in the two years that I was out of Parliament and when I was elected to this place I asked to be excused, but I could not believe it when I turned up on Sunday afternoon to find that 120 people had contributed to that project. There are just too many to mention tonight obviously, but I want to take this opportunity to thank the visionaries and the volunteers for the wonderful work that they did which I know made such a material impact on a small but important segment of our community.

It is extremely disappointing that having caused the loss of softwood resource, the Labor-Green Government has done absolutely nothing to genuinely support the Scottsdale community, as the last major sawmill in the region closes.

This Government has been failing the north-east for 12 years now and federal Labor is complicit in this sad situation too.

Instead of providing valuable re-training opportunities before the mill shut, or providing funds for shovel-ready projects that could create jobs in Scottsdale, Labor has abandoned the community.

Regional communities like Scottsdale are the lifeblood of Tasmania – this Government can and should have done much more to prevent the loss of talented workers from the region.

In the wake of looming job losses, business closures and the recent flood crisis, the Labor-Green Government has remained completely silent as the people of the North East of the state continue to suffer.  It is becoming increasingly clear that this Government has totally and utterly failed to listen to the people of the North East, and has failed to deliver any form of assistance during a time when the region needs it most.

Lara Giddings and her Labor-Green Government have instead chosen to go through a slow, lazy exercise designed to look like they are listening. But they have failed to act on creating, or even protecting existing jobs. Instead, they have preferred to work with the Greens on destroying our forest industry – with the damage bill to be paid by regional communities, including the North East.

The effects of recent flooding on the North East have been devastating. It is estimated that about half of the north-east potato crop, amounting to potentially 25,000 tonnes and a farm gate value of $7.5 million, has been destroyed.

The setbacks for many North East communities as a result of this have the potential to be devastating, yet the Labor-Green Government has been virtually silent on the issue. They couldn’t even be bothered to send someone to meet with the farmers and assess the damage.

New Minister and chair of the so called “North East Working Group”, Brian Wightman, needs to be visiting North East communities and listening to the families that are being hurt by the closure of businesses and the loss of jobs, instead of sitting back and assuming that the region will recover on its own.

Labor’s neglect of the area does not stop at a state level. New Labor member for Bass, Geoff Lyons, has been silent on providing any assistance to the region, when he should be talking to his counterparts in Canberra and providing the support and assurance that these communities so desperately need.

The onus is now on this shaky Labor-Green Government to get off its bum, seriously identify job opportunities and new industries for the North East and put all the Government’s focus and energy into delivering.

The closure in four months of the Scottsdale sawmill is very devastating news to my electorate of Bass and the people of that community, for whom I feel very strongly. At least 85 jobs are at stake but it could be as many as 135 jobs that are lost in total. The closure is not only devastating for Scottsdale and the North East region but also for the entire resources sector in this State. Sadly, the news came as no real surprise to anyone in this Chamber, given Labor’s mismanagement of the Tasmanian forest industry.

It was in 2007 that Labor scrapped a sawlog supply agreement with the then mill operator Auspine, and that would have allowed this mill to carry on its business and to employ local people into the future. I am absolutely no advocate of all of the practices and behaviours of the company management at that time – indeed, if time permitted I could go into a whole range of matters that left me deeply dissatisfied with the way they conducted themselves. Nonetheless, there is a broader history to this and I believe without any doubt that the Government should and could have done more but chose to not life a finger to assist – not Auspine – but that community to retain its resource and allow it to continue having a viable business in that community. This is devastating news. The people of Scottsdale will not forget that it was this Labor Government which was a very substantial part of the problem and that has been so repeatedly reluctant to be part of any solution.

Let us be clear here. The Government was warned repeatedly from the earliest days that this disaster could occur, and I can remember not being the first one to issue a warning but I was one who did, and I remember issuing a warning about the softwood resource as far back as about early 2005 and it was Minister Green who was the then minister, as he is now, but with a break in between. I remember quite clearly back then saying publicly that while this is not a time for panic it is a time for action. The then minister all too readily agreed in response that there was no need to panic but, as history now records, the Government took an entirely hands-off approach, leaving the negotiations for the allocation of increasingly scarce softwood resource to the managing agent for Taswood Growers, Rayonier, a New Zealand company which has long since left the scene.

In fact, I recall the prompting for me of issuing that warning was a briefing from Rayonier when they came to see me as a reasonably newly-elected member to tell me that there probably would not be enough resource for two mills in Scottsdale. Here we are today in 2010 looking into 2011 and there is not enough resource now for even one. I think this is a great and sad indictment upon this Government. I deeply regret the fact that we have seen spin above substance and I think Alison Andrews’ article in the Examiner today is very salient and to the point where she says that:

‘North-east Tasmanians have every reason to feel bitter and twisted as they contemplate the closing of one of their last major industries and nobody would blame them if they directed a great deal of their pent-up anger at the State Government. It has talked and talked about what it will do for the north-east but has still much to deliver.’

I and the Tasmanian Liberal Opposition will be standing with the North East community in this hour of need. Who knows what can be salvaged from this mess and debacle, but hopefully with some planning, work and a change in direction from this Government which sets up task forces but does not bring them together, if we can salvage some economic activity arising out of government leadership I would welcome that and hope I can see it occur soon because we do not have time to waste. With news this week as well that the Federal Government is now going to delay its upgrade of the defence nutritional research centre which, had it gone ahead as planned in the first place, would have timed quite nicely with the drop-off in economic activity early in the first quarter of next year, I am very disappointed about that. I know the community will be disappointed and I call on this Government to get off its hands and start representing the people of the North East, like they said they would do before every election, when they go around there promising people the world, but after the election delivering very little.