• James Crotty, lawyer, former Labor candidate, in Comments: This man sold his reputation for $1000 and some freebie trip. What a foolish decision. I do not know him at all but this example of his decision making casts grave doubts about his capacity to appreciate the expectations of the community. In other business cultures, such as those in which the parent of Ta Ann and associated controlling interests operate, there is a culture of gift giving in business relationships. In Australia, as in the United States and most western countries these gifts are regarded as bribes and outlawed. Mr Harriss was not in a business relationship with Ta Ann. He is not in business. He is a politician. Or that is our perception. Which makes one wonder why Ta Ann would give him money in the first place. And just so the force of this criticism is not lost and seen to be even handed; Jack Lumber has got it right. It was incredibly silly of the Greens to accept the impugned donation. Makes them no better than the others and unfortunately exposes an unnecessary hyprocrisy.
Pecuniary interest declarations by Upper House Member Paul Harriss MLC that he had received thousands of dollars in ‘gifts’ from Ta Ann Tasmania raised questions over the participation of any Member with a pecuniary interest, declared or otherwise, in a future vote on IGA-related legislation, says Greens Forestry Spokesperson Kim Booth.
Kim Booth MP
Greens Forestry Spokesperson
The Tasmanian Greens today said pecuniary interest declarations by Upper House Member Paul Harriss MLC that he had received thousands of dollars in ‘gifts’ from Ta Ann Tasmania raised questions over the participation of any Member with a pecuniary interest, declared or otherwise, in a future vote on IGA-related legislation.
Greens Forestry spokesperson Kim Booth MP said Mr Harris’ pecuniary interests declaration shows that he declared a $1000 gift from Ta Ann Tasmania Pty Ltd in 2007-08 and a further $1000 in 2010-11, and or travel costs to Malaysia on the 17th and 22nd of October 2010.
“There is no question that Mr Harriss has properly declared these gifts from Ta Ann on the pecuniary interests register,” Mr Booth said
“However the broader question for both Houses is whether any Member who has received gifts from Ta Ann should participate in a debate or vote on legislation in which the company could be perceived to have a vested interest.”
“Standing Orders, although slightly different in both Houses, require a motion to decide if a person with a pecuniary interest relevant to a particular parliamentary debate will vote, and it would be very interesting to see if Mr Harris or others who may have such an interest, will vote on their participation.”
“This is a challenge to both Houses and will have a direct effect on IGA legislation or Ta Ann-specific legislation.”
“The Greens welcome the Premier’s statement that she had not received any cash and travel donations from Ta Ann, it that it would have been inappropriate to do so.”
“What the Premier was unable to say, and what is still not known, is how many other elected members in the Tasmanian Parliament have also received gifts from Ta Ann.”
Download:
Paul Harriss’ disclosure of pecuniary interests (2007-08)
Mar7_P_Harriss_Pecuniary_Interests_Register_Excerpt_2011_ATTACH1.pdf
Paul Harriss’ disclosure of pecuniary interests (2010-11)
Mar7_P_Harriss_Pecuniary_Interests_Register_Excerpt_2008_ATTACH2.pdf
Excerpt from Legislative Council and House of Assembly Standing Orders
Mar7__LegCo_HoA_Standing_Orders_Excerpts_ATTACH3.pdf
• Geoff Law: Horrifying Liberals
I was horrified to read today that Tasmanian Liberal Leader Will Hodgman will legislate (if/when in government) to prevent new national parks from being declared unless a two-thirds majority of both houses of Parliament approves the park. This appears to be a vindictive and hysterical reaction to the Liberal Party’s own hype about the current forests process.
The area of national park – or national-park equivalent – in Tasmania is still less than 24% of the state. Other lands supposedly ‘locked up’ are still open to mining and, in some cases, hunting. The attachment has a breakdown of public-land reserves in Tasmania.
The last new national park declared over a significant tract of forest was in April 1999 – the Savage River National Park (17,980 ha). The Legislative Council is already vetoing new national parks that may arise from the forests process. Hodgman’s move would be particularly disastrous for the 75% of Tasmania (including wilderness areas such as the Tarkine and south of Macquarie Harbour) that does not have protection from mining.
Hodgman’s move would potentially end future protection of wilderness areas such as the Tarkine and should be strongly rejected and criticised.
• Vica Bayley: Hodgman – delusional approach to forests, discrimination against environment
Liberal leader Will Hodgman today continued a hysterical and delusional approach to the forest industry collapse and campaigns for forest protection by ignoring realities and proposing a discriminatory approach to the declaration of new reserves.
Wilderness Society spokesperson Vica Bayley said this approach was more akin to the policy position of the Hunters and Shooters Party or Australia First and was inconsistent with the Tasmanian brand and a positive future direction for the state.
“Mr Hodgman’s speech and politicisation of the forest debate continues his head in the sand approach to the industry collapse and the collaborative approach taken by stakeholders to achieve forest protection and industry restructure outcomes,” said Mr Bayley.
“Today Mr Hodgman confirmed that his party has no new vision for forestry and dipped back into history to promise the continuation of a failed model based on logging controversial forests that should be protected.”
Changing the way new National Parks and reserves are established via parliamentary vote by increasing the threshold to a two thirds majority is a new position that cuts across traditional parliamentary process applied to most other legislation.
“Pledging to change the parliamentary process by which National Parks are declared demonstrates clear discrimination against the environment and represents a hysterical response to the fear and division whipped up by his own party’s campaign against industry restructure and forest protection.”
“New forest reserves like National Parks are critical to adequately protect the values in high conservation value forest and other areas and ensure the conservation aspirations of the Tasmanian community are met. This is a fundamental part of the Forest Agreement and what is required to achieve a lasting resolution to the forest conflict in Tasmania.”
• Nick McKim: Xenophobia slur is new low for even the Liberals
Nick McKim MP
Greens Leader
Greens Leader Nick McKim MP today rejected Will Hodgman’s slur of xenophobia, saying that within the first two days of Parliament resuming the Liberals had stooped to a new low.
“I strongly reject Mr Hodgman’s insulting assertion that I’m xenophobic, but I stand by my criticism of the Chinese regime, which has received such strong international condemnation for its appalling human rights track record,” Mr McKim said.
“What next? Will Mr Hodgman accuse Amnesty International of xenophobia, for daring to speak up in defence of human rights in China?”
Last Tuesday-week on Tasmanian Times: Mr Harriss, Independent MLC, and Ta Ann
SPECIAL REPORT: Retired journalist The Old Bear worked in Borneo for a decade and during that time became familiar with the plight of the jungle dwellers and the devastating impact of modern development – including dams with which Hydro Tasmania is associated – on their traditional way of life.
• People at risk
The Old Bear
Hydro-Tasmania’s involvement in controversial Sarawak dam projects casts a spotlight on the multiple problems threatening the existence of Sarawak’s jungle people. They face a very uncertain future.
The adverse impact of the dams is serious to the tribal inhabitants traditional way of life – through loss of essential habitat, displacement and resettlement (with inherent issues of how they will survive from being relocated), loss of cultural identity, their rights and compensation. The list is long.
Destruction of the jungle from whole-scale logging has long been a worry, and building many hydro dams adds another major, disturbing dimension to the people’s woes.
In fact, concern over these dams goes back more than three decades – to December, 1980, when work began on the first, the Batang Ai dam (sited in the Lubok Antu district of what is that East Malaysian State’s Second Division). Taib Mahmud was elected Chief Minister the following March and plans for more dams blossomed.
In 1987 (Batang Ai was operating by 1985) Evelyne Hong wrote a book titled Natives of Sarawak, survival in Borneo’s vanishing forests, a very detailed, critical examination of, firstly, the destructive logging, and, secondly, the dams. The book was published by Malaysia’s Institut Masyarakat, an independent non-profit institute involved in research on economic and cultural developments in the Third World in general and Malaysia in particular.
Hong summarised that the dams proposed then (at six locations but subsequently expanded to 12, which the Chief Minister says are necessary) would cause massive dislocation to several thousands of natives and damage the forest ecosystem: “It is suggested that the plans for these dams be seriously reconsidered and that the losses to be endured by the natives as well as the destruction of the forest ecosystem and the loss of land be taken into account by any cost-benefit analysis or evaluation of such projects. Such human, social and ecological costs are usually under-weighted (and in some cases ignored) in such evaluations. Moreover, the loss of cultural identity and way of life to affected native communities would be too great to be reflected in any monetary evaluation of costs.”
Batang Ai had a big Australian input, both in terms of money and design work – a $22 million loan from Australia’s Export Finance and Insurance Corporation, and the consultants were from the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation, engaged by the Australian Government Assistance Bureau under its development assistance programme to Malaysia.
The people hit by Batang Ai were Iban and the dam’s location was regarded as being in the heartland of Iban traditional culture. The dam flooded 21,000 acres of jungle and 3,000 natives had to accept resettlement.
Of Batang Ai and other such schemes proposed, the author said “to make way for the dams, the natives would have to surrender their customary rights to land, move from the forests, and be ‘resettled’ on fixed agricultural lands provided by the government, together with some monetary compensation. Hydro development has already dislocated many natives in the Batang Ai project and will disrupt the lives of many thousands more should the other dams be built.”
Of the now visitor-restricted Bakun dam (on the Upper Rejang River of the Seventh Division), for which Hydro-Tasmania has a due diligence safety contract ahead of the water inundation, Hong wrote: “The natives in the Bakun dam area had heard about the problems faced by the Batang Ai Iban when they were resettled for the dam project. Some of them had also visited the Batang Ai settlers. Others had heard about the plight of their people at Batang Ai. These accounts of the Batang Ai people have made the Bakun natives very anxious about their future. This has been made worse by the fact that the latter have not been sufficiently informed by the authorities or visiting politicians regarding the Bakun dam project. They do not want to suffer the same fate as the Batang Ai Iban and thus most of them are opposed to the Bakun dam project.”
When Evelyne Hong wrote this in 1987 it was said the Bakun – South-East Asia’s largest dam – would flood almost 700 square kilometres of forests and mean resettling 5,000 natives from 52 longhouses, of various different ethnic tribal groups.
A final paragraph, from a 1985 dialogue session where natives voiced their fears and disillusionment over Bakun. Their penghulu (a government-appointed native chief in charge of communities in an area) said: “We have been living on this land for as long as we can remember. We fought the British, the Japanese and the communists to protect our land. Some of us even died for it. Now they want to take it away. We heard that the Bakun Hydro-Electric Project is very big and it will make our country very rich. But who will get the money?”
The Old Bear is a retired journalist who worked in Borneo for a decade and during that time became familiar with the plight of the jungle dwellers and the impact of modern development on their traditional way of life.
First published: 2012-03-07 03:51 PM
• DISCLOSURE NEEDED ON TA ANN ‘GIFTS’ BEFORE IGA VOTE
Kim Booth MP
Greens Forestry Spokesperson
The Tasmanian Greens today issued a call to all MPs with a pecuniary interest in Ta Ann Tasmania to publicly declare their interest and to rule themselves out of voting on legislation linked to the Tasmanian Forests Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA).
Greens Forestry spokesperson Kim Booth MP raised the matter in the House of Assembly today, pointing to the Chamber’s Standing Order No. 214, which provides for the House to vote to disallow any Member with a pecuniary interest in a matter before the House. [1]
“Many timber industry advocates have said that there is direct link between IGA legislation and the fortunes of Ta Ann, so clearly any MPs with a pecuniary interest in the matter must rule themselves out of voting on legislation when it comes before the House,” Mr Booth said.
“This is a matter that cuts right to the heart of probity and good governance in Tasmania.”
“Any Members of Parliament who are not completely upfront about their pecuniary interest in Ta Ann risk bringing the Parliament into contempt.”
“Tasmania cannot afford to return to the grim days of the Lennon Labor Government, when every decision by Parliament carried the stench of corruption and cronyism.”
“All Members with a pecuniary interest in the IGA debate need to be upfront and rule themselves out of voting on legislation when it comes before the House.”
“The Greens welcome the Premier’s statement that she expects Members of the Lower House to abide by the Standing Orders.”
[1] REFERENCE: Relevant excerpt from House of Assembly and Legislative Council Standing Orders:
Download: Mar8__LegCo_HoA_Standing_Orders_Excerpts_ATTACH.pdf
