retiree's felled

Retirees can't see woods for Gunns' trees

by: Sue Neales, Rural Reporter
From:The Australian
October 19, 201212:00AM


Peter Mathew Source: The Australian


BILL and Marie Gooch prided themselves three years ago on having planned well for their retirement and the handover of their northern Tasmanian farm to the fourth generation of the combined Gee and Gooch families.

Now, just to make ends meet, the former cattleman is working as an occasional caddy at the golf course where he once used to play, their seaside holiday house is rented out as guest accommodation and his wife is teaching Pilates to local women's groups.

"But we're not whinging; we might be scrimping, but we've still got our health and each other and there are always people worse off than us," says Marie, 62, standing among the tall eucalypt trees on their Frankford farm northwest of Launceston that were meant to provide for the couple's comfortable retirement.

The collapse last month of Tasmania's largest timber company, Gunns, now in the hands of receivers and administrators, has left the Gooches in deep financial trouble.

Part of the administrator's job is now to examine the myriad investor-funded Management Investment Scheme (MIS) tree plantations that the company used to run, growing on land leased from farmers such as the Gooches -- and untangle the complex mess of the trees' future ownership, finances, management rights and responsibilities.

About 400ha of the Gooches' 2200ha farm, Wisedale, has been planted to eucalyptus trees managed by Gunns and another now-in-administration Tasmanian tree and timber company, Forest Enterprises Australia.

With most of the trees planted under MIS schemes paid for by investors, the Gooches were promised rents of between $225-$300 for every hectare of their farm leased to the plantations, paid quarterly by Gunns and FEA, which also prune, mange and fertilise the trees.

There were no labour requirements or maintenance costs involved with the tree lots; a particularly alluring idea for older farmers close to retirement like the Gooches.

But now the cheques have stopped flowing. All up, unpaid plantation land rents owed to the Gooches by FEA and Gunns tally a massive $480,000.

At least 300 other families in Tasmania have been stranded in a similar predicament with Gunns' financial demise this year.

It is estimated about 60 per cent of the 104,000ha of Gunns plantation estates established under MIS schemes were on land leased from farmers, who received a cheque in the mail of $50-$75 a hectare every three months. No rents have now been paid for more than three months.

There was further bad news this week. Specialist tree farming lawyer Will Edwards told an urgent meeting of Gunns' plantation farmers organised by the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association in Launceston on Tuesday that they touched the trees at their peril.

"While the Administrators (PPB Advisory) remain in place, you can't just reclaim possession of your land once the default period in the contract is reached," Mr Edwards said.

Many farmers came to the meeting assuming that, with unpaid rentals outstanding, they could legally bulldoze tree lots and could more profitably return to grazing or cropping.

Forestry accountant and adviser Bob Ruddick said the Gunns MIS woodlots legally belong to the 49,000 investors in the schemes who paid as much as $6000 a hectare. "So this is now a legal quagmire," Mr Ruddick said.