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Geoff Cousins is a ferocious consumer of words and in June 2007 he was tucked up in the loft of his Sydney house reading a long, angry article by the author Richard Flanagan in The Monthly. It was about the destruction of Tasmania’s native forests and the takeover of the state by the timber company Gunns.
At the time, Gunns was a darling of the share market and by far the largest company in Tasmania. It owned great swathes of land and had interests in an array of businesses, from pubs and hardware stores to wineries and sawmills. Its chairman, John Gay, was the most powerful man on the island and enjoyed a cosy relationship with the premier, Paul Lennon – so cosy that a building company owned by Gunns was renovating Lennon’s historic house.
It appeared inevitable that Gunns would get the approvals and finance to build the controversial billion-dollar pulp mill in the Tamar Valley in the state’s north. For those who opposed the development, it seemed all hope was lost.
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Outraged
Cousins was outraged by what he read. He spoke to his wife, author Darleen Bungey, and said, “You’ve gotta read this. I think I am going to do something about it. But I’ll need your support because I will probably get into trouble.” He’s often in trouble of some sort. She read it and told him to go for it.
Cousins was familiar with Flanagan, having read his novels, but had never met him, so sought out an email address and sent a letter offering his services. “I have a deep love for the rainforests of Tasmania,” he wrote.
“I’m not a religious person in the traditional sense, but they are truly beautiful places, holy places. Who am I and how might I help? I come from a business and semi-political background that on the face of it might seem to make me an unlikely fellow traveller. I’ve either run big businesses or been on boards all my life – from Optus to PBL to Telstra. And I was a consultant to prime minister John Howard for 10 years. Good grief, you say. Here is the Devil arrived in a silken cloak.”
“We are all devils,” Flanagan replied, “whatever coloured motley we display ourselves to the world in.”
The two men met a few days later. Flanagan put Cousins in contact with the Greens leader, Bob Brown. They met for a cup of tea and Brown told Cousins they were having great difficultly making the pulp mill a national issue. “I think I can help,” the old ad man told the senator.
Within a few months every Australian who owned a television knew about Gunns’ plans for a pulp mill in Tasmania. Cousins had labelled the then opposition environment spokesman, Peter Garrett, “the shadow minister who doesn’t cast a shadow”. He purposely set out to provoke the environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull – “the minister against the environment”. Turnbull took the bait, the line, the rod and a bucket of berley and angrily called Cousins “a rich bully”. The issue played out in the media for weeks. “It was manna from heaven,” Cousins says.
Pulped
He presented 20,000 signatures from ANZ customers to the bank’s executives to persuade them not to fund the mill. He put pressure on the Gunns board that would eventually lead to the resignation of John Gay. Gay is now facing the prospect of up to five years in jail, should he be found guilty of insider trading charges. Shares in Gunns, which were worth $3.32 in 2007, have slumped to 16 cents.
The pulp mill, Richard Flanagan says, “is now as good as dead”. Earlier this month, plans for a major investor to buy into Gunns fell through. The efforts of tens of thousands of people should be celebrated, he says, and it could not have happened without such widespread support. But, Flanagan insists, it’s also true to say, “Geoff Cousins stopped the Gunns pulp mill.”
And now, John Howard’s old mate has turned his attention to the Kimberley in Western Australia and plans by Woodside to build a massive gas hub at James Price Point. “The biggest non-government industrial project in the history of Australia,” Cousins says. “But we’ll see.”
Like a corporate hit man, he bumped off John Gay, whose reputation, as a result of the charges against him, lies somewhere at the bottom of the Derwent River, cast in cement boots. And now Cousins has his sights set on the don of corporate Australia, the big daddy of them all: Michael Chaney, chairman of Woodside Petroleum and National Australia Bank.
Cousins greets me at the door of his house in Wolseley Road, Point Piper – Sydney’s most exclusive harbourside address. The 69-year-old is tanned and dressed in a crisp white linen shirt and boat shoes without socks. He possesses a beautiful, deep voice that’s somehow cultured and ocker at the same time – as though
Read the rest: http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/management/the-corporate-assassin-20120326-1vtwg.html#ixzz1qXxbLtPZ
• ABC 7.30:
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 29/03/2012
Reporter: Martin Cuddihy
Can conservation and the timber industry be reconciled? Studies are underway to form the spine of an agreement over that for Tasmania’s native forests.
Transcript
CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: The fight over Tasmania’s forests has raged for more than a generation. Now talks to achieve a lasting peace deal are in what’s supposed to be their final stage. The urgency of the task has been underscored by a new report that says forests are being cut down at twice the rate they’re growing. Environmentalists are demanding this stop, but the industry has issued an unprecedented ultimatum to green groups: stop the protests or there’s no deal. Martin Cuddihy reports.
MARTIN CUDDIHY, REPORTER: Just south of Hobart lies the Huon Valley. It’s traditional timber country and the home of the Malaysian-owned Ta Ann timber veneer factory.
GREG HICKEY, TA ANN GROUP: Ta Ann takes what used to be known as regrowth pulp wood logs, and we cut them into short lengths, known as billets. We put them in the lathe and we peel thin sheets of wood from them, which is veneer.
MARTIN CUDDIHY The company sends the veneer it makes to Malaysia where it’s turned into flooring for the Japanese market. The factory mostly uses regrowth from native forests because it can’t process logs any bigger than 70 centimetres across. But it’s been consistently targeted by environmental campaigners because most of the timber comes from native forests. There’s been factory break-ins, market campaigns and even ships have been targeted. It’s been bad for business.
GREG HICKEY: Our customers have reduced their orders because of the interference in the markets. That’s caused us to restructure. We’re having to downsize. We’re going through a redundancy process at the moment.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: The source of the wood used by Ta Ann is regrowth in Tasmania’s native forests which are logged by the State Government-owned Forestry Tasmania. But those forests are being harvested twice as fast as they can grow. That’s the finding of Professor Jonathan West, a former Harvard academic and Wilderness Society director leading the studies that will form the basis of the forestry peace deal.
JONATHAN WEST, SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, UTAS: The findings are not my findings; they’re using data from Forestry Tasmania with models provided by Forestry Tasmania and it was Forestry Tasmania personnel who ran them. The numbers are not inaccurate.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: But Professor West’s report has prompted a furious backlash from an industry struggling for survival.
BOB GORDON, CEO, FORESTRY TASMANIA: What is unfortunate is he got his report incorrect. He has made false and incorrect statements about sustainable yield and about Forestry Tasmania’s professionalism.
GREG HICKEY: It depends on how you determine what a sustainable cut is, and there’s a number of ways to look at it. It depends on the rotation. So, that’s yet – I think that’s yet to be given any real credence.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: Professor West’s primary recommendation is that harvesting has to be cut back to a sustainable level which will require renegotiating of existing contracts and less harvesting.
The report comes at a crucial time in the final chapter of negotiations. There’s been forest disputes in this state for more than 30 years, but there’s yet another stumbling block if peace is to be achieved this time. The Forest Industries Association of Tasmania has an extraordinary demand. It’s refusing further negotiation unless green groups stop targeting forestry companies.
TERRY EDWARDS, FOREST INDUSTRIES ASSN: The campaigns they are embarked on at the moment are all about destroying business and destroying markets, so it’s a form of economic terrorism, if you like.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: Economic terrorism, that’s quite a strong term.
TERRY EDWARDS: Well it is a very strong term, but it’s exactly what they are embarked upon.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: The association is negotiating on behalf of the timber industry and wants clauses built into the final agreement requiring environmentalists to stop protesting and targeting companies. Terry Edwards is calling them durability clauses.
TERRY EDWARDS: We would see the state and federal governments needing to impose durability requirements over and above any agreement that might be reached.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: Do you think that’s likely?
TERRY EDWARDS: Well, not only is it likely, I think it’s absolutely mandatory.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: The so-called durability clauses would be aimed at those Terry Edwards calls extremists.
TERRY EDWARDS: I would count amongst the extremists people like Markets for Change who are embarking on the market campaign we talked about, Still Wild, Still Threatened, the Huon Valley Environment Centre. But I would also include people like Senator Bob Brown.
BOB BROWN, GREENS LEADER: I’m happy to be labelled extreme if Terry Edwards sees himself as an average conservationist. I mean, we’re not on the same spectrum.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown is bemused by the suggestion that he could be muzzled.
BOB BROWN: Well, what a whacky concept that in an open democracy the logging industry should be requiring that democracy halt for those people who want to save the forests.
GEOFF COUSINS, BUSINESSMAN: And I must say, if anyone by any amazing miracle ever managed to bring such laws into place, I’d be delighted to be prosecuted under them.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: High-profile businessman Geoff Cousins became involved in the forestry debate through his opposition to Gunns’ pulp mill. He’s convinced the idea won’t work.
GEOFF COUSINS: It is basically trying to suppress the freely expressed views of organisations and individuals.
MARTIN CUDDIHY: At Ta Ann in the Huon Valley, the campaigns are already taking a human toll. Somewhere between 40 and 50 people will lose their jobs in the next week or so.
The State Government plans to table legislation binding the peace deal by June 30, but Jonathan West warns time is running out, and unless an agreement can be reached, it will be lose-lose.
JONATHAN WEST: It is entirely possible that we could lose both the forestry industry that’s so important for our employment and the environmental forests that are so important to environmentalists. We could lose both unless an agreement is reached.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Martin Cuddihy reporting.
From here: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3466952.htm
• ABC Online:
Cousins admits warning off Chandler Corp
Updated March 30, 2012 12:28:45
It has been revealed high-profile pulp mill opponent Geoffrey Cousins advised the Chandler Corporation against investing in Gunns’ pulp mill project.
Mr Cousins warned about the possibility of protests bigger than the Franklin Dam campaign if Chandler invested in the project as it stands.
The Sydney businessman says he was asked by Gunns to speak to the Singapore-based group during the due diligence process.
Last month, the corporation withdrew from plans to invest $150 million in the Tasmanian timber company.
Mr Cousins said that to gain a social licence for the project public hearings would need to be reopened.
If that did not happen, there would be protests bigger than during the Franklin Dam campaign.
“[I said] they ought to look at some of the footage from the Franklin Dam protest because if they were to just try and bulldoze this through the sort of protest action that would happen on this issue would be even greater than that,” he said.
Mr Cousins says at a meeting with the corporation he expressed his surprise that a normally secretive company was interested in becoming involved in the controversial pulp mill project.
He said there would need to be scrutiny of Gunns’ claims that it had improved the mill and Chandler’s finances would be subject to public scrutiny if it invested in Gunns.
“I said all of those would have to be subject to cross examination in a public hearing and Richard Chandler himself would have to be prepared to go through all that.”
“I also said that there wasn’t too much financial information in the public arena on the Chandler Corporation and all of that would need to be made publicly available.”
Mr Cousins says he was delighted that the corporation withdrew its plans to invest.
The timber company is now trying to raise $400 million from shareholders, in its latest capital raising strategy.
From here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-30/cousins-admits-anti-gunns-push/3922366?section=tas
Gunns seeks up front court costs
Updated March 30, 2012 10:17:39
The timber company Gunns has applied for the Tasmanian Conservation Trust to pay legal costs up front in its court challenge to the Tamar Valley pulp mill.
The trust is challenging the validity of Gunns’ permits for the pulp mill, arguing they lapsed before substantial work had commenced.
That case is yet to be heard, but Gunns has applied to the Supreme Court for security of costs.
It wants the trust to pay money up front in case it loses the trial.
Counsel for the trust, Duncan Kerr, argued the organisation may not be ordered to pay Gunns’ costs, even if it does lose.
He said the trust has always paid its legal costs and has money in reserve to cover such bills.
But Gunns’ lawyer, David Gunson, said it was very significant litigation and the trust’s financial position could change.
The matter continues today.
From here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-30/gunns-seeks-court-costs/3922610?section=tas
