GREAT SOUTHERN - GONE SOUTH

Now we know for sure: money doesn't grow on trees. As foreshadowed last week, the receivers moved in yesterday to try to sort out the mess that is Great Southern. The company's debt stands at $826 million. The environmental costs to us all are probably incalculable. And another 240,000 hectares of Blue Gum plantation ends up . . . going nowhere?

UPDATE: Here's a Kangaroo Island perspective. And then there's this prescient Stateline KI report from 2006. No doubt there will be a lot more fallout nation-wide. But, in the confined spaces of KI, the long-term loss of good farm country and the sorry tale of such schemes are starkly revealed.

MAYBE NOT SO GREAT AFTER ALL

In WA they've got a Great Southern wine region. Here in SA there is a Great Southern Railway. And there's another mob called Great Southern who look after investment schemes in assorted corners of 'rural' Australia. The schemes include timber plantations that have gobbled up big chunks country everywhere from WA to NSW and the Tiwi Islands to Kangaroo Island. According to some observers the fate of some of these tax minimisation cum investment outfits doesn't look too flash. Businesses come and go. Nothing new there. But if these schemes fail, what happens to the trees in the ground? What about the productive land covered in Blue Gums busily sucking the water table dry? On what balance sheet do the losses to nature and the community appear?