Matthew Denholm The Australian
THE future of the $2billion Gunns pulp mill in Tasmania is in doubt after John Howard last night rejected demands he guarantee a federal decision on the project before an election is called.
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IT SEEMS that Tasmania’s pulp mill wasn’t Gunns’ pulp mill it was Paul Lennon’s Pulp mill!
It explains why the Premier, his government and State bureaucracy has gone to such lengths to ensure it got through all the approvals steps at the State level – come what may. The way Premier Paul was telling it this was a State economic development project and he needed an investor! Come in Gunns.
On Thursday night the Tasmanian Premier who usually shuns the national media was interviewed on the ABC’s 7.30 Report.
KERRY O’BRIEN: Having now cleared all the stumbling blocks to the pulp mill in Tasmania, at least, Premier Lennon is now challenging the Prime Minister to push the federal assessment through before the looming federal election.
Paul Lennon joins me now from our Hobart studio.
Premier, now that you’ve got the vote in your Parliament, looking back on the process and given the barrage of criticism that you’ve faced that you’re too close to Gunns, that your association with the whole pulp mill saga began with a private dinner between you and the head of Gunns, John Gay, before any formal approach had been made to the Government, that your actions subsequently have helped to undermine the proper independent assessment processes of the pulp mill until that assessment panel collapsed. Looking back on all of that, what if anything, would you have done differently?
PAUL LENNON, TASMANIAN PREMIER: Well, Kerry my job is to grow the Tasmanian economy. When we came to office, Tasmania was the basket case of Australia.
In three of the last five years we’ve been the fastest, we’ve grown faster than the nation as a whole. We’ve done that because we’ve aggressively chased investment for our State.
Now, it’s ridiculous to have a position in Tasmania where we ship our timber to other parts of the world to be turned into pulp and paper and then imported back into Australia. Of course, I went looking for an investor who was prepared to invest the sort of dollars necessary to build a pulp mill in Tasmania. A pulp mill that could meet world environmental standards. And we know now from the independent scientific reports that have been presented as part of the process that the Tasmanian Parliament’s now been looking at that the Gunns’ mill will be one of the best in the world and it will be the best in the world for odour and air quality, which are the key issues to be addressed, environmentally for a mill of this type, which is located in the Tamar Valley.
