Will Hodgman

Bryan Green has challenged me to explain our forest policy to timber workers - I will, but let's make it a debate at Huonville, Triabunna, Scottsdale and Smithton.

He should put up, or shut up - or will he run away from these debates just like Premier Giddings did a month ago?

The fact is we have always acknowledged there are short term market issues - but the solution to this is not to permanently cut supply, as the job-destroying IGA is doing.

Mr Green was at the same meetings in Singapore with wood buyers as me, and he knows what was said about the importance of supply security to our markets.

Imagine if Western Australia had locked up the Pilbara before the recent mining boom because of "market issues".

It would have been an act of economic madness, just as the job destroying forest deal is.