The sale of Rushy Lagoon has focused attention on the Federal Government’s decision to bankroll a foreign buyer to purchase Tasmania’s largest farm.
But something bigger and more worrying is happening.
Government policies aiming for net zero emissions are changing the economics of productive land.
At Rushy Lagoon, taxpayer-backed finance has helped one buyer purchase a working dairy farm to convert thousands of hectares to plantation forestry. A consortium wanting to continue producing milk did not have that same financial advantage, apparently because cows fart and trees store.
I have long supported native forestry, plantation forestry and agroforestry. I want them to grow and create jobs.
But I don’t support government policy artificially driving productive agricultural land from one use to another. This is government interference in the free market.
As our former Prime Minister Tony Abbott remarked on my latest podcast, if it needs a $69 million subsidy to make it work. It’s plainly uneconomic.
Rushy Lagoon employs people and supports contractors, suppliers, transport operators and businesses throughout the North East. Losing productive farms has consequences well beyond the farm gate.
After speaking with Mayor Beattie, I was the first MP to raise concerns with Minister Gavin Pearce and seek State Government advocacy. Senator Richard Colbeck has also fought hard on this issue.
Despite widespread community concerns, that we all strongly expressed at the recent TasFarmers meeting, Canberra refuses to listen .
And adding insult to injury, it has now been revealed that the Federal Government, before any process had been completed to make the sale, gave the buyers an $8.8m grant to buy trees.
It’s an absolute farce.
Federal Agriculture Minister Julie Collins, a Tasmanian, has the power to veto the project.
Under the Australian Carbon Credit Unit Scheme, plantation forestry proposals must be reviewed by the Federal Agriculture Minister.
If the Minister believes a proposal will have an adverse impact on agriculture in the region, she can veto it.
And yet she continues to take Tasmanians for mugs.
By contrast, the Federal Opposition Leader, Angus Tayor has not only condemned the decision as contrary to Australia’s national interest but made time to visit our community to draw attention to its impact.
Our Labor MP has not helped with this issue or the closure of the Defence Nutrition Centre.
The foreign purchase process has shone a light on the problem. But stopping foreign buyers won’t stop it happening again.
The next buyer could be Australian and need no FIRB approval.
Unless we confront policies putting a taxpayer-backed subsidy on taking productive farmland out of agriculture, mark my words, Rushy Lagoon will be the first of many.
The North East knows what is at stake: productive land, employment, families and the future of our community.
Let’s keep up the pressure.
PODCAST WITH TONY ABBOTT AC
Want to know more? I discuss the Rushy Lagoon proposal, climate policy and Tasmania’s future in my recent conversation with former Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Good Company. Watch or listen at michaelferguson.com/podcast
From Bridgenorth and Launceston to the world, Richard Scolyer made a truly extraordinary contribution to humanity.
As a fellow Northern Tasmanian, I am incredibly proud and grateful for the life he lived. Through his work, countless lives have been saved and improved, and that impact will continue long into the future.
I just read his beautiful and generous final farewell. Richard said he hoped to be remembered as a proud everyday Aussie who “gave it a crack”. He certainly will be. Australian of the Year in 2024 and always.
My thoughts are with Katie, Emily, Matthew and Lucy, and all those mourning his loss. I am also thinking of Richard’s elderly mum and dad, who raised a son who would go on to make such a remarkable difference to the lives of others. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Mr Scolyer at a Riverside Primary School presentation just last year. The love and pride for his son was so evident.
A good man. A generous man. A proud Northern son – who made, and will continue to make, a remarkable difference to the world.
Thank you Richard
Also, this tribute to Richard I gave in Parliament recently. Click here.
Wednesday the 10th of June is Thank a First Responder Day. As Local MP for Bass, I want to really celebrate the people and services that look after us all. Throughout this week, our Bass community will be recognising the service of our local frontline personnel and the families who quietly support them behind the scenes. for many reasons, this is a cause that is very important to me.
This is an opportunity for all of us to do something plain but meaningful – and that’s to say a clear, direct “thank you” to the men and women who respond when emergencies occur, often under the most difficult and trying circumstances.
Our first responders carry a heavy burden on behalf of us all. That is why practical, visible acts of appreciation, such as a handwritten note carry real weight and make a genuine difference to the person receiving them.
How do I participate?
To ensure it is as straightforward as possible for people to participate, my office has worked with local small businesses across Launceston and the Tamar region. Thank a First Responder Day cards are now available at several local pharmacies. I want to publicly credit these businesses for their willingness to support the effort.
You can pick up a card, write a short message, and pop it in the nearby envelope for direct delivery to our local stations and units. These locations include:
Launceston – TerryWhite Chemmart Brisbane Street (opposite City Park) Launceston – Pharmacy & Co. in Kings Meadows Launceston – Hatton & Laws on Charles Street Youngtown – Youngtown WholeLife Pharmacy and Healthfoods Beaconsfield – West Tamar Pharmacy Riverside – TerryWhite Chemmart (Woolworths Complex) Mowbray – TerryWhite Chemmart George Town – Your Pharmacy
Alternatively, you can nominate a first responder to give the card to personally.
A message of thanks does not need to be complex or overly long. A few sincere lines are enough to acknowledge the work that is too often unseen and performed at a high personal cost. We want to turn quiet gratitude into action to encourage the first responders who serve our community.
If you are unsure of where to start; a simple acknowledgment of professionalism, care, bravery or the thank you for an experience you had with a first responder will go a long way. I would like people to include a word of thanks to the families of our responders, who share in the sacrifices of these amazing people.
I encourage everyone who is able to take a brief moment this week to visit one of these pharmacies, involve your children or your workplace, and help ensure our first responders know their service is fully recognized and respected.
Tonight in the Tasmanian Parliament, I paid tribute to the life of the late Neale Daniher AO. A great Australian sporting figure, founder of FightMND, and the 2025 Australian of the Year.
Neale Daniher inspired millions through his courage, humour, humility and perseverance in the face of Motor Neurone Disease. Through FightMND, he helped unite Australians in support of research, treatment and hope for a cure.
Let’s reflect on his extraordinary legacy, including the impact of the FightMND movement in Tasmania and the admiration so many Australians held for him.
Vale Neale Daniher AO.
I also just want to take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation and great respect for the life of the late Neale Daniher AO, who, as we know, passed away at yesterday.
Not only a great sporting champion for our country and his code, but also unifying our nation as the great founder and champion for FightMND, culminating not only in an extraordinary national outpouring of support and fundraising for research and treatment and searching for that cure but culminating in his nation loving him and recognising him as our Australian of the Year for 2025.
I know that many members of this House so happily joined him at the joint FightMND Clifford Craig event last year.
He was a man with wonderful humour, humility, generosity and, as we know, perseverance and inspiration and I for one am so grateful for his life.
Budget backs Northern Tasmania with major health, road and school investments
Treasurer Eric Abetz has delivered a responsible first full Budget at an important time for Tasmania. There is broad recognition that this is a period where governments must focus on careful budget repair following the enormous impacts of COVID, global trade and tariff disruptions, and the very significant costs associated with the Commission of Inquiry. Tasmanians expect governments to spend carefully, but they also expect us to keep investing in the roads, hospitals and schools our communities rely on. (more…)
Tonight in Parliament I spoke about the Federal Labor Government’s decision to sell the Scottsdale Defence facility in North East Tasmania.
The Scottsdale site has supported Defence food science, nutrition research and cadet development for decades. It has also recently benefited from major taxpayer-funded upgrades and advanced food technology capability. What becomes of that investment? Wasted.
Tasmania’s own Defence Industry Strategy identifies Scottsdale as Defence’s main food science and technology facility in Tasmania, yet the Commonwealth now proposes to sell it and relocate what’s left of it to Launceston.
I also raised concerns about the future of local cadets, the gradual decline in staffing and activity at the site, and the broader loss of regional capability in the North East.
Regional communities deserve genuine consideration before important national assets are dismantled.
Mr FERGUSON (Bass) – Deputy Speaker, I rise tonight to speak about the Federal Labor government’s decision to effectively run down and now sell the Scottsdale defence facility. This decision has caused a lot of concern in my electorate of Bass, in particular across Dorset and across the state. It is a defence site with a very proud history. It’s has recently upgraded infrastructure and real capability for the defence of our nation.
This facility was established under the Menzies government in 1954. That facility has contributed to defence food science, nutrition research and human performance capability for seven decades. Importantly, it’s also supporting, right now, cadet training and youth development for proud young Tasmanians who live in the district.
Many people might be surprised to learn that a regional place like Scottsdale has quietly played a significant role in feeding defence personnel for those seven decades. For most of that time, it was producing ration packs and employing members of the community in my electorate and it has fed the army that, as the saying goes, “marches on its stomach”.
I’m very concerned that the Commonwealth wants to now sell this and send the staff who are still there to Launceston UTAS campus to do their work. This is especially difficult to agree with or understand. I’d like to point out to the House that the Tasmanian government’s own defence industry strategy, which has only been released recently, specifically identified food technology and food processing as a key defence capability area for Tasmania.
It specifically identifies Scottsdale as Defence’s main food science and tech facility in our state. It refers to food security, supply-chain resilience and advanced shelf-stable food capability, all of the things that are necessary and for the good for the defence of our nation.
People are entitled to ask this question. If this capability is strategically important enough to appear in the state’s own defence strategy, why is the federal Labor government abandoning it without warning and without consultation?
Members here will be, I believe, horrified to learn that taxpayers spent $18 million upgrading this centre in the last decade. It now has better infrastructure and more equipment, only for it now to be talked about to be shut down, and that facility has been modernised by
Liberal and Labor governments in Canberra because they have recognised the facility’s strategic value to our country. Good on them. It supported nationally significant work in food technology, nutrition science and defence capability as its role shifted from volume packaging
of freeze-dried ration packs through to research on human performance and nutrition for defence personnel across the services. The infrastructure itself no doubt remains highly valuable today. The labs are still there, the advanced microwave-assisted thermal sterilisation
capability is still there. But it’s only as valuable as the level of its utilisation.
I am concerned to discover, having attended a recent consultation – a consultation offered after the decision was announced in Launceston at the RSL, to discover that this facility, while still open and still operational, has been gradually run down rather than properly supported. Little wonder that the community is so frustrated about that.
A quick mention about the local cadet unit. That’s their base, that’s what those young boys and girls, the young men and women of that army cadet unit call home. That’s where they raise their flag. They parade on that property. They’re being told that they might just be sent off to a school hall. Those arrangements are not acceptable. I support those cadets and their commanding officers. They are not allowed to speak publicly but I know how they feel. They’re disappointed.
As to how we got here, successive governments have, under pressure at times, committed to retaining that facility. At a time when our country is concerned and talking about sovereign capability, Australia should be very careful about closing down an asset that supplies those needs, in particular in relation to food, because once it’s gone, it will be gone forever.
A message of thanks does not need to be complex or overly long. A few sincere lines are enough to acknowledge the work that is too often unseen and performed at a high personal cost. We want to turn quiet gratitude into action to encourage the first responders who serve our community.
