Labor’s Black Forest

Tasmanian Times has been told of extensive polling in Tasmania’s North East by the Federal Liberal Party …

And the result, the informant says, is disastrous for Labor … federally and state.

It has bought a very big grin to the face of Bass Liberal incumbent Michael Ferguson. Grimaces for Labor hopeful Jodie Campbell.

Launceston Deputy Mayor Campbell won pre-selection as Labor candidate after an internal factional fight. Ald. Campbell was beaten in the first ballot for the position. Scottsdale High School principal Steve Reissig was originally selected but he pulled out of the race in October.

Bass has been national bellwether in federal elections, tenaciously fought over and deeply significant to federal political fortunes. But with the Auspine disaster* compounding deepening distrust of Lennon’s Monkey to Gunns’ Organ-Grinder — Mill backflip fury and $180,000 secret payout and The Oz: the drunken sailor … — it would be a very brave Labor polly or would-be polly who would even approach the boundary of Scottsdale.

Which brings us to a little history. It’s instructive to recall Premier Paul Lennon’s loving embrace of of Federal Liberal strategy at the last federal poll: This is from the chapter The Black Forests in Loner – Inside a Labor Tragedy by Bernard Lagan:

Shortly after arriving in Hobart on Monday 4 October 2004, Latham met Lennon in the Tasmanian cabinet office. It was there that he outlined the full detail of the policy. Lennon was aghast. Latham said he would be announcing that Labor intended to lock the loggers out of 240,000 hectares of high conservation value, old-growth forests. A scientific panel would be appointed to assess the forests in order to confirm that they needed protecting. The great forests of the Tarkine Wilderness, the Dazzler Range, the Blue Tier and the Styx Valley were on Latham’s list. To compensate the timber workers who would be affected, Latham said he would be promising $800 million to fund new job opportunities in Tasmania and to modernise the industry. The plan was politically audacious. It was a deep shade of green and matched the 240,000 hectares of forest that the Wilderness Society and the ACF wanted saved when Peter Garrett had been the ACF’s president. These green groups were Lennon’s enemies. At the press conference, Latham was asked about Lennon’s reaction [to his bold election policy]. He delicately said that Lennon would speak for himself, but that the Premier had been happy for Latham to come to Tasmania.

Flanked by senior public servants, Lennon had in fact fumed at the meeting with Latham, telling him the Labor Party would now lose two seats in Tasmania at the coming weekend’s election because of the logging policy. Latham replied that Lennon was talking rubbish. He said Labor’s research showed most people in Tasmania, as well as those on mainland Australia, supported locking away the forests. Lennon ended the meeting by saying the best he could do was to go home and not make any remarks about Latham’s policy. The loathing was mutual.

Surly timber workers, goaded by their union, and the logging truck owners with their convoys of expensive rigs were waiting for Latham outside the Tasmanian government offices. Michael O’Connor and other CFMEU officials had been incensed by a policy they considered an underhand, dishonest sell-out of timber workers. They also believed Latham’s actions had trashed the assurances they had gained as the price for supporting Peter Garrett’s nomination for the federal seat of Kingsford-Smith. There was no quelling their rage. O’Connor told Michael Cooney from Latham’s office to shove the policy up his arse when Cooney called to brief him. The ACTU president Sharon Burrow got the same advice when she phoned O’Connor in a vain attempt to hose down the CFMEU by arguing Latham’s policy wasn’t all that bad. But the ACTU federal secretary, Greg Combet, who also called O’Connor, appeared to understand the union’s outrage.

O’Connor and his union now reversed and savaged the Labor Party, publicly denouncing Latham’s forest policy. The meeting of timber workers outside the Tasmanian Parliament in Hobart condemned Latham. O’Connor told the media it was clear Tasmanian workers and their families were being sold out to appease the Greens and The Wilderness Society. The next day’s national newspapers carried pictures of forlorn truck drivers and their families. The reports said they were facing ruin. Dick Adams, MHA for the Tasmanian federal seat of Lyons, turned upon his leader, saying he was devastated and would not blame Labor supporters if they now voted for another party. Latham was being eaten alive by his own just 5 days before the 2004 federal election. Worse, the union [CFMEU] snuggled up to Howard. The CFMEU launched a campaign in support of the Coalition provided Howard promised not to change the Regional Forestry Agreement which sanctioned Tasmania logging.

This was the catastrophe of the Latham 2004 election campaign and John Howard was watching it unfold on TV with his advisors on the upper floors of the Brisbane Sheraton. Howard’s office had been working for weeks on policies for the Tasmanian forests. The Prime Minster was under pressure from within. The NSW liberal senator Bill Hefferman was pushing for his party to adopt a bold Green policy. Howard’s office had developed several policy scenarios for the Tasmanian forests, ranging from minimal change to substantial. With Latham’s policy announcement, Howard’s staff rapidly began dusting off their plans and they opened a frantic round of telephone negotiations with the forest industry’s employers and unions.

To set his policy well apart from Latham’s, the Prime Minister wanted to go to Tasmania and announce a policy that was specific and did not rely on having another inquiry. He wanted to be able to give loggers certainty while gaining points with the ‘doctors’ wives’ in the capital cities for protecting high conservation value forests. He had a policy ready to go three days after Latham and he set out for Launceston.

Howard and his advisors were unsure of what to expect from the from the forestry workers who had again gathered to make their claims, only this time in greater numbers than they had for Latham [in Hobart 3 days earlier]. Some had been drinking. But Howard won rapturous applause from the Launceston crowd of 3000. He was armed with only a modest industry compensation package — about $50 million — and the outline of a plan that he said could lock up 170,000 hectares of land from the loggers. Much of it turned out later to be either land most unlikely to be logged or land that was not forested. Howard received his loudest applause, however, when he said his policy would not require inquiry. Later that day the unions publicly endorsed the Howard Plan over Latham’s

Labor’s fraught venture into Tasmania’s forests was completed on election night when Labor lost the northern Tasmanian seats of Bass and Braddon. It was the beginning of the party’s backwards slide.

* What Auspine said
Earlier:
Rayonier revelations ‘scandalous’:

MEDIA RELEASE
RAYONIER REVELATIONS “SCANDALOUS” The revelations made by former Rayonier and Forestry Tasmania manager Tony Stonjek in the North Eastern Advertiser (8 March 2006) have confirmed the worst fears of the softwood industry. Local processors, contractors, employees and communities reliant upon the Tasmanian softwood industry have every right to be alarmed.

Mr Stonjek revealed that Rayonier’s two fundamental aims are related to extremely ambitious financial hurdle rates for the joint venture partners and Rayonier. The performance standards relate to annual rates of return and profitability for the joint venture partners (Forestry Tasmania and GMO) and the manager (Rayonier). Mr Stonjek described the achievement of these targets as being “absolutely nonnegotiable”.

According to Mr Stonjek, should these targets not be achieved, Rayonier will pack up and go home.

The targets revealed by Mr Stonjek make no mention of industry sustainability and jobs. No mention is made of compliance with the Forestry Tasmania Ministerial Charter. No mention is made of the Forestry Act and the legal requirement to ensure that employment is treated as an important consideration in examining options for the sale of publicly owned resource.

I guess after you have achieved your financial key performance indicators there is no room for anything else. It would appear that the vision for a world class industry has been
discarded in favour of some short term and aggressive financial hurdles.

Mr Stonjek also revealed that Rayonier persisted with a softwood sawlog export program and an unsustainable harvesting rate in the full knowledge that local processors would be
subjected to volume reductions in subsequent years.

This is an outrageous state of affairs. Tasmanians will remember that the establishment of the softwood joint venture was designed to turn the softwood sector into a world scale
industry. Instead we are in a process of contraction while we watch perfectly good sawlogs being exported to Korea.

To add insult to injury, Rayonier’s commitment to Tasmania amounts to little more than an office in Launceston and a five year management contract. The risk profile for the industry
is vastly different – millions of dollars worth of investment and thousands of employees and their families.

The industry is fed up with being drip fed resource at unsustainably high prices by a “fee catching” manager. After suffering volume cuts of Rayonier’s own making, the industry is
not in a position to subsidise the grower and manager for a comparatively low quality and poorly-managed resource. Unless something changes, Tasmanian jobs and communities
will be the inevitable casualty.

As a major investor and employer itself, Auspine is obliged to give fair warning of that. Auspine has made its position clear. It is now for Tasmanians to decide if they are happy
to allow a foreign multinational to decide the fate of its softwood industry.

Geoffrey Campbell, Manager, Auspine Tasmania. Dated: 8 March 2006

And

Meantime, the timber company Gunns donated $50,000 to the federal Liberal Party while also giving nearly $3,000 to the Tasmanian Labor Party.

Thanks, mate

Earlier on Tasmanian Times:
Auspine: A little history, or don’t upset Gunns … ?