ALTHOUGH a J.P. Morgan economist has described the latest national gross domestic product figures as "underwhelming", Tasmania's surge from recession to equal top economic performer in the country is worth a shout, and Premier Lara Giddings, together with her hard-pressed Labor-Green colleagues, will be shouting, "Tasmania's turned the corner."
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The big hope from this optimism will be that, at last, there are jobs on the horizon, particularly for the hundreds of young people about to leave school.
For that possibility to become a reality, very significant private capital investment will be required.
On that score, the project announced for the closed Triabunna woodchip facility is a good new/slightly less bad news story.
There will be "new private capital investment" but in some respects barely compensating for the huge losses brought about by the almost total collapse of sections of the forestry industry.
Welcome though it will be for that part of the East Coast, this tourism-based project adds another competitor into an industry that will require substantially increased consumer interest for all the players to keep out of the red.
More and more it becomes clearly obvious that governments must re-energise the potential that was the Tamar Valley pulp mill project.
- TREVOR COWELL, Perth.
