Everyone has lost through the sorry tale of the Timbercorp managed investment scheme: investors, governments, communities, farmers, contractors .... not to mention every taxpayer in the country.
So it is time for Canberra to show some leadership and common sense and kill the tax avoiding, market distorting managed investment sector.
How can a tax avoidance scheme be allowed to artificially lift the price of land and water and the food and fibre produced from them, when the real farmers have to compete with the MIS in an unfair market?
The coalition that sold out to the fierce forest lobby and allowed the continuation of forestry MIS should hang their heads in shame.
The fall out from Timbercorp's failure and maybe that of Great Southern, Australia's largest landowner, will be felt in many ways throughout the country areas this cancer has infected.
Any mug willing to see through the glossy prospectus could see this was going to fail and the financial crisis was just the end, not the start of the trouble.
Not only did investors stop the gravy train when tax no longer became a problem but the timber MIS sector was never focussed on timber and the downstream industries it could have created, it was simply about tax.
What other reason is there for the lack of mills ... not to mention markets?
Not a sod has been turned for a chipping or port facility and the Japanese turned sour on woodchip imports many months ago.
Pity we have 100,000 hectares of bluegums to be harvested over the next few years.
We have turned good dairy, cropping and sheep country into forests. Kevin Rudd, close the MIS timber loophole, stop the gravy train now and let people get off.
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