Forestry Conflict Comes to Town

The forestry conflict in the Huon Valley appears to be spilling over into unrelated businesses.

We awoke this morning to the unpleasant surprise that someone had stickered our goat's milk soap shop in Geeveston with "No Greens" stickers. Suddenly we've moved from having no involvement in the forest conflict to being labelled as the "enemy" by some poor, scared forestry worker.

I don't blame the individual for this misguided attempt to intimidate us but I instead look towards our representatives, Paul Harris and premier Lara Giddings, who have failed in their leadership roles to unite the community. With their partisan positions, they are driving a wedge through the community to create an "us vs them" mentality that ultimately harms the community but increases their chances of getting re-elected.

• Where is their initiative to provide trade schools in the Huon?
• Where is the encouragement and support for business diversity?

The fear of the Ta-Ann workers that they have no future outside forestry is directly the result of the failure of our elected representatives to provide education and employment opportunities for the Huon, not of someone who had the initiative to start dairy goat farming and a soap business.