John Hayward
FEW Tasmanians seem excited that the state may be hosting the most colossal sting in Australian history. The alarm bell is the “Long Term Pulp Supply Agreement” (LTPSA) of 18 October 2007 between Forestry Tasmania and Gunns Ltd. The pact has attracted amazingly little public attention, despite its potential to privatise a vast portion of public land at a vast expense to the public.
The agreement does not appear to require Gunns to even build the mill to make a killing. If the mill is not built, the LTPSA can only be terminated on acceptance of new terms agreed upon by BOTH Gunns and FT. To satisfy both parties, these terms will doubtless include pricing no less favourable to the buyer than the original – i.e. prices on fixed increases that will likewise be less than inflation, and which will encourage the continued logging of native forest over plantation for all 20 years of the LTPSA.
It states at Cl 3.5 that Gunns may process wood they have purchased as pulpwood for any purpose the wish. Given that forestry researcher Judith Ajani has estimated that 50% of the wood Gunns presently chips is suitable for milling and other value-adding, this looks like a windfall.
The most alarming provisions lie rather innocuously in cl 7, dealing with “Road responsibilities and transfers”. The first sentence of the first dot point makes Gunns “responsible” for new roading within the “Stumpage Zone”, which appears to be still indeterminate and largely unlimited except for some specified areas of plantation not wholly owned by Gunns (“Mill Door” zones). In the Stumpage Zone, “the parties will review ownership of the existing roads associated with the new roads and effect transfers of ownership if they agree terms. This will likely see a gradual change in road ownership across the stumpage zone”. In short, this means the transfer of ownership of present and future roading in State Forest to Gunns on unspecified terms.
The second dot point under Cl 7 is even scarier.
” The parties agree to work together to further consider and advise, by December 2008 on a plan to rationalise road assets with a view to keeping harvesting and roading with the same entity in each of the respective supply zones.”.
Put simply, it means the transfer of State Forest and and its roading to Gunns Ltd on terms agreed between Gunns and Bob Gordon.
No terms are specified, but we may draw some pointers from the great “Land Swap” agreement of 1997, wherein nearly 78,000 ha of FT plantation was deeded to FT as freehold, or private land, on the understanding that they would pay for it by surrendering freehold FT land of equal value back to the state. As they had never owned anything close to this much worth of private land, It is not surprising that neither FT nor the State Government have ever produced any evidence of where the surrendered land is.
On the evidence, the “Land Swap” would appear to have cost the Tasmanian taxpayer at least $200,000,000 in public plantation given away. Under the terms of the LTPSA, that figure could turn out to be chickenfeed.
