Logging money talks loudly

Extracts from the AFR article:

“I guess I should have been shocked, but I wasn’t because that’s how business is done in Tasmania.”

Bob Cheek, former leader of the Liberal Party in Tasmania, is referring to the night he was summoned to the Launceston office of John Gay, chief executive of Gunns timber company.

In his book Confessions of a Ferret Salesman, Cheek says that just weeks before the last state election in 2002, Gay offered him a donation to the Liberal Party.

“$10,000 no strings attached and another $20,000 if I could guarantee we [the Liberal Party] would continue with our policy of supporting logging in old-growth forests and clearfelling,” Cheek says.

Cheek took the $10,000 donation on behalf of the party.

But he says he declined the $20,000 offered by Gay because he personally wanted to change the policy, even though he knew his Liberal colleagues would not — “they were all too subservient to Gunns, especially Rene Hidding” — now leader of the Tasmanian Liberal Party.

“I didn’t see [the $20,000 offer] as a bribe because I was only leader of the opposition, and that’s how things are done in Tasmania,” Cheek tells The Australian Financial Review.

With Tasmanians going to the polls on March 18, Gay is unwilling to comment on Cheek’s claim. But a spokeswoman for Gay says: “That is not how Mr Gay remembers the night.”

Gunns owns 185,000 hectares of freehold land in Tasmania and manages more than 110,000 hectares of plantations. The company employs about 1700 people and has a turnover of about $700 million.

And:

Tasmanians for a Better Future has funded the two commercials, and print and radio ads to follow.

The only authorisation at the end of the ads is by Tony Harrison, head of Hobart advertising agency Corporate Communications.

Harrison told the AFR he was employed by “a group of concerned Tasmanians. The group began with about 20 people and it’s grown to about 50 or 60.”

He refused to name anyone involved in the group or what kind of budget the group had to run its political campaign. But he confirmed the group was not incorporated, was not a political party and was not a business or a charity.

And:

Harrison’s public relations company works for Tasmania’s best known organisations including, Powerco, Gunns, TT-Line, TasPorts and Hobart Airports and he has previously worked for two Tasmanian premiers, Doug Lowe and Robin Gray.

The commercial features property owned by timber giant Gunns. The AFR asked Gunns if the company, or any of its directors, had been involved in the ad campaign and if, apart from allowing Harrison to use one of its properties, it also contributed funds to the campaign.

And:

The issue is controversial in Tasmania because of the way it echoes the 1989 royal commission’s investigation of a group called Concerned Citizens for Tasmania.

The commission found this “fictitious” group was conceived by then-premier Robin Gray, who is now on the board of Gunns. “The deception which attended the placement of the advertisement and petition was deliberate … ” the
commission found. It “was deliberately designed to mislead the community into believing that a group of well meaning and concerned people had come together spontaneously to express their concern, and to invite others to join them in voicing their protest about the Labor/Green Accord”.

Read the article: HERE (you’ll have to pay)

The Wilderness Society writes to the A-G:

MEDIA RELEASE 3 March 2006

CALL FOR ATTORNEY-GENERAL TO INVESTIGATE CHEEK’S CLAIMS

Was alleged $20,000 offer to the Liberals a bribe?

The Wilderness Society has written to the Attorney-General, Judy Jackson, asking her to investigate a claim by former Liberal Leader Bob Cheek concerning an alleged offer of $20,000 to the Liberal Party by Gunns boss John Gay.

The claim was reported in today’s Australian Financial Review (p.80) and appears in Mr Cheek’s book Cheeky – Confessions of a Ferret Salesman (p.368).

Mr Cheek says in the book that a cheque for $20,000 to the Liberal Party was offered by Mr Gay on the basis that the Liberals continued to support their existing forestry policy. (At the time, Mr Cheek was attempting to negotiate a policy to phase out clearfelling of oldgrowth.)

“The Wilderness Society wants to know whether the alleged $20,000 offer was true, and if true, whether it constitutes a bribe,” said Tasmanian Campaign Coordinator, Geoff Law. “We urge the state’s chief law officer investigate this issue.”

“We also call on Liberal Leader Rene Hidding and Labor Premier Paul Lennon to publicly disclose whether they have had discussions with Gunns in which forest policy and donations to the party have been linked.”

“And we call on Gunns to disclose now just how much money they plan to donate to Liberal and Labor in this election.”

Gunns donated over $50,000 to the Labor Party shortly after the July 2002 state election. It also donated $25,000 to the pro-Liberals Free Enterprise Foundation at that time.

“And, given Mr Cheek’s account of Gunns’ approach to the Liberals, the Wilderness Society also wants to know whether a similar approach was made to the then Premier, Jim Bacon, and if discussions with Gunns occurred in which forest policy and donations were linked,” said Mr Law.

The letter to Judy Jackson: wildos_Gay_March_06.doc

The Mercury’s report: Gunns donations questioned