Pine tree pension plan

1976 in the Humanities Building...

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Jack: You going running at midday?

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Jerome: There’s a meeting. On alternative pension plans.

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Jack: The government won’t look after us?

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Jerome: Today’s speaker is talking about planting a forest on ten-acre blocks. Better a lump-sum windfall than a promise you can’t be sure of.

_________

Ecological misfortune

Voice-over

Forty years later and the pension uncertainties are still an issue.

The solution is not clear-cut. Planting a ten-acre block in pinus radiata may have brought something of a lump-sum windfall.

Horror after harvest

But for many of us, our conscience is happier we stayed with the government pension.

Forests are monocultures, an ecological calamity. A cut down pine plantation is an abominable sight of slaughtered trees and pulverized native growth. There again, superannuation may be funded by radiata forests...

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