Mont, Kenny? And The Examiner eulogy

5 Comments

1. 

   Cameron Hindrum

   January 31, 2005 at 05:22

   Is a Pulp Mill worth the intolerance?

   In the Sunday Examiner of January 30th there appeared a 40-page advertising feature extolling the virtues of the totally environmentally friendly world’s best practice pulp mill that Gunns Ltd’s Executive Chairman John Gay has his heart set on. This mill seems likely to be built, if it goes ahead, at Bell Bay, not far from George Town in the northern reaches of the Tamar River. The advertising feature strained to set the facts out, dispel any fears that the Pulp Mill would present any threat of harm to the Tasmanian environment and generally sell it as a development without which Tasmania would be left in the economic Dark Ages.

   All this comprehensive advertising is undone, however, by the ad that appears on Page 5 of the feature. The ad features a picture of an unidentified man with the caption “This bloke supports the establishment of a pulp mill in Tasmania…the associated employment and the resulting flow of benefits.” Then there is a cartoon, about which more later. At the bottom of the ad is a statement: “We will leave it up to you as to who you support.” And then, with breathtaking arrogance, the question: “Do you support Tasmania or not?” Conveniently, there is nothing to identify who the ad was placed by, leaving open to conjecture the identity of the ‘we’ in that statement. Is it the Executive board of Gunns? The Forestry Industries Association? The George Town Anglican Church Ladies’ Guild?

   But if a patronising statement and a provocative question isn’t enough, the cartoon — by Examiner cartoonist Mike Woods — is an appalling piece of stereotypical Greenie-bashing. It features a bespectacled, unshaven character dressed as though as he has just stepped out of the Tarkine, carrying three placards that say, respectively: Ban This, Ban That and Ban Something Else.

   The Examiner, of course, is the newspaper Rod Scott (was editor of before applying) for his position as Paul Lennon’s chief of staff. Scott as editor published a series of blatantly biased articles in support of the Bacon/Lennon Government’s forestry policy, and on at least one occasion deriding the Green movement as needing the forestry issue as without it they have no raison d’etre. He led the charge against the ABC’s Four Corners program Lords of the Forests, which aired in Tasmania early last year and was savaged by Scott in his weekly editorial column in the Sunday Examiner. (Scott no doubt felt vindicated when complaints about this program’s bias were upheld recently.) In that column, though, he attacked the journalistic standards of reporter Ticky Fullerton, who prepared and presented the program: surely a hypocritical act, from the man who within weeks announced that he was leaving the editor’s chair for the plum job in Lennon’s office. I am happy to report that his replacement, Dean Southwell, at least attempts to be objective. continued below
2. 

   Cameron Hindrum

   January 31, 2005 at 05:23

   Is a pulp mill worth the intolerance? (continued)

   Scott’s disdain for pro-conservation arguments and actions is symptomatic of a wider insidious problem that the Green movement in this state will continue to have to deal with. Attitudes against environmental activism are still shot through with seemingly impenetrable levels of intolerance. I say still, because this is nothing new. The Green movement in Tasmania can be traced back to the late 1970s with the formation of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society by Dr Bob Brown and others, as a response to the drowning of Lake Pedder earlier that decade. Its halcyon days arrived quickly with a victory of international significance after the Franklin River Blockade of 1982-3, and since then it has maintained a consistent presence in Tasmania, where more recently it has gone into battle for the old growth forests of the Styx Valley and the Tarkine. The value of the victory over the Franklin River cannot be overestimated. Then Premier, Robin Gray, was determined to build the dam at any cost. He labelled the protesters who flooded into the site to stymie construction work as extremeists and guerrillas. In January 1983 he rejected a $500-million offer from then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser to stop work on the dam. He even threatened to secede from the Commonwealth if the federal government interfered; in the end, someone must have talked him out of this. As history records, a federal election in March 1983 delivered Bob Hawke’s Labor government to power, in part because of a campaign run by conservation groups in marginal seats acting on Hawke’s promise to stop the dam if he was elected.

   As history also records, Hawke stood by his word and legislated to stop the dam being built. Tasmania’s south-west wilderness had become a World Heritage Area in December 1982, although Gray ignored this and proceeded with the dam anyway. A high court appeal against Hawke’s decision by the Gray government lost and by the middle of 1983 the Gordon below Franklin Dam had been stopped. (Gray accepted a $270 million dollar compensation package from the new federal government, considerably less than the first offer of compensation offered by Fraser, and one can only imagine the ignominy with which Gray accepted the lesser amount from a Labor Prime Minister.)

   And what is Robin Gray doing with his time these days, now that the Premier’s office is a distant memory? Well, among other things, he serves on the Executive Board of Gunns Ltd. What a stretch that must be. He couldn’t drown the forests, so he’s now supervising their destruction by chainsaw and chipper.

   The thing that characterised Gray’s time as Premier, particularly during the Franklin Dam protests, was his immunity to debate. He didn’t need to listen to anyone’s arguments: he had made a decision and that was it. This refusal to consider an alternative, not to mention opposing, opinion is one of the big flaws in pro-forestry, pro-development arguments that arise in this state with reliable regularity. Most recently it was given frightening new form by the launching of a $6.5 million writ against the Gunns 20. John Gay’s motives in taking this action have to scrutinised very, very closely. The company turned over $105 million last year, so it’s not short of a quid. So why do it? To buy silence. To play the arrogant schoolyard bully. To eradicate any opinion that doesn’t endow with its rampant capitalistic empire-building with common sense.

   There is a sense of inevitability about this pulp mill. It is an understatement to say that the Lennon government supports it. Gunns are going to great lengths to ensure that all the umpires (to use a metaphor from the 40-Page Propaganda Gazette) are kept happy. The failed attempt to build a pulp mill in Tasmania in 1989 led to the rise of the Tasmanian Greens as a political entity, and it may be that in the intervening years technology has improved to the point where a “clean green” pulp mill is in fact feasible. Tasmania may even need one now. If Gunns are going to sell this venture to the Tasmanian community, however, they will need to stop endorsing divisive and deliberate attitudes that only drive a wedge deeper into the argument. Passions about Tasmania’s environment run very deep indeed, deeper than Lake Pedder and deeper than the bottom line on Gunns’ annual profit statement. Intolerance will not win Gay or Gray or Lennon or any of the other Suits who run this state any friends in the forests.

   Cameron Hindrum is a teacher and writer who lives in Launceston. His first novel The Blue Cathedral (which deals in part with the Franklin River Blockade of 1982-3) is currently under consideration by a Melbourne publisher. He is he director of the annual Tasmanian Poetry Festival, held in Launceston in October every year, and he serves on the Committee of Management of the Tasmanian Writers Centre.
3. 

   phill Parsons

   February 5, 2005 at 01:56

   Gunns need a pulpmill for 3 reasons.

   The first is because of the return on exporting unprocessed wood can be bettered by exporting them as unprocessed pulp. Value is added so that the low price paid for woodchips becomes, for a time, a higher price paid for woodcips without the waste, with some additional moisture and reduced costs of shipping. Success with this project will impact on share value and therefore more on the personal wealth of a larger shareholder.

   The second is a social one, Gunns having taken a position that it is a Tasmanian company with Tasmania’s interests at heart it can meet the economic imperative and make the big investor impact. The apparent return of industrialization can even be lengthened and repeated by building 2 mills at the nodes of each wood supply area.

   The third is political. Entrenching a special arrangement with the power that is, Lennon and Howard, whilst trying to demonstrate that the green claims have no validity. And if they do it is a win, win because it was always the plan to upgrade to a closed loop mill.

   Here is a prediction about the building of this timber empire. The end product will be made here. The determinant will be the return on paper over the return on pulp. The timing will be governed foremost by growing the share value but also by the debt to equity ratio.

   The high conservation value forests will either be destroyed or saved by this time and still dum and dee, the parliamentary instruments responsible for all environmental dilemmas being put to us as the only choices.

   There are 2 other instruments. That of business who often say we cannot do it any other way then end up doing it another way because it makes more money and that of government who always say and end up doing what they are told if they agree with it.

   And of course their are the billions of us who have to change it to survive.
4. 

   nudger jones

   March 30, 2005 at 06:42

   Someone has seen Monty, this is tree-mendous news. I thought he had disappeared off the face of the universe.

   Monty old son is it really worth it? You could still be the venerable all-things-Tasmanian correspondent for The Australian, sipping a latte in Salamanca and occasionally filing a story.

   Perhaps old mate, old bean, old thing, you couldn’t see the forests for all those bloody trees.
5. 

   nudger jones

   March 31, 2005 at 09:19

   Mmmmm, re-reading what lies above, I see that Rod Scott has also gone over to what many consider the dark side. He was always a bit of a worry was Rod, the poor man’s Michael Courtney. I think Rod even hated driving on the left hand side of the road, poor bugger, so full of hatred of the Left was he. He utterly despises the ABC, and no doubt all those trendy, arty farty, creative class types coming to live in our State must really give him the shiddly-dits. You can’t build your economy around them. Unlike wood-chips, they think for themselves and talk back.

   I wonder if he’s noticed his boss is left-handed?

   All these journos ending up in positions of official power is a bit of a worry. How can cobbling together 500 to 1000 words a day qualify you to run a state? Perhaps the time has come for Government to look beyond the scribbling classes when it comes to employing bureaucrats. Let’s have more piss-pots like the bloke who missed the flight to Flinders and gave Ken Bacon the shits.

   Well done to the journo who wrote that yarn. If she keeps up this sort of Walkley Standard work she’ll be being head-hunted as head of the Premier’s Office.

   Of couse the journo who really is running Tasmania is not very far from the controls of this web-site.

   Vote one, Tuffin!