STRAW POLL ON GUNNS DRAFT IIS

Since the Draft Gunns IIS has been released it has come to TPMT’s attention that there has been an IIS Straw Poll in operation. Now straw polls have limited authority, nonetheless, their results are almost always interesting and especially so when politicians use them to justify a position and/or a decision.

Notably, John Howard this week used a straw poll – or rather he took a “sounding” – to justify his decision to stay on as leader of the Liberal Party and fight the 2007 election. So straw polls are a by now a part of Australian culture – and the political landscape too. It’s just that very often politicians, corporations, and others, are reluctant to site them as the basis for all too many of their decision making processes.

The IIS Straw Poll handed to TPMT was to do with the IIS’s believability, reliability and thus it’s veracity. All that has now been broken down and reinterpreted in the context of the PLF Rating (Poetic Licence Factor Ratings) the people surveyed gave to the IIS.

The graphic above demonstrates the result far more clearly than it might be in any other way

Click here for more information about PLF Ratings

Below there is a sampling of the comments that were gathered in the polling process.

• Gunns management’s authority to prepare an IIS is invalidated by the duty of care they are required to have towards their shareholders.

• The Draft IIS is virtually impossible to assess, or respond to, given that it is just that, a draft, diverse yet simplistic, self-serving from the proponent’s perspective, and worryingly, it can be changed at any time which raises a whole range of serious issues.

• The IIS is littered with qualified statements and assertions, plus subjective desktop assessments, all of which seriously devalue the document and the process.

• The government has let the fox get into the henhouse here and the fox is far too greedy to be trusted.

• If you went to the doctor and he gave advice of this quality in regard to how one should manage one’s health you would be forced to seek independent advice.

• The IIS makes too many assertions and assessments that are subjectively assessed, ‘cherrypicked’ and they are also qualified. This sort of thing does not protect the Tasmanian community in any measurable way. There are too many risks – that is for both the Tasmanian community and Gunns' shareholders!

• The IIS is simply another action designed to tie up detractor’s time and resources (just like the Legal action against The Gunns’ 20) and therefore the IIS and the process that produced it is discountable in far too many ways.

Two Quotes:
• "If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction". William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Twelfth Night", Act 3 scene 4

• "Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?" Kelvin Throop III