Dr Raverty’s poison antidote

Henry Melville

By his actions and expressed intentions firstly in relation to undertaking this task and secondly the ethical approach he has taken to events that lead up to and after his voluntary resignation from the RPDC assessment panel, Tasmania owes Dr Raverty a huge debt of gratitude. Not only has he stood fast on his own personal principles and ethical underpinnings but he has courageously spoken out about covert Machiavellian tactics that were operating behind the scenes.

WHEN an independent scientist of the experience and calibre of Dr Warwick Raverty is publicly discredited by the spokesperson for Forest Industries of Tasmania, it tell us a great deal about how seriously poisoned Tasmania has become.

For goodness sake, this is a CSIRO scientist who was a member of the original three-person assessment panel — the panel that, not so long ago, was held up by Premier Lennon as the independent assessment body for the Gunns IIS on the Bell Bay pulp mill.

By his actions and expressed intentions firstly in relation to undertaking this task and secondly the ethical approach he has taken to events that lead up to and after his voluntary resignation from the RPDC assessment panel, Tasmania owes Dr Raverty a huge debt of gratitude.

Not only has he stood fast on his own personal principles and ethical underpinnings but he has courageously spoken out about covert Machiavellian tactics that were operating behind the scenes.

As any public interest whistleblower can attest, it takes careful consideration and/or serious provocation for an individual to take the significant step of speaking out ‘in the public interest’.

The paradox that is Tasmania is the way persons are publicly elevated to icon status only to find themselves discredited, sullied and undermined when they openly define and declare their independence and concerns.

Make no mistake the pressure on such individuals to stay within the system, remain quiescent and cooperate in the face of a corrupted and undermined process would be considerable.

The Government and the Forest lobbyists have done a great deal to confuse Tasmanians over the reasons why the RPDC pulp mill assessment process collapsed. They have selectively blamed the Greens and anti-pulp mill protestors and remained blind to the clear reasons given by the former RPDC pulp mill panel chairman, Mr Julian Green.

How shallow and fickle has public office become in Tasmania, that paid propagandists are permitted to spin their deceptions before the public without an elected government showing the leadership and integrity to tell their people THE TRUTH?

The catalogue of embarrassing actions and equally embarrassing reactions leaves any careful observer aghast at the impoverishment of governance in Tasmania.

• the blatant actions of Lennon government’s Pulp Mill Taskforce — through its website — that undermined the independence of RPDC assessment panel member, Dr Raverty.

• the disparity between the recollection of former judge, Christopher Wright and Premier Lennon in relation to their conversation on 22 January

• the subsequent contacts and meeting between the Tasmanian Premier and Gunns, after Mr Wright received Mr Lennon’s new directives for a shortened timeline on the panel assessment and a curtailment of public hearing.

• the reaction of the Tasmanian government once it realized that Mr Wright was prepared to resign on the basis of the unacceptable propositions put to him by Mr Lennon.

• the subsequent action of the Gunns board (1 day after Premier Lennon meeting with Mr Wright) to announce that they were withdrawing from the RPDC assessment process and had referred the matter back to the premier

• the failure of the Premier to stand up for the RPDC assessment process in the face of a laying down of the gauntlet by Gunns.

• the acceptance by the state Labor government that Gunns formal withdrawal made the RPDC assessment process void and necessitated the drafting on new legislation for assessing the pulp mill

• the perception that the State Government and its bureaucrats conspired with Gunns in the drafting of the Pulp Mill Assessment Bill 2007.

• the presence of a range of serious failings in the drafting of the legislation that has cause several constitutional, planning and common law practitioners to question the Bill and the serious consequences it poses for both State and Commonwealth environmental planning policies.

The proprietors of the three daily papers must be gleeful at the extra revenue that the pulp mill fiasco has created. For days now Tasmanians have seen several full or half page advertisements from the Forest Industries of Tasmania, Tasmanian Council of Commerce and Industry, the State Government, Gunns Pty Ltd, Pitt & Sherry (engineering contractor to Gunns P/L), Tasmanian Timber Communities and Investors for the Future of Tasmania Inc, etc. The Government has engaged in a state-wide mail out to all households and Gunns P/L has inserted a 4 page colour pamphlet in newspapers highlighting the views of their pulp mill technical consultant — Pöyry Forest Industry Oy (Finland).

The stakes are very high indeed … advertising money is no object in what looks like an ‘end game’. So high in fact that character-assassination, public bullying, political lobbying and propaganda overload are all par for the course.

What is this poisonous process doing to the players in this tragic-comic drama. And more to the point what is it doing to the health & wellbeing of Tasmanians who have to watch, maybe forced by the propaganda to take one side or the other. Is community division the way this island is to be controlled like a feudal state by the powerful oligarchs?

And this is all happening as Ten days on the Island — our biennial arts festival extravaganza — should be centre stage! Yet we are all forced to endure another sad re-run of a play that Tasmanian have seen before.

Whether it is Robin Gray or Paul Lennon in the lead role, this is not a star performance. It is another ‘black hole’ for all concerned and not worth the spectacle!