Pulp Mill: a timeline of deceit

Henry Melville lays out a “timeline of deceit” for the latest scandal to envelop the state Government over the approval process for Gunns’ proposed pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. His verdict on the Lennon Labor government: “Tasmania does not deserve to be so arrogantly governed by such blatant deceit.”
ON 2 March (a Friday) this year the RPDC Executive Commissioner, Simon Cooper wrote to John Gay, Chairman of Gunns Ltd stating that the Supplementary Information provided by the pulp mill proponent was deficient and amounted to ‘critical non-compliance’ with the Commission’s directives.

The letter clearly indicated that the company had yet to supply sufficient scientific data for the Commission to start the assessment of the pulp mill to be assessed against the State’s environmental standards.

The RPDC letter to Mr Gay paid particular note of the failure of Gunns Ltd consultants to provide the technical data required and in its place offer a disclaimer that was in Mr Cooper’s words ‘not acceptable’. One consultant’s report that made up part of the Supplementary Information provided by the proponent stated: “With respect to the marine impact assessment at Attachment 2; the tight time constraints under which the report was constructed may have led to expressions, concepts and opinions not being written with appropriate clarity for the lay reader. Nevertheless the issues and impacts have been carefully considered in all the detail reasonably possible given the prospective status of the proposed mill and time available.”

A Freedom of Information request obtained from the RPDC shows that the Commission had contacted the Secretary of DPAC informing her of the RPDC’s intention to formally write to Gunns Ltd about their ongoing non-compliance with the Pulp Mill Assessment Panels directives.

The then Pulp Mill Assessment Panel chairman, retired Justice Christopher Wright, had prepared a letter addressed to Gunns Ltd outlining these non-compliance issues and deficiencies in the scientific data provided.

RPDC Commissioner, Mr Cooper told Premier Lennon: “it had been intended to send this letter on 9th March (a Friday), but it was not sent, at the request of the Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet.”

So the RPDC didn’t send the letter to Gunns Ltd but in the week beginning 5 March DPAC were aware of the full details contained in Justice Wright’s unsent letter. Disturbingly we now know that the Premier himself received his own personal copy of this unsent letter for his information; sent courtesy of Mr Cooper on 23 March.

In the following week, certainly by 8 March, the Head of Premier Lennon’s department, Ms Hornsey, had contacted Gunns Ltd (by phone) and informed them of these matters. In particular the pulp mill proponent would have been made aware of the significant concerns the RPDC had about the inadequacy of Gunns’ Supplementary Information.

On 14 March (a Wednesday), five days after this RPDC letter had been due to be sent to Gunns Ltd, the company announced, in a release to the ASX and media outlets, that it was “formally withdrawing from the Bell Bay pulp mill project from the RPDC pulp mill assessment process” citing unacceptable delays caused in the assessment process as its principle reason.

On the matter of the proponent’s withdrawal, Mr Cooper formally told the Premier, “once a project is subject of a declaration under section 18 of the State Policies and Projects Act 1993, it remains the Commission’s statutory obligation to assess it. A proponent’s ‘withdrawal’ of a proposal does not bring the statutory process to a conclusion.”

But apparently neither Gunns Ltd nor the Government Executive were deterred by such ‘statutory obligations’. The Premier merely accepted that Gunns Ltd had withdrawn their proposal and he accepted Gay’s ultimatum that the State Government now take over the assessment process.

The next day, 15 March, the Premier of Tasmania, Paul Lennon, announced his government’s intention to immediately prepare a bill to fast-track the assessment process so that the assessment would be completed by the deadline ultimatum set by Gunns Ltd (end of August). [Lennon recalled State Parliament on Tuesday 20 March to debate the new legislation.]

Over the following weekend (17-18 March), members of Gunns Ltd Board of Directors and their company lawyers met with the Premier, Deputy Premier and senior government officials to begin the drafting of the bill to present to Parliament; the bill passed the House of Assembly on Thursday 22 March.

On 23 March the RPDC Commissioner, Mr Cooper wrote a ‘for the record’ letter to the Premier giving him clear concise information and a timeline of events that show that the activities of the RPDC had not delayed the assessment process. It is in this letter that Simon Cooper reveals the intervention of the Head of the DPAC in effectively blocking the transmission of the Commission’s letter to Gunns Ltd of 9 March. Mr Cooper also put on record the fact that material supplied by Gunns to support their Integrated Impact Statement was “still deficient in several important respects”.

Mr Cooper felt it necessary to also record in his formal letter to the Premier that “I simply put this chronology to place in context the suggestion, attributed by some sections of the media to Mr John Gay, that he had ‘heard nothing’ from the Commission.”

At no stage has Premier Lennon volunteered, to either the Parliament or the people of Tasmania, that:

1. His Department was formally made aware in early March that the Gunns IIS was critically deficient or that even after Gunns Ltd had provided the RPDC with Supplementary Information on 16 February — 16 days late — the information was still deficient.

2. The Head of his Department — DPAC — had intervened in the RPDC’s intention to send a letter to Gunns Ltd on those matters.

3. Unbeknown to the RPDC, DPAC had communicated to Gunns the concerns contained in the unsent RPDC letter; this secret communication occurred in the period between 2nd &14th March

4. The Premier’s own department had alerted Gunns Ltd — the proponent for the pull mill — of the conclusions made by the RPDC at that time (namely that the information provided by the company was critically non compliant).

At no stage did Premier Lennon even attempt uphold the clear advice from the RPDC that a proponent’s ‘withdrawal’ of their proposal does not bring the statutory process of assessment to a conclusion.

Tasmania does not deserve to be so arrogantly governed by such blatant deceit.

As Tasmanian Greens Opposition Leader, Peg Putt said on the opening day of Budget Estimates: “It beggars belief that there was no contact between the government and Gunns, between the company being told of their critical non-compliance with the RPDC Directions and the company’s decision to pull out of the RPDC and get a government fast track approval process instead.”