RICK PILKINGTON
Respected Tasmanian political scientist Richard Herr appeared before the parliamentary committees on executive appointments and ethics. Herr observed that the pulp mill was associated with many of the recent government scandals. Professor Herr, normally moderate in his public utterances, delivered a scathing assessment of the Tasmanian government’s handling of the pulp mill.
Readers will recall an unusually animated and angry Professor Herr staring down members of the Ethics Committee including Liberal Jeremy Rockcliff and Labor’s Brenton Best saying he could not forgive the Parliament for the “poor professionalism” it showed when dealing with the pulp mill.
Gunns threatened in early 2007 that time was running out to build its $2 billion pulp mill and then withdrew from the independent assessment process.
Yet today Gunns themselves admit that there is no real urgency.
Therefore argued Herr the Tasmanian Parliament appeared to have acted on information that was probably misleading.
Herr railed that those lobbyists who sold the parliament the idea of an urgent need for a decision on the mill, should now explain themselves.
They should be held to account and the parliament should demand answers as to whether it has been misled, by referring the issue to an inquiry by committee or by bringing key players, such as Lennon and Gay, before the bar of the House of Assembly to answer question.
Professor Herr called for a commission of inquiry to investigate.
Tasmanians do deserve a thorough investigation into the Gunns Pulp Mill. Questions do need to be answered, as Herr argued “to the satisfaction of the public, not to the convenience of the parties”.
The pernicious effects of the Pulp Mill scandal on the Tasmania has to be resolved. If the issue continues to be swept under the carpet by the parliament, Tasmania will continue to pay the price – particularly if the Pulp Mill is built in the Tamar Valley. It will, as Dr Herr suggested “overhang the political process for a very long time”.
An investigation is of course unlikely to happen now before the 2010 election.
The public have good reason to believe the Premier was capable and willing to deliberately mislead them to protect himself and the pulp mill.
When Paul Lennon ignored RPDC chief Simon Coopers advice that Gunns withdrawal did not bring the Pulp mill assessment to an end and instead rewarded Gunns for wriggling out of the assessment that he had frequently extolled as the best in the land, Tasmanians were convinced the race was fixed.
The community who had been told to trust their Premier saw a Leader who was prepared to look the public in the eye and perjure himself.
The testimonies of Mike Hawkes and Simon Cooper coupled together with the Premiers admission that he did ask Christopher Wright to remove public hearings (as reported by the OZ’s Matt Denholm and the ABC’s Jocelyn Nettlefold) after previously denying this, casts grave doubt over the credibility of Mr Lennons claims of having no prior knowledgde of Gunns withdrawal. The evidence given by Wright, Cooper and Hawkes will remain on the public record and be revisited by media and critics of the pulp mill project to demonstrate how and why they feel so betrayed. Couple these testimonies with the many other unresolved questions, discrepancies, controversies and unfulfilled starts dates and the case for a commission of inquiry is too compelling to ignore.
Terry Martin a member of the upper house crossed the floor to vote against the Government’s Pulp Mill Assessment Bill and was subsequently expelled from the Parliamentary Labor Party.
“Ordinary Tasmanians who are not necessarily conservationists or for that matter, necessarily pro-development or anti-development, they are simply disgusted and appalled at what they see as this attack on democracy. This is what this bill means to these people. For many they believe there is a stench about this issue and irrespective of what the truth is and the varying accounts of events leading up to this bill, the reality is that there is an overwhelming perception, that has been created for many good ordinary Tasmanians, that something shonky has taken place”. (Terry Martin, 29 March 2007)
Indeed, opponents of the pulp mill can not justifiably be dismissed as “conservationists” or “greenies” only as polling has shown it to be significantly more broad-based than the proponent and the Tasmanian government would have us believe.
Paul Lennon himself acknowledged a lack of a social licence.
That polls consistently registered majority opposition to the pulp mill following Gunns RPDC withdrawal yet Labor and Liberal voted unanimously for the PMAA highlighted a disturbing gulf between public and government discourse on the mill issue. That the parliament reacted so indifferently to a scandal to which the public had taken such great offence created further resentment and disenfranchised many good and decent Tasmanians.
