Bring It On – the Australian Greens Build Credibility?
Kate Crowley. Pic: of Christine Milne
14.05.12 4:54 am
Of Milne’s many pressing tasks, one of the most crucial and requiring all her negotiating acumen and skill at consensus politics will be to tend to the many shades of Green now jostling within the party. But for outgoing Senator Bob Brown, Whish-Wilson, the merchant banker, is no contradiction; he is an embodiment of ‘clean, green and clever’ that has inspired Greens for many decades. Brown is confident that, just like his family’s wines, Whish-Wilson will be a gold medal Greens Senator for Tasmania.
The disinfectant aroma of burns-tainted wine
Clive Stott http://www.cleanairtas.com
14.05.12 4:18 am
Wines made from grapes exposed to smoke exhibit various aroma characters with some smoke tainted wines containing ‘burnt’, ‘smoked meat’, ‘leather’, ‘disinfectant’, ‘charred’, ‘ashtray’ and ‘salami’ aromas.
‘Next month’ ... and ‘APRIL’ ...
The Hag
14.05.12 4:15 am
Sumatra: This land was once rainforest, but has now been cleared, burned, planted, harvested and burned again
What was that all about ... ? Hag was sitting in a downtown Hobart cafe in recovery from far too much Green Fairy absinthe, natch, when she overheard two middle-aged gentlemen discussing that ghastly proposition, a pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. She didn’t hear much ... other than refs to ‘next month’ and APRIL. Surely, god no, not this mob ...
• Richard Colbeck: Even Prof. West says forestry deal set to fail ...
• Gunns’ latest announcement: The Company requests that its suspension from trading continues until ...
Is Tasmania a failed state ... ?
Lindsay Tuffin
13.05.12 7:01 am
You have to wonder how much worse it can get ...
• Kim Booth MP: Secrecy around Hydro’s Malaysian dam consultancy, Tasmanian Power Users Left Exposed: The Tasmanian Greens today expressed concern over the lack of transparency around Hydro Tasmania’s risky hydroelectric dam building venture in Malaysia, which had potentially exposed the Tasmanian public to further power price rises. Greens Energy spokesperson Kim Booth MP said his Right to Information request regarding Hydro subsidiary Entura Energy’s consultancy work for the Bakun Dam project in Sarawak had been refused on questionable commercial in-confidence grounds. … First raised on TT here (with not a hint of mainstream media interest)
• Anne Cadwallader. in Comments: Yay to Estelle and Scarlett, this is a FANTASTIC state, just a few dead dinosaurs stinking it up a bit. The west winds will soon blow that all away. Composting works miracles. Perspective is very important ... maybe Tasmanian Times needs a parallel column, the beautiful and brave side of Tasmanian living.
• ABC Online: Power price relief ‘overdue’
• Marta Lenton, in Comments Lindsay’s analogy about the canary in the mineshaft resonates with me. To anybody that has lived interstate and overseas, it may be obvious that many of the same industry-government idiosyncrasies we see here in Tasmania are not unique, indeed they are rife in other places too, but because we are a smaller community, it is simply easier to see them here. A couple of Australian examples recently would be the whole mining tax kerfuffle, or the way that fraccing has menaced even highly populated areas of Sydney around Marrickville. When we ask whether Tasmania is a failed state, it depends on what metric we want to measure it by
Go back to the days of Electric Eric and The Emperor, says Howes
Matt Smith, Mercury.
12.05.12 6:40 am
“Voters in the eastern suburbs of Sydney who think they are working to help preserve some kind of pristine, untouched natural paradise have no understanding that this is a pulp mill being built in an industrial zone in an area where there is already significant industrial activity and has been for generations” … Mr Howes said the state needed to take the lead of previous state premiers such as Eric Reece and Jim Bacon and stand up to environmental groups. “There is a lot to be said for this state,” he said.
• Anne Cadwallader, in Comments: Go home Mr Howes. Being a “labor powerbroker” - look where that has got us!
• Cameron, in Comments: Finally, the attitude that we can simply continue using resources, unsustainably, as cash cows is also an economic throwback to the 1970s. The cargo cult mentality is, or should be, gone; Gunns has established that woodchip markets are highly volatile (or at best, unreliable) and—pay attention please, Mr Howes—we now need to think outside the box.
• John Biggs, in Comments: Well said Cameron, that just about covers it. Likewise Anne. ” ... no understanding that this is a pulp mill being built in an industrial zone in an area where there is already significant industrial activity and has been for generations.” What an ignorant statement. No distinction between heavy polluting industry and environmentally friendly primary industry, wine, fishing, tourism, the proceeds of which are far greater than anything the mill will produce and would put in jeopardy. How many experts have predicted the mill would be uneconomic in view of the dollar, the declining world market and the competition from S America and China? But Howes is only echoing what both major parties, state and federal, are saying about the mill. How can so many get it so wrong? The question that nags me: what’s in it for the Liberals, Labor and Howes in particular to push this patently uneconomic and divisive project? Can it simply be that they have a mid20th century mindset that their rigid little minds are unable to shake off? Kudelka’s cartoon (HERE) In today’s Mercury was right on, if a little too kind:
• Nick McKim: Tasmania needs to smarten up, not toughen up … populist grandstanding from an old-school unionist stuck in a last-century economic mindset.
• Anne Layton-Bennett, in Comments, Here we go again. So Mr Howes thinks: “that this is a pulp mill being built in an industrial zone in an area where there is already significant industrial activity and has been for generations.” Pretty clear he’s never visited the Long Reach site then. Because contrary to Gunns’ factsheet, (presumably the script Mr Howes is reading from) the mill site is NOT at Bell Bay. There is NO industrial plant or factory anywhere close to the mill site. Until Gunns bulldozed it the site was a native reserve for heaven’s sake. It is surrounded by bushland - crucial habitat for several threatened and endangered species. Like others before him who only ever want to mine, plunder and chop to oblivion Tasmania’s natural resources, Mr Howes does not appear to conceive there are many alternate ways of investing in Tasmania, providing employment and developing economic wealth, that don’t involve the brutal destruction of our environment.
• Tomas, in Comments: This is all becoming just a little too predictable. Editor posts article, rapid rabid pack (terms used advisedly) sets to insults, finger-pointing and general ill behaviour (that I suspect you wouldn’t see if all met face to face, but then again…). I wonder about this group of people who are poised to repeat themselves with the same slogans on any whiff of provocation, so quickly after something like this comes up on a web page. Editor, a suggestion, why don’t you see if you can get a couple of people lined up to produce some interesting comment when you put something like this up - doesn’t have to be balanced dear editor, but it should be polite, thoughtful and perhaps, oh god please just once in a while, not so repetitive in prose?
• Pete Godfrey, in Comments: No company wants to lend Gunns the money because we are a basket case of a state led by idiots who worship the shiny seats that a few privileged bums sit on. They spend too much time listening to lobbyists from companies who want to dig it up and sell it as Mr Howes does. So here are a couple of ideas that have sunk Tasmania in the mire. MIS schemes, Basslink, Selling everything that makes a profit such as Pine Plantations for short term political gain.
• Mike, Gary: Pulpmill site, Bell Bay or Long Reach?
• Richard Colbeck: Heed Paul Howes ...
Lucy Poskitt, The Examiner. Pic: of Greg L'Estrange
11.05.12 5:44 am
Managing director Greg L’Estrange said yesterday that Gunns had a strong commitment to sustainability, and the grant showed the company was working with the community to address issues of local interest and concern. Two years ago, Gunns welcomed a report that found there were no water quality issues with the George River, after an independent inquiry investigated concerns that toxicants from eucalypt plantations were affecting public health and the health of farmed oysters at St Helens.
‘New life ahead for Zombie’. Ta Ann ship protest
Paddy Manning BusinessDay, SMH
10.05.12 1:46 am
Greg L’Estrange: He’s done an enormous job
Gunns’s chief executive, Greg L’Estrange, whose contract expires in July, was overseas meeting investors this week and would not comment on the capital raising but has told BusinessDay the pulp mill was in the top quartile of cost-competitiveness worldwide.
• SMH, Wednesday, May 9: New life ahead for zombie Gunns, HERE: It is no surprise that Tasmanian forestry business Gunns still wants to build its $2.3 billion pulp mill at Bell Bay in the Tamar Valley. What is surprising is that anyone wants to fund it. Yet as BusinessDay reported on the weekend, a handful of key institutional shareholders are poised to do just that, backing a circa $400 million capital raising to stave off Gunns’ bankers and get the project moving along without an equity partner. Good money after bad? Not the way the instos see it. Gunns current share price – 16 cents, where it was suspended on March 9 – puts them in a difficult situation. The company’s reported asset backing is 88 cents a share and while there may be a degree of scepticism about that number, key fund managers believe the share price does not reflect anything like the value of Gunns’ 150,000-hectare hardwood plantation estate, let alone ascribe any value to the pulp mill project which has all necessary approvals.
• Thursday, May 10: Protest at Ta Ann timber vessel in Tasmania; Two arrests. Two released
• Senator Richard Colbeck ...
Geoff: It’s far worse ... Forestry Tasmania’s shrinking estate
John Lawrence
07.05.12 5:00 am
Doing it their way: Forestry Chief Bob Gordon and Minister Bryan Green
Forestry Tasmania is not as bad as Geoff Law suggests in a recent posting Forestry Tasmania: A compelling case for reform, HERE. It’s far worse.
ABC Online
04.05.12 4:20 am
Mr Whish-Wilson, 44, is the co-owner of a vineyard in the Tamar Valley and a finance lecturer at the University of Tasmania. He has been a vocal opponent of the proposed Gunns pulp mill in the state’s north.
• Nick McKim ...
• Whish-Wilson gets nod to replace Brown in Senate
• Canberra Times: Greens pick Tasmanian banker for Senate
• Peter Henning, in Comments: That is just one aspect of how Tasmania is hell-bent on missing the opportunities that come from understanding what is taking place in the broader world. The classic case, of course, is MIS plantations. All Tasmanian politicians were warned, again and again and again, about how this was a disaster waiting to happen, but they all ignored those warnings without exception, Labor, Liberal and Greens. They still do. Even while plantations once established by the collapsed MIS schemes are being returned to pasture and other agricultural alternatives, the mantra in support of Tasmania as Plantation Isle continues unabated.
• Peter Whish-Wilson: My Vision for Tasmania, as published in today’s Examiner
• Friends of the Tamar Valley: Pulp mill opponents wish him well
More proof needed for Gunns ‘equity offer’. What The Ex says ...
Kim Booth MP Greens Forestry Spokesperson MR
02.05.12 3:08 am
Geoffrey of the Tamar Valley
The Tasmanian Greens today said that the ASX should refuse Gunns Ltd any further extensions to its suspension until it can provide real evidence that its so-called “equity offer” is anything but a fantasy.
• Alison Andrews, Examiner: Pivotal Gunns decisions on hold ``The date for that announcement is yet to be set,’’ she said.
• Daniel Ferguson, in Comments: After witnessing how obviously loose the regulatory provisions are in the way the ASX allows the weekly suspension of trading by Gunns, gives me no confidence in investing in the Australian stock market. The big company’s certainly appear to be protected at the expense of the mug punter investor. I’m certainly not investing any more super into the stock market than I absolutely have to ever again.
Vica Bayley, Miranda Gibson. *Pictures: Matt Newton
01.05.12 6:00 am
Creating the Future: The Lark Distillery, Davey St Hobart, Today, Tuesday, May 1, 6.00 - 7.30 pm: From the protesting in the Tarkine, to chatting with Oprah and Larry King, Warren Macdonald comes full circle to give a global perspective on the alternate futures available for Tasmania. Warren lost both legs on Hinchinbrook Island in 1997. Ten months later he climbed Cradle Mountain, then Federation Peak the following year. He travels the world helping people adapt to change. Come along to the Lark for an inspiring hour with Warren as he discusses not just surviving radical changes, but turning challenges into strengths. Entry by donation. All proceeds raised will go towards supporting Miranda Gibson in the ObserverTree. For more info call Stephenie on 0417 699 917
• Media Update: 01/ 05/ 2012: Amputee adventurer inspired by tree top visit
• John Biggs, in Comments: Warren’s talk at Lark was just so inspiring! First his statement about wilderness and Connection, which was in itself the most moving raison d’etre for conservation, and then his personal story of being legless but NOT disabled. Then there’s Miranda’s story of dedication, courage, connection and perseverance. Put the two stories together, stitched up with the help of Mathew’s terrific photography, and you have the most powerful reason why FT and the greedy boys can’t win. The Power of Two!
Gunns: Is it all over, Red Rover? 5pm: The Company requests that its suspension from trading ...
John Hawkins, Chudleigh
30.04.12 3:00 pm
Will the ASX force Gunns back to the market on Tuesday if they say or do nothing? Will Gunns at the very last moment rise from the ashes on the Tasmanian Forest Floor? One Hour to Go!
• Rod, in Comments: Posted about 5pm. Nothing to add. No date for further updates. Nothing about the mill as promised. Not a good look for investors. How long will the ASX allow this procrastination to continue?
• John Hawkins, in Comments: Gunns have released a statement to the market after closure today 30 April 2012. It is interesting to recap their performance whilst in suspension.
• Tom Ellison, Wills Financial Group, in Comments: John Hawkins, #10, asks what purpose the ASX serves in a case like this. The ASX is simply a market operator, albeit one with a near monopoly. The suspension of a listed entity is governed by ASX Trading Rules, which are distinct from Corporations Law, which is governed by ASIC. It is quite appropriate for the ASX to continue a suspension in this situation, given Gunns shareholders are existing in an information vacuum. Whether or not Gunns is in breach of Corporations Law is, of course, a matter for ASIC, not the ASX. As an aside, shareholders are free to dispose of their shares by completing the appropriate off-market transfer documents. If they have a buyer, that is.
• James Hardie Misled Investors on Asbestos Fund, Court Rules:
Forestry Tasmania – A Compelling Case for Reform
Geoff Law
27.04.12 3:41 am
Rob Blakers, http://www.robblakers.com/
The list of Forestry Tasmania’s failings is therefore exhaustive and damning:
• Its status as a Government Business Enterprise and its legislated resource commitments mean that it cannot manage for environmental protection;
• Forestry Tasmania is failing to fulfil its obligations to operate as a successful business;
• Expert advice to Forestry Tasmania on biodiversity was manipulated in the Federal Court;
• The conversion of native forests to plantations has destroyed environmental values (biodiversity, water conservation and scenery)and consumed over $100 million but failed to deliver an appropriate resource to industry;
• Poor business decisions have ruined local sawmill businesses in Scottsdale without generating a commensurate number of jobs elsewhere;
• Forestry Tasmania’s joint ventures are not accountable to Parliament and are arguably exempt from the Forestry Act;
• Public resources on public land have been sold off to the private sector without the approval of Parliament;
• Contracts signed by Forestry Tasmania with Ta Ann cannot sustainably be met from State forest.
Ban health and climate-hazard forest burns. Four protest arrests
Jenny Weber Huon Valley Environment Centre http://www.huon.org http://www.nativeforest.net MR.
26.04.12 3:00 am
Pic: Matt Newton, http://www.matthewnewton.com.au/
Flare Protest and online action in Tasmania The community has demonstrated today to call for a ban on the environmentally disastrous logging burns. The so called “regeneration burns” turn the world’s cleanest air into a health hazard. The entire state of Tasmania has to suffer air pollution and climate impacts, because Forestry Tasmania and the logging industry continue to pursue the archaic, ecologically unsound practice of logging and burning in the forests
Pic: Matt Newton, http://www.matthewnewton.com.au/
• Thursday: 15 conservationists from Still Wild Still Threatened, Huon Valley Environment Centre and Code Green are conducting a “sit in” at Forestry Tasmania’s Hobart headquarters, dressed as Tasmanian devils. Four Protest Arrests
Greens cry wolf on Integrity Commission
Matthew Holloway.
26.04.12 2:43 am
It is a sad indictment on the Greens that they did not come out questioning government departmental transparency outside of the issue of the Tasmanian Government’s collusion with Gunns.
• Watch YouTube videos of theIntegrity Commission in action ...
Last Roll of the Gunns’ Dice ... as Pulp World burns
Mercury. Pic: of Greg L'Estrange
26.04.12 2:00 am
Gunns is seeking to raise $400 million in its last roll of the dice to get the mill project built. Managing director Greg L’Estrange indicated it would be at least a week before the equity-raising was finalised.
• Alison Andrew, The Examiner: Gunns set to make pulp mill announcement
• Wednesday: via Dr Warwick Raverty: A wonderful and enterprising bod has kick-started an Avaaz petition re stopping the Tamar Valley pulp mill. Please encourage all your contacts – nationally & globally - to sign & circulate!
• Bloomberg Businessweek: Stora Enso Q1 profit halves to $97 million
• Wood Resource Quarterly: China log and lumber imports down in 1Q/12 ...
• BusinessSpectator: What’s in a name change?
• Garry Stannus: Gunns and Vica ...
• Richard Colbeck
Forestry Tasmania ... and The Yellow Brick Road
John Powell, Myrtlebank, Golden Valley.
23.04.12 4:29 am
By early 2012, Lara finds the Yellow Brick Road in ruins at the hands of the evil Nome King. It is presumed in the legend (Return to Oz) that after she defeats him, the Road and the Emerald City is restored. What will be the outcome?
More bizarre pulp mill land titles - the depth limitation
Laurie Levy
23.04.12 4:08 am
The three dams for the project themselves are expected to contain 15 megalitres, 9 megalitres and 3 megalitres of water respectively and this would probably involve a fair amount of digging. However the stormwater ponds would most likely be shallow. A court case is presently underway over the permit for the Stormwater Ponds and the proposed Dam. Presumably if there was any real reason for the existence of the depth limitation title as to “savings of wells and springs” then this would have come to the notice of the legal teams involved. The question therefore remains as to why the depth limitation title is still in existence when it could easily have been removed when the Crown Lands Act came into existence and protected the Crown’s interest in 1976?
Clive Stott http://www.cleanairtas.com
23.04.12 2:17 am
The following ‘statement of fact’ appeared in Gunns Pulp Mill Project Newsletter #6
DISMISSED! Paul Harris ‘called out’. The Stench. DISMISSED: Court rejects Gunns
Russell Pearce, Acting Chief Executive Officer, Integrity Commission
20.04.12 4:28 am
For the reasons identified and canvassed above, the various complaints to the Integrity Commission regarding the pulp mill are dismissed
Download, read for yourself: HERE
• ABC Online: Watchdog unable to probe pulp mill claims
• Matthew Denholm, The Australian: Tasmanian pulp mill escapes toothless watchdog One complainant, Friends of the Tamar Valley, last night called for a review of the commission’s powers, or at least of the interpretation of them relied on to deny a full investigation. Vanessa Bleyer, lawyer for the group, said: “The IC is saying that it is a toothless tiger. We have a situation where the misconduct complained of escapes scrutiny because the IC thinks it doesn’t have the powers to investigate it. “(It means) the IC is not there to do what it was created to do: investigate alleged misconduct by public officials.”
• Anne Layton-Bennett, Friends of the Tamar Valley: Tasmania’s Integrity Commission is a powerless misnomer
• Simon Warriner, in Comments: I do not really care what a bunch of emasculated bureaucrats can or cannot do. What I know is this: The prostitution of our parliament by our elected representatives that occurred was certainly not the definition of the democracy I was taught our Anzacs fought and died to protect. That is something we should ponder on as we pause to remember in a few days. We might also use it to calibrate our response to those hypocritical alleged representative politicians who attend commoration services. Lest we forget.
• Paul O’Halloran: Paul Harriss must apologise over Ta Ann “We checked the statement with our counterparts in WWF-Malaysia. WWF-Malaysia have confirmed they did not say, nor did they ever imply or convey, that they consider Ta Ann to be the pinnacle of forest operations in Malaysia.” “Paul Harriss needs to clarify whether, as it appears from the Hansard, he attempted to claim that WWF-Malaysia endorsed Ta Ann’s forestry operations in Malaysia.” “He must come clean on whether he simply made up the claim as an attempt to greenwash a timber company from which he’s been a direct beneficiary.” “If it turns out that Mr Harriss has misrepresented the WWF’s position regarding Ta Ann, then he must immediately correct the public record and apologise to the organisation and its members.” “Does Mr Harriss represent the voters of the Tasmanian Upper House seat of Huon, or does he prioritise the interests of a foreign timber company with a questionable environmental and human rights record?”
• Kim Booth, Stench Lingers Around Dodgy Pulp Mill Approval: “It’s patently ridiculous that the Commission is unable to investigate the very claims that led to it being set up in the first place.” “As a result, none of the matters surrounding alleged interference with the RPDC and the alleged interference with the appointment of a magistrate have been able to be investigated in any significant way. “The stench of corruption will contaminate Tasmania’s politics until the matter of the pulp mill approval process is dealt with once and for all.”
• Bob McMahon, in Comments: What I didn’t say, because I knew the Examiner would hightail it into the hills to get away from this one, is that a proper job for the IC would be an ‘investigation’ into the fact that Paul Harriss admitted in the Legislative Council that he received money from Ta Ann, at the very least, a questionable act worthy of appropriate investigation and censure, which in my view should lead to explusion by the Legislative Council (although I would not at this stage go this far ... a cynic would call it a bribe ...). He called it ‘pecuniary interest’ but that is a misnomer in this case. However, the IC by its own admission doesn’t ‘investigate’. The question is, does anyone have the faintest idea what the IC actually does? Is the IC up to denying that it is no more than a receptacle into which public money is poured to keep a lid on any complaints that come across its collective desks?
• Barbara Etter, in Comments: I am happy to assist in enhancing the current legislation.
• Geraldine Allan, in Comments: When one reviews the role of Governor and wimpish processes of how that office deals with requests for assistance or intervention, it is just another useless and costly window dressing. Anyone who does persist with a valid request for a satisfactory outcome usually receives the go away worn-out statement — “Regrettably I must add that it would serve no useful purpose to continue to correspond with you on this issue.”
• Friday: Peter McGlone, Tasmanian Conservation Trust: Gunns’ costs order application dismissed
• Kim Booth: Gunns Must Come Clean With Investors on Project
• AFR: There’s rot at the core of the Apple Isle
SATURDAY:
• The watchdog that can only watch. Rick Snell ...
SUNDAY:
• Mr Wightman said the government took matters of integrity seriously.
Today
• Feathering nests or furthering Tassie ... ? • Without fear or favour • Legco: Labor crushed • Andrew Nikolic and The New Examiner. 48,000 visit New Examiner ... • Is Tasmania a failed state ... ?
• SMOKE POLLUTION COMPLAINTS GET HAND-BALLED AGAIN • Forest Moratorium?- Public meeting • Jo Quail’s Florentine fundraiser concert • A day in the Styx • NO PULP MILL Public Meeting Wednesday 1 December, 7.30 Sharp
When will cronyism be free to fully declare itself as an integral and accepted part of Tassie society?
It’s…
