A good friend has emailed me and has told me that I am under a personal attack from a Mr Mark Poynter ( HERE ). I do not know this Mr Poynter, but then, on the other hand, having read his article, I definitely do know him – not personally, but for what he is. I do not think that this needs elaboration. This has forced me to come out of retirement to defend myself and my choice of life in France and once more to refute the mis-statements that are put forward as facts by those who have a very obvious vested interests in the forest industry.
Beginning with the title itself ‘Peace in Tasmanian Forests’ I would like to ask the question, ‘what peace?’
Firstly, Point 1. …. initiating a campaign of harassment against the ANZ Bank which may have helped deter it from investing in the state’s approved, but still unbuilt, pulp mill.
Yes, I did initiate this campaign after I observed the repeated failures of demonstrations to have any real effect, and contacted the Wilderness Society, TAP group, the Greens, local action groups and a few powerful business activists, pointing out that an attack on the bottom line and the financiers might have a far greater effect, as without the finance, the pulp mill could not go ahead. I reminded them to persuade the banks to honour their ‘Equator Principle’ pledges and to demonstrate outside those banks that directly supported Gunns, and beyond this, to tackle their customers as well. I further initiated a campaign to prevent them from building their pipeline, for again, without water, they could not operate. This took the form of pledges of support for the farmers to match any offer that Gunns might make for purchase of rights across their land, and also to help with any legal costs that a refusal might entail. I myself pledged a substantial sum to this end.
‘The states approved, but still unbuilt pulp mill’ …. ‘Approved’? By whom? Do you mean the RPDC, or the general public, or the local councils or the TAP group or the Tamar Valley residents, or the Bass Strait Fishermen, or the AMA, or indeed anyone not associated with Gunns or in their pay?
Point 2. …. “eschewing Tasmania for a European country that is powered mostly by nuclear energy; where there are few “natural” forests; where pulp mills are embraced; where millions of hectares of farmland have been converted to plantations; and where the leading source of renewable energy is the burning of woody biomass.”
Apart from the nuclear energy bit, where the fuel is supplied mainly from Australia, the rest is utter and complete crap! For an Australian to champion coal fired power stations and exporting the stuff in huge quantities to China and burning ‘woody biomass’, but frowning on non-CO2 producing nuclear power I find strange. (Perhaps I am not so deeply-green as you suspect.)
From my windows in Cordes-sur-Ciel I look out over a wonderful farming valley with no sign of plantations to the massive Forest of La Gresigne – just one of many hundreds in France. I have not seen a single eucalypt tree in all my travels, but I have seen ‘community forests’ that benefit villages and small towns, and they do not clearfell or burn them. There are many large wind farms, which is their major source of renewable energy, but there are no wood burning power stations. Other plantations are minimal, largely comprising of poplar trees, which are not chipped as there is no pulp industry here. Conservation is the key word throughout France and their target is ZERO CO2 emissions!
Then we get ‘lies, damned lies and statistics,’ in a series of half truths, distortions and one-sided accounting, that puts forestry Tasmania on top of the world table.
But then, how about this for a statistic? If Gunns gets its way and builds a pulp mill and the feedstock is added in with all the other exports of old growth and plantation wood, Tasmania chips in the region of 9 tonnes of wood for every single citizen per year!!! That must be by far the greatest indictment of forestry practice in the world – and yet they tell us this is the ‘world’s BEST practice.’ ‘The world’s greatest con’ would be nearer the mark!
About 70 per cent of Tasmania’s forests are publicly-owned … yet the public are legally excluded from all of it when Gunns decides it wants to capitalise and destroy it.
I find every single point made by Poynter in the whole of his article to be factually inaccurate, deliberately misleading or totally one-sided. There are just too many points to answer individually, but a selection is as follows:-
“…has to a large extent been hijacked by a tribal green-left collective overtly focused on forestry issues. On this topic, their discussion is generally angry and littered with untruths, half-truths, irrational pseudo-science and conspiracy theories……”
As opposed to propaganda, a vast spin machine, extensive green-washing and advertising campaigns at our expense, existing on unlimited handouts recently stated to be in the region of multi millions, possessing a legal status above any individual or group and sold at a loss to one single corporate giant with offshore shareholders.
“….won praise from UNESCO’s World Heritage Commission and the FAO’s Asia Pacific Forestry Commission. …What the hell has the World Heritage Commission and Forestry Tasmania got in common? One is a protector of natural assets and the other is a destroyer! Please enlighten us as the actuality of this ‘Praise’!
“Regular anti-forestry contributors to the Tasmanian Times include retired “tree changers”, medical doctors, lawyers, accountants, Greens politicians, career activists, and bush-block alternative life-stylers….” Yet you describe these people as irrational and uneducated, where in point of fact, they are highly knowledgeable, erudite and not under the influence of the perpetual slurry that is churned out by a sea of spin doctors for general consumption.
No Mr Poynter, for too long the Forestry has been a top heavy industry where the money poured into it goes not to the ‘workers’, as is their public cry, but to the innumerable upper echelons who benefit from the public resource and Treasury as though it were their own fiefdom to do with as they wished. It is a dishonest industry in league with corporate wealth and a weak and subservient government, which benefits Tasmania little, if at all. The Tasmanian Times remains one of the few outlets where concerned and enlightened individuals can still challenge the self-interests and power of wealth, corruption, lobbying and rent-seeking. Long may it survive with that mantra.
Barnaby Drake
P.S. Life in France is just Great!
