Matthew Denholm Weekend Australian: Further confirmation of: John West
IN the Tasmanian pulp mill debate, the lines between Gunns and government blurred a long time ago. Not only did Paul Lennon’s Government set up a taskforce and a bus tour to promote the project, but it has since emerged that the mill was his idea. It’s local folklore that the proposal was hatched over a dinner the pro-logging Premier shared with Gunns executive chairman John Gay. Asked on The 7.30 Report whether it was he or Gay who first suggested the mill, Lennon said: “I went looking for an investor who was prepared to invest the sort of dollars necessary to build a pulp mill in Tasmania.”
Since that fateful dinner, the Government, its Premier, ministers and media advisers have all acted as salesmen for the Gunns project. Lennon argues he is trying to keep Tasmania’s economic recovery going. But his handling of the assessment process has given the public the distinct impression this is as much his proposal as it is Gunns’s.
He allegedly leaned on a planning chief to dump public hearings and speed up the process to meet Gunns’s timetable. When this failed and the planning body concluded the proposal was “critically non-compliant”, Lennon came to the rescue with a fast-track assessment by consultants. Gunns had input into the drafting of the fast-track legislation and the operating permits to apply to the mill.
A significant donor to both main political parties through the years, Gunns was essentially granted its ambit claim. It chose a site logical in terms of its needs but fraught in terms of existing “clean, green” industries and public health. Promises that the mill would be entirely plantation-based and totally chlorine-free were pulped.
Having staked so much on the project, the danger for Lennon is the vacuum left if it falls over. This is a possibility, either as a result of a more sober approach from the Federal Government, investors or bankers, or of the election-induced paralysis in Canberra.
Lennon sincerely believes the project is in the state’s best interests and is willing to cop some political pain. Just as well. He has tarnished his standing with some in his party, lost an MP to the cross-benches and sent his personal approval south to 24 per cent. He needs the vindication of a successful project.
