The statements made today by wealthy Sydney-sider Graeme Wood cannot go unchallenged.
Writing in the Mercury today*, Mr Wood criticised what he called the “business/political elite” for supporting fish farms – only the day after it was revealed he donated $630,000 to the Greens for last year’s federal election.
This is a businessman who is very much part of the elite – extremely wealthy, and now trying to tell the people of Tasmania that they cannot have jobs in aquaculture because they are near to his yet-to-be-built tourism business at the former Triabunna woodchip mill he bought and dismantled.
Mr Wood is supporting a secretive Green front group in a highly misleading campaign aimed at damaging our aquaculture industry to stop a fish farm at Okehampton Bay.
No one should seriously believe that either he or the Greens would stop there.
In fact, his statement that the “right place” for aquaculture is “seriously offshore or on land” makes very clear that Mr Wood is – despite his denials – opposed to the Tasmanian aquaculture industry and every job it provides.
Mr Wood’s quite evident belief in the well-worn Green lie that we cannot have tourism coexisting with other industries, whether they are forestry, mining or now aquaculture, would, if he had his way, cost thousands of jobs in this State.
Tasmanians have a right to know how much – on top of his donations to the Greens – Mr Wood is providing to the appallingly misnamed “Let’s Grow Tasmania’s Future” Green front group.
* Mercury, 2 February 2017, Pages 18-19