“There will be no social licence for a pulp mill and its fibre plantation wood supply while the public continues to be excluded from the Round Table discussions and continues to carry the huge burden of uncosted impacts on health, water and jobs”, said John Day, spokesman for the community group TAP Into A Better Tasmania.
“The public is appalled that Geoffrey Cousins, Senator Brown and the Wilderness Society can somehow offer Gunns a ‘social licence’ in exchange for a particular type of pulp mill. This way of solving the issue is as badly flawed as the government’s one-sided benefits-only assessment of the pulp mill,“ he continued.
“Any proposal for a pulp mill anywhere must have a full independent risk assessment with community input. The assessment must include the costs and impacts of its plantation wood supply on the Tasmanian people, public subsidies and the ability of the Government to fund basic essential services first,” he said.
He went on, “Forestry is a major land use and imposes a huge burden on many for the benefit of a few. The people – rural communities, tourism businesses and many others – are suffering from stress and continued uncertainty, burn-off smoke and aerial spraying, lost jobs in tourism, depleted water supplies, and many other impacts from the way forestry is currently practised”.
“A pulp mill will cement in the burden of plantations over huge areas of the State and lock in the State to booms and bust of the global commodity cycles”, Mr Day said.
“There will be no social licence for a pulp mill and forestry while the public continues to carry the burden for the benefit of a few and remains excluded from the discussions.”
John Day, TAP Into A Better Tasmania
