West: Fatally flawed

Professor West’s Chairman’s report for the Independent Verification Group is fatally flawed.

Stripped of all its high-sounding padding, it boils down to this: In Professor West’s opinion, Tasmanians must accept a huge, plantation-only pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, in return for protecting greater areas of native forest.

This argument suits the needs of a narrow section of the forest industry and the native forest conservation movement. It does not serve the long-term interests of Tasmania and will not settle the forests dispute.

There remains broad public antipathy towards the pulp mill proposal. Even if the project could somehow establish itself with public support, there is no surety that a plantation only pulp mill can be built and operated profitably in the Tamar Valley, by Gunns or anyone else, in accordance with licence conditions.

In the meantime, the scope of plantation development in Tasmania necessary to feed this proposal has not been properly explained to the public. Were it to be done, this would create another front in the forests dispute.

The supporting claims from the native forest conservation movement, that markets won’t accept product from native forests, are self-defeating and undermining of any solution. This is a concoction, that first emerged as an argument against the pulp mill, but has morphed into a general anti-native forest logging shibboleth.

Coupled with this is their tacit agreement with Gunns and others, that it does not matter that the approval process for the mill was corrupted. The destruction of the RPDC and public confidence in due process surrounding the parliament and forests management are an acceptable price it seems, so long as they win their objectives. This is not a platform from which to sue for peace! They should rightly be condemned for their duplicity.

In fact, since the round-table fiasco started, no-one has bothered to ask Tasmanians if we will accept some extension of forest reserve boundaries and a reduction in the rate of native forest harvesting to protect legitimate commercial and conservation values, without these concessions being linked to the Tamar Valley pulp mill. The answer to a separated question may surprise the “negotiators”.

To support the ongoing viability of a Tasmanian forest industry with access to less forest resource, a workable solution might be found if the conservation movement removed their philosophical embargos on how the residues of working native forests may be used.

If forest conservationists were able to concede this matter, it would bring pulp, energy and bio-fuels from native forest harvesting back into commercial focus for Tasmania. We may again be able to consider a decentralised industry, that supports regional communities, rather than a grotty industrial hub in the Tamar Valley.

Three billion dollars – the largest manufacturing project ever attempted in Australia – Tasmania. Do these three concepts run together harmoniously in any realistic assessment of the triple bottom line of the future of Tasmania’s forests? Do we really accept that the only way forward to forest peace is the trade-off suggested by Professor West?