Jonathan Bowden
Watching the sweep of calm water that runs past Swan Point at high tide, you have to ask yourself honestly how different will it all look once the Gunns Pulp Mill is up and running?
The honest answer might be, not much: at first, anyway. It would smell different of course. The mercaptans and sulphurous gases would lend an interesting bouquet to the air and you wouldn’t have to bother with the smells of mud and marsh and tea tree: but would it matter to lose the scents of nature in the valley if three hundred people got jobs at the Mill?
The sky would be a little different of course, no longer those greys and pinks, just a general uniform brown : and the same for the water which in one respect at least be the same : it would still be wet, though there would be a lot less of it. But what would that matter if three hundred people got jobs at the Mill?
The birds wouldn’t look quite the same. There wouldn’t be any pelicans wheeling over the point, or gulls reflected in the water : and the Black Swans might still be there but only as sets of bones in the mud at low tide, as happened in Valdivia where an identical but much smaller pulp mill was built, and closed down.
And there wouldn’t be many fish in the river either, apart from eels because fish don’t thrive on dioxins or in murky water. But would it matter that three thousand Bass Strait fishermen lost their livelihood if some of them could get a job at the Mill ?
As you drove back past Brady’s Lookout, the rocks and hilltop forests would look as beautiful as ever but the vineyards would no longer have vines in them because the Europeans and Americans would have turned up their noses at the taste of our polluted wine. But would it matter that we no longer had a wine industry if three hundred people got jobs at the Mill?
When you reached the City of Launceston the streets would be alive to the thunderous music of log trucks, one every two minutes down Bathurst Street. Otherwise they would be eerily quiet , the restaurants would be closed and there would be new forests in the town — not of trees, but of For Sale signs, because under a year round blanket of toxic fog house prices would have collapsed in Launceston and with them the building industry. But surely that would be worth it if three hundred people got jobs at the Mill and John Gay got an Order of Australia?
As you drove up Charles Street past deserted Cafes you would see activity at last.
Long queues of people waiting to get into the day clinics at the LGH where the asthmatics and bronchial sufferers of all ages would be exchanging stories about what a wonderful place Tasmania had become now we had a Third world class pulp mill, and surely that was better than no Mill at all?
And wasn’t it reassuring to know that Paul Lennon was now CEO of Gunns industries on a salary of ten million dollars a year?
Overcome with outrage you protest to your member of parliament but all state and federal members of the Government and Opposition apart from the Greens treat you like a naughty child and refer you to their answerphones where an endless voice repeats the message. “ The mill will be good for the Tasmanian economy and if anything goes wrong with it, or you, we have enacted legislation to say that no one is allowed to take the blame.”
You find this a beautiful Sentiment, worthy of playschool but it does not answer the question that has been forming in you mind. What is Gunns? And who actually runs it? But no one is allowed to tell you. You have to guess.
You guess that Gunns is the shell of a small town business whose only sustainable resource, plantations, was mortgaged years ago to the same logging interests that have poisoned the water and the wildlife and the people all over South America and Asia. You guess this, no one is allowed to tell you anything about Gunns except Gunns, which tells you in suffocating detail everything it wants you to hear.
If anyone tells you something that Gunns doesn’t want you to know, Gunns sends off a private army of QCs to shut them up until there’s no one left to ask questions, let alone discover the truth about how Gunns came to be the de facto government of Tasmania.
But if no one seeks out the truth where will the lies end?
The lies will end when there is no longer any money to be gained from telling them. The lies will end when the last wild forest is gone, when the last farm is swallowed under plantations, when the rivers are dry, when the water birds are poisoned, the vines uprooted, the fisheries contaminated, the air sickly and unbreathable.
And in five or ten years time when Launceston ceases to live as a city will the people of the north still be asking the question, was it worthwhile? Was it worthwhile to sell our health, our land, our livelihood, our right to representative government and free speech?
Was it worthwhile to sell the beauty and the soul of Tasmania for three hundred jobs at the mill?
