[Greens-Media] Auditor General slams Tas forests rorts:Funding freeze and inquiry needed

[Bennett, Ebony (Sen B. Brown)]

		Auditor General slams Tas forests rorts:
		Funding freeze and inquiry needed

		Hobart, Thursday 28 February 2008  Australian Greens
Senator Christine Milne today called on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to
establish an inquiry into the apparent rorting of the Tasmanian
Community Forest Agreement grants scheme and freeze all funding through
the program pending the results of that inquiry.
		 
		Senator Milne said "In the dying days of the Howard
Government, taxpayers' money was thrown at the forest destruction
industry like there was no tomorrow. Rudd Labor tacitly supported this
at the time, and is continuing to promise a 30% increase in this grants
scheme in spite of its complete lack of transparency and due diligence.

		"Following the Auditor General's report today,
confirming the rorting of the scheme, the Rudd Government must freeze
the scheme and hold and inquiry, especially since, according to former
Minister, Eric Abetz, the Lennon Labor Government put its signature on
the grants as well as his.

		"The Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement grants scheme
was set up to assist the forest industry to make the transition out of
logging high conservation value native forests. Applications were
supposed to demonstrate how the new equipment purchased and projects
nominated would assist this transition and create new jobs.

		"Instead, the scheme became a slush fund overseen by
Senator Abetz, which gave out taxpayers' money to projects which clearly
did not fulfil any of these criteria."

		"As I asked in Senate Estimates last week, how could AW
Harvesting be given a grant and go into liquidation straight afterwards
if any assessment as to its commercial viability had been done?

		"How is it that many of the grants provided funding for
plant and equipment that was business-as-usual native forest logging and
not creating new jobs? The taxpayer should not be subsidising running
costs and maintenance for the logging industry.

		"It is an outrage that a high proportion of the
assessments did not cover the financial viability of the applicant or
the technical and operational viability of the proposed project - in
fact these factors were deliberately excluded."

		Contact: Tim Hollo on 0437 587 562


		Note - quote from the Auditor General's report:

		The ANAO's analysis of the assessments undertaken for
the 88 approved applications indicated that:
			*	For the three applications ($49,950, $68
312 and $102 585) there was only a DED assessment
			*	Six of the 14 approved applications
(43%) under $50 000 only had a preliminary assessment by DAFF against
the eligibility criteria for the programs, These assessments did not
cover the financial viability of the applicant or the technical and
operational viability of the proposed projects, areas normally covered
by the independent assessor or, to a lesser extent, by DED;
			*	10 of the 74 approved applications over
$50 000 were not referred to the independent assessor;
			*	the scope of the independent assessment
of 8 applications over $50 000 was restricted by the Advisory Committee.
For five of these applications, the financial viability of the applicant
was excluded from the assessment. For the other three applicantions,
aspects of the financial vialbility of the proposal were excluded.
			*	The total value of these 18 grants over
$50 000 was in excess of $13 million, with individual grants ranging
from $62 500 to $7.9 million. Three of these applications (with a total
value of $8.2 million) were not assessed by DAFF.




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Ebony Bennett
Media Adviser
Office of Greens Senator Bob Brown
Mobile: 0409 164 603
Ph: (02) 6277 3170
Fax: (02) 6277 3185	

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