Tamar Pulp Mill Talk

A Pulp Performance Review: Barry Chipman

2006-09-21T00:11:00.000+10:00

On Tuesday September 19 Barry Chipman of Timber Communities Australia chanced his luck in a public debate at the University of Tasmania in Launceston. Barry was supporting the Pulp Mill Task Force’s Bob Gordon in presenting the case that the proposed Gunns Pulp Mills would benefit Tasmania.

To say that Barry and Bob were utterly outdone says nothing about the extent to which they were. However Barry took the prize for the evening!

Barry, short of something important to say, used valuable time trying to win the audience over with a joke. Almost needless to say, he fluffed it and big time.

Barry, God bless him, proffered to proposition that without paper we’d all be dragged back to the stone age or something of the like. He suggested that without it all our wisdom would need to transcribed onto “slate” heaven forbid.

Barry even got a touch lavatorial and seemed to be suggesting that we might all be reduced to using slate instead of recycled paper for bottom wiping. Perhaps he had been experimenting prior to the evening which might explain his rather unusual gait that evening.

Well Barry drew an enormous laugh from his audience but sadly Barry didn’t get the message that they were laughing AT him rather than with him. It is such a joy to be on a debating team with the likes of Barry opposing your position and all so vehemently.

Barry and Bob made an excellent team with Bob trotting out the by now over worked and thoroughly discredited same old, same old, with Second Banana Barry undermining any ground he might have gained.

The crowning glory of Barry’s performance was when he kicked a home goal. That happened when he was called upon to vote and he in fact voted against the case his team put – a truly perceptive decision.

Both of these characters are paid to present their positions and rumour has it, somewhat handsomely.

Apparently the Bob and Barry team were invited to participate in the debate in good faith and because it was assumed they would have something cogent to say and thus pull a crowd. Well they did pull an audience of well over 200. However, under a John Howard Australia Workplace Agreement both should be expecting a tap on the shoulder sooner rather than later. It aught not to be possible to ignore such non-performances in the line of duty but anyone opposing the pulp mill proposal should be quite happy if they were let off yet again.

All in all it was a good night out for the anti pulp mill community and one presumes a rather ominous one for those who have invested their energies supporting the pulp mill proposition.

Col Patterson

Pulp Mill Commentaries

2006-09-20T14:54:00.000+10:00

On Monday the ABC undertook to discover the Pulp Mill Task Force’s Executive Director’s (Bob Gordon’s) qualifications and presumably in regard to their relevance to the pulp mill issue.

It was somewhat illuminating to discover, via the ABC’s investigations, that Mr Gordon holds a Bachelor of Science Degree. By implication, it seemed that this information was being presented as something that should impress ABC listeners in respect to his qualifications to speak in regard to the pulp mill proposal. With respect, all by itself, and as an undergraduate degree, this qualification wouldn’t necessarily qualify him for all that much.

Clearly, Mr Gordon has, and would need, other qualifications (university or other) in order for him to have won the high profile Pulp Mill Task Force’s Executive Director’s position. This is a government funded (public?) position and one that attracts a significant salary. Given this, it would be relevant for the Pulp Mill Task Force to provide a more fulsome account of its staff’s, and spokespeople’s, relevant qualifications and experience. It isn’t to be found on the Pulp Mill Task Forces Website.

People need this information in order that when Mr Gordon and others make a comment on an issue, they can contextualise it and hence put what they have to say into perspective.

As things stand, seemingly, Mr Gordon speaks with less authority than one might expect and this is somewhat surprising. Mr Gordon spoke quite unconvincingly in regurgitating the proposed pulp mill proponent’s arguments at the University debate in Launceston September 19. Indeed, he was comprehensively out classed in the exchange. This is a concern as, by implication, the Tasmanian Government was also discredited given its funding of his position. Simply put Mr Gordon didn’t perform as one might expect that he should.

Given all that is at stake, the wider pulp mill ‘debate’ that is now raging needs to be given some real perspective. Consequently, the qualifications and credentials of commentators, their relationship(s?) to the proponents, government and others, their community standing, their stakeholder status, etc. needs to be articulated so that those trying to assess the situation can put their comments in context. This very often happens but it seems some are reluctant to put their qualifications and/or credentials up for scrutiny and one has to wonder why that might be.

What is at issue here is the partiality and credibility of the commentators (Mr Gordon and others) who speak out in support or otherwise of this Tamar pulp mill proposal. It is past the time when this issues needed to be addressed.

Dorothy Joiner
Senior Partner: Joiner Barton Vale & Associates

How many & who rallied to the call??

2006-09-19T10:30:00.000+10:00

We’ve all witnessed various commentators arguing over just how many people were at the Pulp Mill Rally last Saturday.

Some Tassie sheep farmers recon they can count sheep in a paddock, and accurately, but I am yet to see anyone pull that stunt off. Maybe I’ve just not been around when it has happened but I do not think so.

However no matter how many it was who were at the rally there were enough voters there to determine just who might be elected to a position on Launceston City Council.

There was even enough to determine who would represent Bass in State Parliament. Indeed there were even enough to say who will represent Bass and Braddon at the next Federal election.

Also, there were more than enough to determine one or two Senate seats I suspect.

However many it was who were at the rally it was enough to make a difference, to do so in lots of ways and to do so in ways we are yet to discover I suspect.

Trevor Allen
A Bass voter and a rally attendee

NOTE: Various commentators claimed numbers between 3,000 & 15,000. Whatever the numbers were there was a lot of people in town and without doubt this rally was one of Launceston's biggest if not the biggest ever ... Frank Lee

Allegoric Advertorial

2006-09-02T17:30:00.000+10:00

Tasmania is on the cusp of gambling led economic boom. No, it’s neither the racetracks, nor the Tassie Hawks’ footy team nor the casinos that are to be the key players here! It’s actually the renewable resource industries. All these other gaming options have been enlisted to keep the punters’ eye off the main game while everything is lined up for the really big take. Indeed, why play around with small change when you can go right to the edge and gamble the lot and take everything.

Governance and the corporate world have formed the TPGC (Tasmanian Perpetual Gaming Cooperative) to market their various schemes going forward. TPGC will be a monopoly and the ‘Investment House’ licensed to wager Tasmanians’ resources on 200 to 1 plus projects.

An early TPGC product being promoted is Tasmanian Roulette. This game offers enormous, and gilt edge, opportunities for corporations investing in totalling Tasmanian renewable resources – primarily its farmland and forests but not exclusively. The rules are still in development and uncritical investors are still being sought.

Tasmanian Roulette will be the mechanism whereby TPGC will lever both the dollars and the resources required to amass the mandatory stake in the first big gamble – the toxic option, down stream, constrained value adding, pulp production, grand flutter mark one.

It is estimated that 20 years (2026) will see all valuable resources removed from the island thus making space for, and simultaneously opening up the opportunity for, the second big gamble – the dumb, up stream, total value depleting, toxic dump, grand flutter mark two.

The elegant part of this entire scenario is the fact that TPGC investors and their collaborators will have acquired white shoes and moved to a cooperative playground somewhere else. The sting in the tail is that these places are soon to come under the threat of like schemes perpetrated by even cleverer, even more malevolent and absolutely descendant free investors. History tells absolutely nothing to those who pay little or no attention to it!

The Examiner seems to be wanting to lift it’s game??

2006-08-25T11:09:00.000+10:00

BREAKING NEWS SEPT 2 _ Tom is "on leave" and is "due back"(?) September 22!!

TPMT has noted that The Examiner seems to making an effort to lift their game on the pulp mill discourse/debate. Tom Ellison seems to be getting a bit of a run at telling the story. It is early days, and still too few stories to tell us that much, but one would have to wonder if the ABC’s Media Watch’s attention has started to kick in.

A look back over the links to stories below makes interesting reading. What does the future hold?

Town set for social upheaval – Thurs 24 August 2006

Mill will emit toxins: report – Gunns' use of scientific data questioned By TOM ELLISON , Wed 23 August 2006

Rolling thunder – Wed 9 August 2006

Mill waste to go into Bass Strait – Report tells of plans to dispose of pulp effluent – Thur 3 August 2006

GUNNS' PULP MILL EFFLUENT: Daily discharge kg Effluent volume 69,800,000 Total dissolved solids 153,000 Suspended solids 2100 Colour 25,500 Organochlorines 411 Chlorate 125

Media Watch: The Examiner runs ads as news

Aunty’s 7.30 Report picks up on the pulp mill debate.

2006-08-25T09:16:00.000+10:00

The ABC picked up on the debate August 22 and the link to the TV Program Transcript has quite a few quotable quotes.

Click here to go to the transcript

WHO IS GOING TO CLEAN UP TASMANIA?

2006-08-19T00:52:00.000+10:00

(NOTE 24/08/06: This item has been revised as some of the numbers are in dispute and new information is coming to hand day by day. TPMT still thinks that this item holds up even with the new numbers being suggested)

TPMT has just received this notice from CUT (Clean Up Tasmania)and we are publishing in full, unedited, in the hope that someone will confirm the calculations, or better still, be able to refute them.

START INFORMAL ADVISORY NOTICE
A world scale pulp mill in Tasmania could destroy our farms and our forests

The Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has published information about pulp mills that should concern the community, Gunns shareholders and investors need to carefully consider new information coming in from professional organisations.

JAKARTA (11 May 2006)--False assumptions … have led international investors to channel tens of billions of dollars worldwide into financially risky and environmentally destructive ventures, according to an expert analysis of 67 pulp mill projects released today by the Indonesia-based CIFOR.

The report… warns that a lack of due diligence in the expanding global pulp sector may lead to a new wave of ill-advised projects, setting up investors, forest-dependent communities, and the environment for a precipitous fall.

The CIFOR report finds that the scale of pulp mills has grown dramatically over the past decade and that individual mills now have a voracious appetite for wood: a single large mill with an annual capacity of 1.0 million tonnes requires the equivalent of 15 percent of the Brazilian Amazon's annual timber harvest. When this wood is not available from plantation forests, the demand for pulp can drive illegal logging and clearing of natural forest ecosystems. Plantation development itself often displaces forest communities and fuels social conflicts.

Given the lack of evidence to support the IIS from Gunns, coupled with the biased and compromised process for evaluating the risks to Tasmanians, the local community and investors have every reason to be concerned about the Gunns pulp mill proposal.

One immediate and serious concern is the impact on Tasmania's forests and farms (largely ignored by the RPDC and the State government). If the CIFOR report is correct, (and it is surely more reliable than anything from Gunns) then Gunns mill will require around 12 million tonnes of wood each year as feedstock (Brazil timber harvest = 75 million tonnes; 15% is 11,250,000 tonnes).

Gunns mill is mooted to be 1.1 million tonnes production capacity per year and so will require around 12 million tonnes of timber each year based on the CIFOR figures.

It has been reported that 87,320 hectares of hardwood plantations in Tasmania between 1997 and 2004 were bought with MIS funds. (Plague of plantations, Bevilaqua, News Ltd) which has been estimated as around 17% of Tasmania's farmland.

Using these figures and a figure of 200 cu m of timber per ha as a guide we calculate

12,000,000/200 = 60,000 ha/yr of plantations to feed the pulp mill

If a plantation regrowth rate (turnover) is 15 years then the mill will need 60,000 ha * 15 of plantation feedstock or 900,000 ha.

If 87,000 ha is around 17% of total farms, then 1% would be about 87,000/17 = 5,100 ha

Total farmland area needed to convert to plantations would then be 900,000/5,100 = 175% ……(NOTE: The ACTUAL numbers here are in dispute BUT whatever the outcome, it will be a lot even if it is 50% as some are suggesting and given the impact of that upon Tasmania's economy)

If the assumptions are possible and a reasonable average of the situation, then the Gunns mill could entirely destroy Tasmania's farm sector with plantations and need to remove thousands of hectares of valuable forests.

NB this informal advisory notice has not been based on any definitive studies due to a lack of useful information provided by the State government. The figures from CIFOR and the calculations herein should be used as guides to the risks faced by Tasmania and its population if they wish to build a world scale pulp mill in a tiny (non-world scale) island. Readers with more accurate and definitive estimates are invited to email their figures to us at cleanuptasmania@gmail.com

Richard Barton
CUT (Clean Up Tasmania)
Postal Address
PO Box 5255 Launceston TAS 7250

Email Clean Up Tasmania

PULP PLANTATIONS: Tax Breaks Under Examination

2006-08-15T14:40:00.000+10:00

Readers of the Examiner probably won't know this, but there is a new and very viable threat to the proposed pulp mill that Gunns Ltd is, hopefully, starting to get a little bit nervous about. A report in yesterday's Sunday Tasmanian informs us that federal government moves to reduce tax breaks for plantation investors, who sink money into plantations in managed investment schemes on which Gunns Ltd relies rather heavily.

Put simply, and I won't pretend to be any sort of expert on taxation matters, people are enticed to invest in plantations because of the tax breaks attached to doing so. As a result investment in plantations have increased dramatically over the last few years, and of course Gunns has stated loudly and often that it needs a secure supply of plantation stock to feed the ravenous mill. To keep its filthy hands off native or, Heaven forbid, old growth forest.

If the tax breaks are reduced, investment in plantations also reduces as the incentive to do so is taken away. Federally, the Nationals would seem to support a tax break reduction as plantations have had, to put it in the nicest possible terms, a rather adverse effect on farms and other small communities. That effect has been well documented in Tasmania of late.

Of course, there was nothing about this in The Examiner today, and don't hold your breath waiting for the front page splash. No doubt our fine local journal will continue its robust and very informative weekly series on why we'll all go the dogs if this mill doesn't get up. The instalments on effluent outfall and transport have been fascinating.

No recognition at all that there is a viable alternative point of view, but then that's hardly news is it? And the Examiner rarely bothers itself with anything so inconvenient as the news.

I hope Media Watch is paying attention.

Salvation Jane

THE SWANS ARE DEAD paper by Robert (Bob) McMahon

2006-08-05T20:27:00.000+10:00

The paper, "THE SWANS ARE DEAD" by Robert (Bob) McMahon, is in seven parts and it is now available as a print friendly download via TPMT. The paper came out of experiences, and an issue of contention, in Chile that have resonances in Tasmania and the Tamar Valley specifically. It has been published in order to:
1. Allow people to spread the word and use the information freely;
2. Encourage Tasmanians to think seriously about what’s at stake when all too little attention is paid to the ways natural resources are exploited;
3. Encourage Tasmanians to think seriously before allowing any large company to take advantage of their resources; and
4. in the whole process, pay more than scant regard to Tasmania's resources and their true value.

Needless to say, the paper’s publication was sparked by the imminent publication of the Gunns Draft IIS. The paper can also be read online and there is a companion DVD with video footage shot and collected by Bob in Chile in April 2006.

Click here to go to Bob McMahon’s BLOG & the paper

Click here to go to the print friendly download site

Email Bob McMahon to order a copy of the DVD

Geohydrologist David Leaman responds to Gunns Draft IIS

2006-08-05T19:32:00.000+10:00

David Leaman, prominent Tasmanian geohydrologist, has responded to Gunns Ltd. Draft IIS. His submission makes for compelling reading and can be downloaded form TPMT’s facilitating WEBpage.

Click here to go to the download site

Quotation: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident". Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)

STRAW POLL ON GUNNS DRAFT IIS

2006-08-05T15:38:00.000+10:00

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

Open Letter to Tasmania's Newspaper Editors and the Tasmanian Community.

2006-07-30T18:34:00.001+10:00

Damon Thomas of the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is a great advocate for the Gunns pulp mill and the big players in general in the forest industry.

He does not appear as interested in the welfare of those many commercial interests which will be adversely affected by the project.

I declare a conflict of interest: I grew up in the North East of Tasmania (Blue Tier country) and I was horrified to hear John Gay state that it was his intention to “convert the native forests of the North East to plantations” (for the benefit of his pulp mill project)

Plantations of rapidly growing eucalypt species are rapidly replacing the mixed wet forests as well as the rich agricultural soils in this region.

There is precious little employment associated with the establishment, maintenance or harvesting of plantations and there are many well documented problems for farmers, winegrowers, leatherwood honey producers, tourism operators and aquaculture businesses as well as many traditional smaller operators in the Timber industry.

Mr Thomas does not mention the clear and repeated (science based) warnings by Dr. David Leaman of the disastrous effects of plantations on water yield nor the warnings of health professionals and local citizens concerned about the aerial spraying of dangerous chemicals used in plantation forestry.

As has been expressed by pulp mill expert Robert Eastment, it is essential that the many concerns about the operations of the mill and the sourcing of pulpwood are fully and openly addressed so that the community can have confidence that this project, which has already used much taxpayer money in it’s promotion, will really benefit the Tasmanian population as a whole and not just a few favoured individuals.

A wonderful old lady, unfortunately now deceased, who lived all her life in the North East (at Pyengana), made a statement of qualified support for the pulp mill, ”as long as it won’t harm the birds or fish.” Wise words.

Dr. Frank Nicklason
West Hobart

NOTE: A similar letter to this one has been submitted to The Mercury, and has not yet been published, as well as Tasmanian Times where it was.

Tasmanian Times Link

FREE ADVERTISEMENT: INFOstopper

2006-07-26T04:15:00.000+10:00

POA

LETTER FROM CAMERON: Get the Blinkers off, Gunns!

2006-07-26T02:35:00.000+10:00

The pulp mill draft IIS, Vol 1 Section 3.1, states: “Value-adding and the production of more complex differentiated products are important for economic growth…they result in less sensitivity to exchange rate fluctuations and price competition than the simpler commodity product (woodchips).”

This claim is directly contradicted by the recent report issued by CommSec, which stated that the mill would never be cost-competitive, and provided no guarantees of security given the volatility of the global market for pulp. The same report stated that the mill was financially risky and dangerous, as reported in The Mercury on May 31. Gunns’ current share price (approx $2.50 or thereabouts) values the company at about $850 million, which widens the gap between its financial security and the capital needed ($1.4 billion) to proceed with this development.

Section 3.2 states: “The alternative to establishing a pulp mill is a ‘do nothing’ option, that is, continue to export woodchips to international pulp mills for processing.”

This, I’m afraid to say, is patent rubbish. In 2004 the Tasmanian Greens released their Forest Transition Strategy, which did exactly what this quote denies: it laid out an alternative proposal to the pulp mill. “A pulp mill,” the FTS document states, “is not in the best interests of Tasmania’s strategic direction. It would continue Tasmania’s ‘quarry mentality’ as a price-taking undifferentiated commodity producer. This is the opposite of making high-quality low-volume goods for the world’s top niche markets--and it returns less jobs for more wood and more investment than the other options.”

Read the overview of the Greens’ FTS here

But there’s the thing, Readers: why is Gunns Ltd’s proposed pulp mill more viable, more beneficial, than the alternative set out in the Forest Transition Strategy? By alienating themselves and their supporters from viable alternatives—or indeed any alternative at all—the credibility of the pulp mill’s proponents is exposed to question. Through a disproportionate level of taxpayer-funded support and by dint of their own resources and capital, Gunns Ltd have built a myth for themselves that suggests the pulp mill should represent the only way forward for the Tasmanian economy.

I have to assert that this is not so. I don’t expect the blinkers to come off, but I don’t accept the propaganda either. I suppose it has always been thus in Tasmania, where our environmental heritage is concerned. The big end of town has all the answers, which of course is convenient when they are given free rein to ask all the questions.

Cameron Hindrum,

Launceston

Is The Examiner a publisher that publishes without fear or favour

2006-07-25T13:06:00.000+10:00

The letter to The Examiner's Editor below is here with the permission of the author. But more of that later! Firstly, let’s look at the unedited version of the Letter to The Examiner – dated Thursday, July 13, 2006

Dear Sir,

Your paper prints the spin put out by Gunns Limited without query or question. Suggestions by them that they can build a Pulp Mill for $1.3 billion dollars creating 8,000 direct and indirect jobs are arrived at so as to give the Community that warm cosy feel good feeling.

I ask, how can a company whose share price has fallen 34% in the last financial year, making it the ninth worst performing stock on the Exchange (Australian Financial Review, 12 July 2006, page 34) afford to spend $1.3 billion dollars on a Pulp Mill when its capital value, based on a share price of $2.75 is $880 million dollars?

Secondly if it takes 8,000 men on say $1,000 a week some two years to build the Pulp Mill, the labour cost alone is 8,000 x $1,000 x 52 x 2 or $832 million dollars.

May I suggest, that based on Gunns figures they may need to hire a new Financial Controller, for the Company will, in all probability, go bust. Mr Lennon will then have to help them out yet again presumably as usual at the expense of ordinary hard working Tasmanians, but maybe an investigative journalist from your paper could discover if $1.3 billion dollars and 8,000 jobs is a fiction or a fact. [215 words]

John Hawkins
Chudleigh 7304
Phone number supplied but presumably(?) not used.

NOW FOR WHAT WHEN TO PRINT:

"Suggestions by Gunns Ltd that it can build a pulp mill for $1.4 billion, creating thousands of direct and indirect jobs, are arrived at so as to give the community that warm and cosy good feeling.

How can a company whose share price has fallen 34 per cent in the last financial year, making it the ninth worst performing stock on the Australian Stock Exchange, afford to spend $1.4 billion dollars on a pulp mill when its capital value, based on a share price of $2.75 is $880 million?
{93 words]
JOHN HAWKINS, Chudleigh.

If you are a letter writer, and you imagine that there is a realistic comparison between the two letters then you are very easy to please. But there is another problem here perhaps. It goes to the issue of the common law moral rights of the author, or letter writer, and when that might just kick in – Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act, December 21, 2000.

About Moral Rights

Authors, even letter writers to The Editor, have intellectual property in their letters and that includes; (1) The right of attribution (including the right against false attribution); And (2) The right of integrity. The right of integrity is infringed if the work [a letter? ] is subjected to derogatory treatment which is prejudicial to the author's honour or reputation. Derogatory treatment has been defined to include: 'material distortion, mutilation or material alteration of a work [letter?]'.

So far as Letters to the Editor are concerned the moral rights of letter writers probably hasn’t been tested. Nonetheless, it would seem that The Examiner might be prudent if it got some expert advice on this one perhaps.

It is always good to know that The Examiner is busy correcting syntax, spelling, etc. while at the same time anticipating just what it is readers really need to know and writers really want to say.

ENDNOTE: Gunns’ shares were selling at $ 2.560 at Noon July 2006 with 426,159 shares being traded for the day at that time. The Commonwealth Bank seemed to have been on the money in their advice to investors and it is a pity that The Examiner’s readers do not seem to be able to rely upon this paper as one that will report the news without fear or favour.

Emily's Arch Myrtle on Weld Hill

2006-07-24T16:08:00.000+10:00

Some People just cannot help themselves! But some go about it in different ways. Some keep on going back to the same place to watch what happens to ‘the place’. Others, well they trash places and walk away and somehow allow themselves to forget all about what they’ve done. Apparently, and reportedly, ‘the trashing’ gives them a huge charge!

Emily's Arch Myrtle at Weld Hill marks just such a place. Indeed, this image was made in 2003 and this extraordinary tree only escaped the trashers’ worst efforts because it happened to be growing in a streamside reserve. That wouldn’t always save it but that’s another story. Anyway, it did this time!

Emily (the tree) is a placemarker and a not so silent witness to the utter devastation that hungry (greedy!?) forestry practices visit upon Tasmanian landscapes to feed pulp mills.

Nowadays, Emily is surrounded by a monoculture plantation. Ironically, in time these plantation trees too will probably be fed into a pulp mill somewhere leaving the place Emily marks icrementally devastated. Watch the comments here as it is a good guess that the GOOGLEearth references will allow you to visit Emily’s spot via cyberspace.

Presumably, and all at once, it is planned that this landscape will be planted out with yet more fast growing Eucalyptus nitens which in time will be harvested all at once. Sadly, this will leave the place Emily marks just that little bit more impoverished. But before that, there will probably be a lot of topsoil that will find its way into the Tamar further increasing the flood risk in Launceston.

Oh, and while they are growing these plantation trees will also be using a lot of water that was once available for all sorts of other things including flushing the ecosystem.

Watching places is an educative activity that big resource companies wish nobody would do. A good reason to keep doing it perhaps!?

A Link to another story about Emily the Arch Myrtle

Water and the proposed pulp mill

2006-07-24T14:24:00.000+10:00

NOTE: The letter below appeared in The Examiner today and has been published here with the author's permission.

Dear Editor,
According to the pulp mill's Integrated Impact Statement, 29 gigalitres of water per year will be required from the Trevallyn Dam (The Examiner, July 15).

On my calculations, based on what I pay for my domestic usage, this would mean an annual water bill of more than $10 million.

Will this affect the economic viability of the mill or will the water be subsidised because of the importance of the project?

If there is to be a subsidy, how will its level be determined?

Would it not be cheaper to take the water from the Tamar River near the mill site and return it, pollutant-free, as we have been assured it will be, into the river, rather than piping it all the way from the dam and then to the coast?

I am neither an engineer nor an economist, so perhaps I have missed some vital point, but I would like an explanation about these matters.

- TIM THORNE, Launceston.

In the letter that followed John Hawkins of Chudleigh pointed out:
• To build a pulp mill Gunns Ltd planned to spend $1.4 billion;
• Gunns Ltd share price has fallen 34 per cent in the last financial year;
• Gunns Ltd is the ninth worst performing stock on the Australian Stock Exchange.
He went on to ask "How can [Gunns Ltd] afford to spend $1.4 billion dollars on a pulp mill when its capital value, based on a share price of $2.75 is $880 million? ( At 2pm 24.07.06 the price was $2.540)

Good points Mr. Hawkins, and we can only assume that Gunns Ltd will be explaining all that to the assembled masses at their invitation only Day-of-Spin at the Grand Chancellor Hotel next Thursday. It'd be interesting to see how it goes down with the investors!

Does The Examiner treat letter writers with disdain?

2006-07-24T03:36:00.000+10:00

Some time ago the letter below was sent to The Examiner and seemingly there has been no response. It is a simple, and a very good, idea. You do have to wonder why the editor is so reluctant to move on this. What has he got to hide? What is the problem here?

After all if you want the world news the last paper you would buy is The Examiner. However, if you want local news and local people's views you might want to buy it. The letters to the editor in particular are what a lot of people want to read. Not publishing a letter, arguably, amounts to cultural engineering!

Is that a legitimate role for The Examiner?

THE LETTER
Dear Mr. Southwell.
I appreciate that you can not print all of the letters that are sent to you for inclusion in the newspaper. You would go broke.

However, letters to the Editor is a growing service that all newspapers are having to deal with. In addition; like myself a reader for more than 30 years, readers may feel so strongly about a specific issue. That they may only send in one letter say every ten years to be included in the Newspaper. To them at the time it is very important.

Can I suggest that the Examiner include a count at the bottom of each letter that simply says " x similar letters received". This would at least acknowledge that all letters have been considered. More importantly, it would give all readers a benchmark to gauge community and their own opinions and interest against.

As an alternative; and in addition you could load all letters on to a specific section your web page. I estimate this would take no more than an hour per day of staff time. This would enable you to deal with all letters, be seen to be offering a service to the Community and individual readers as well promote your own business and advertising.

As a further option you could allow letters to be posted on a section of your web site directly by readers/customers.

I do not be live that you can overlook addressing this issue. Residents/readers/customers have less and less opportunities to express their views, concerns and be heard.

I am sure that if you addressed these suggestions openly, building in safe guards for potential miss use it would significantly enhance the Examiners standing in the community, its business and journalistic standing as well.

I am available to discuss these issues at a convenient time.

Regards and thanks. John

Email The Examiner’s Editor

TAMAR BRICKbatz #1: Gunns, The ABC & The Examiner

2006-07-23T19:32:00.000+10:00

Salvation Jane (the real identity of whom, of course, is and should remain the best kept secret since secrets were invented, which as we all know occurred in 1937 as a new and fascinating tactic in the leadup to World War 2. But that’s another story.)

An Old Examiner Story – Premier appoints 'Examiner' editor as chief of staff

ABC mediawatch transcript – The Examiner wins the Campbell Reid Perpetual Trophy for the Brazen Recycling of Other People’s Work

ABC mediawatch transcript – The Examiner might even win the Campbell Reid Perpetual Trophy AGAIN!

Maybe you love a conspiracy; maybe you have a mathematical obsession for finding patterns in things; or maybe you like to know what’s going on behind the surface of a discourse that presents itself as news. This is the first in an occasional series that will attempt to monitor the coverage of certain events relating to the progress of a certain $1.4 billion development that a certain company based in Launceston wishes to construct at Long Reach on the fair River Tamar. The three links above provide a running commentary of the approach taken by one news outlet to coverage of this story.

Of particular interest is Examiner Editor Southwell’s letter in response to suggestions of unbalanced coverage by Mediawatch. There is the barest hint of protesting too much, but also of interest is his explanation of coverage given by The Ex to the CommSec report, ie. that five out of seven brokers reckon Gunns Ltd shares are a good buy. What an odd response to the CommSec report, which didn’t to my knowledge question the current viability of Gunns as an investment—what it did do was lay out the reasons for approaching this company very, very carefully if the proposed mill goes ahead. The massive outlay required, coupled with a lack of guarantee regarding the global price of pulp, makes the pulp mill potentially very dodgy in strict investment terms.

Anyway, be vigilant, read wisely, and stay tuned.

Sal Jane

Is a Pulp Mill worth the intolerance?

2006-07-22T01:05:00.000+10:00

Editorial Note: At 1500 words this piece is longer than what will ‘normally’ be published here – by about 1000 words – but it’s as good a read as when most of it appeared in the Tasmania Times. Highly Recommended Reading!

In the Sunday Examiner of January 30th 2005 there appeared a 40-page advertising feature extolling the virtues of the totally environmentally friendly world’s best practice pulp mill that Gunns Ltd’s Executive Chairman John Gay has his heart set on. This mill seems likely to be built, if it goes ahead, at Bell Bay, not far from George Town in the northern reaches of the Tamar River. The advertising feature strained to set the facts out, dispel any fears that the Pulp Mill would present any threat of harm to the Tasmanian environment and generally sell it as a development without which Tasmania would be left in the economic Dark Ages.

All this comprehensive advertising is undone, however, by the ad that appears on Page 5 of the feature. The ad features a picture of an unidentified man with the caption “This bloke supports the establishment of a pulp mill in Tasmania...the associated employment and the resulting flow of benefits.” Then there is a cartoon, about which more later. At the bottom of the ad is a statement: “We will leave it up to you as to who you support.” And then, with breathtaking arrogance, the question: “Do you support Tasmania or not?” Conveniently, there is nothing to identify who the ad was placed by, leaving open to conjecture the identity of the ‘we’ in that statement. Is it the Executive board of Gunns? The Forestry Industries Association? The George Town Anglican Church Ladies’ Guild?

But if a patronising statement and a provocative question isn’t enough, the cartoon—by Examiner cartoonist Mike Woods—is an appalling piece of stereotypical Greenie-bashing. It features a bespectacled, unshaven character dressed as though as he has just stepped out of the Tarkine, carrying three placards that say, respectively: Ban This, Ban That and Ban Something Else.

The Examiner, of course, is the newspaper Rod Scott was editor of before applying for his position as Paul Lennon’s chief of staff. Scott as editor published a series of blatantly biased articles in support of the Bacon/Lennon Government’s forestry policy, and on at least one occasion deriding the Green movement as needing the forestry issue as without it they have no raison d’etre. He led the charge against the ABC’s Four Corners program Lords of the Forests, which aired in Tasmania early last year and was savaged by Scott in his weekly editorial column in the Sunday Examiner. (Scott no doubt felt vindicated when complaints about this program’s bias were upheld.) In that column, though, he attacked the journalistic standards of reporter Ticky Fullerton, who prepared and presented the program: surely a hypocritical act, from the man who within weeks announced that he was leaving the editor’s chair for the plum job in Lennon’s office.

Scott’s disdain for pro-conservation arguments and actions is symptomatic of a wider insidious problem that the Green movement in this state will continue to have to deal with. Attitudes against environmental activism are still shot through with seemingly impenetrable levels of intolerance. I say still, because this is nothing new. The Green movement in Tasmania can be traced back to the late 1970s with the formation of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society by Dr Bob Brown and others, as a response to the drowning of Lake Pedder earlier that decade. Its halcyon days arrived quickly with a victory of international significance after the Franklin River Blockade of 1982-3, and since then it has maintained a consistent presence in Tasmania, where more recently it has gone into battle for the old growth forests of the Styx Valley and the Tarkine. The value of the victory over the Franklin River cannot be overestimated. Then Premier, Robin Gray, was determined to build the dam at any cost. He labelled the protesters who flooded into the site to stymie construction work as extremists and guerrillas. In January 1983 he rejected a $500-million offer from then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser to stop work on the dam. He even threatened to secede from the Commonwealth if the federal government interfered; in the end, someone must have talked him out of this. As history records, a federal election in March 1983 delivered Bob Hawke’s Labor government to power, in part because of a campaign run by conservation groups in marginal seats acting on Hawke’s promise to stop the dam if he was elected.

As history also records, Hawke stood by his word and legislated to stop the dam being built. Tasmania’s south-west wilderness had become a World Heritage Area in December 1982, although Gray ignored this and proceeded with the dam anyway. A high court appeal against Hawke’s decision by the Gray government lost and by the middle of 1983 the Gordon below Franklin Dam had been stopped. (Gray accepted a $270 million dollar compensation package from the new federal government, considerably less than the first offer of compensation offered by Fraser, and one can only imagine the ignominy with which Gray accepted the lesser amount from a Labor Prime Minister.)

And what is Robin Gray doing with his time these days, now that the Premier’s office is a distant memory? Well, among other things, he serves on the Executive Board of Gunns Ltd. What a stretch that must be. He couldn’t drown the forests, so he’s now supervising their destruction by chainsaw and chipper.

The thing that characterised Gray’s time as Premier, particularly during the Franklin Dam protests, was his immunity to debate. He didn’t need to listen to anyone’s arguments: he had made a decision and that was it. This refusal to consider an alternative, not to mention opposing, opinion is one of the big flaws in pro-forestry, pro-development arguments that arise in this state with reliable regularity. Most recently it was given frightening new form by the launching of a $6.5 million writ against the Gunns 20. John Gay’s motives in taking this action have to be scrutinised very, very closely. The company turned over $105 million last year, so it’s not short of a quid. So why do it? To buy silence. To play the arrogant schoolyard bully. To eradicate any opinion that doesn’t endow its rampant capitalistic empire-building with common sense.

There is a sense of inevitability about this pulp mill. It is an understatement to say that the Lennon government supports it. Gunns are going to great lengths to ensure that all the umpires (to use a metaphor from the 40-Page Propaganda Gazette) are kept happy. The failed attempt to build a pulp mill in Tasmania in 1989 led to the rise of the Tasmanian Greens as a political entity, and it may be that in the intervening years technology has improved to the point where a “clean green” pulp mill is in fact feasible. But if Gunns is going to sell this venture to the Tasmanian community, however, they will need to stop endorsing divisive and deliberate attitudes that only drive a wedge deeper into the argument. Passions about Tasmania’s environment run very deep indeed, deeper than Lake Pedder and deeper than the bottom line on Gunns’ annual profit statement. Intolerance will not win Gay or Gray or Lennon or any of the other Suits who run this state any friends in the forests.

NB. In the sixteen months or so since this piece was written (and published on , three cheers for Lindsay Tuffin!) some things have changed a little and some things have changed not at all. Recently Gunns Ltd submitted its draft IIS for the pulp mill to the RPDC; the concerned citizens of this state now have about 70 days to respond to a document that has taken Gunns 350 000 hours and $11 million dollars to prepare. (Pulp mill project manager Les Baker said at least in the press coverage of the IIS submission that the scope and detail of the IIS would ‘knock the Greens for six’. I’m sure he hopes that debate, opposition, protest and dissent will also be dealt with similarly. Sorry to disappoint him.) In addition, the propaganda continues, in such forms as an 8-page ‘IIS Lite’ delivered to my home courtesy of The Examiner, and citizens of places like Exeter and George Town appearing on my television telling me what an absolute necessity the pulp mill is. (Or words to that effect.) Not to mention the bumper sticker wars: ‘Pulp a Greenie’ is the pick of them so far. Of course the anti-pulp mill battalions also have their stickers, but none that I have seen as yet advocate violence against another human being.

The Examiner, meanwhile, glossed over the content of the report from CommSec, which painted a less than rosy picture of the financial viability of Gunns to implement and sustain this project. Viewers of Media Watch will be familiar with this issue. TCCI boss Damon Thomas was recently captured on TV news urging opponents of the mill to stop peddling ‘rubbish and bullshit’. (As opposed to the ad which is described in the opening paragraphs of this article.)

The issues surrounding this pulp mill proposal can become complex, but at their core is what I hope is a reasonably simple idea: the people have a right to speak, and they have a right to be heard. I don’t need 7,500 pages to tell me that.

Cameron Hindrum

A CORPORATE NEIGHBOUR FROM HELL: A Postcard From Trevallyn

2006-07-21T22:27:00.000+10:00

Hello,

We live on Trevallyn and we know that Gunns have done their research. When someone from Gunns' management said something like that when they build their pulp mill down river from their Head Office in Launceston they will "punch the exhaust gases up through the inversion layer" they actually knew how it would all work. Evidence this postcard as it documents just what happens when you consign your industrial waste to somewhere outside the environment. For them, it's a tried and proven system!

Perplexed On Trevallyn

DIY Gunns Cultural Impact Statements

2006-07-21T21:17:00.000+10:00

DIY CAR STICKER IN 7 STEPS
Step 1. Take an A4 sheet of paper
Step 2. With a thick TEXTApen, write your message on it – and with a measured amount of passion
Step 3. Stick the paper on a car – perhaps on someone else's car but that would be illegal, very unkind and bad manners too
Step 4. Drive the car about with 'gay' abandon
Step 5. Park the car somewhere in Tasmania
Step 6. Document the result when you return to your car
Step 7. Immediately notify the car owner's insurance company

Graphic by zingHOUSE

Paul's State of Fear

2006-07-21T19:39:00.000+10:00

Subject: Effluent discharge from proposed pulp mill and the effect on marine and coastal environment including waterfront real estate values.

2006-07-21T17:21:00.000+10:00

Press Release July 13th 2006-07-20 Bob McMahon
TAP Tasmanians Against Pulpmill

ISSUES

• Approximately 30 billion litres of effluent discharge annually into Bass Strait approx 3 kilometres off Four Mile Bluff at a water depth of 20 metres.

• Approximately 85 million litres per day (working year of 350 days) i.e. the content of approx 40 Olympic size swimming pools daily.

• Effluent contains sediment (wood solids), heavy metals, many chemical compopunds including POP’s (Persistent Organic Pollutants) like dioxins, the last a cumulative toxin – because of dioxin build up Sydney Harbour is now closed to all fishing.

• Discharge point 6k NNE of Low Head and 3k W of Five Mile Bluff. Such a large volume of effluent will spread along the coast and will come ashore with the tides causing significant environmental devaluation and devaluation of waterfront property values – Greens Beach, Low Head, Bell Buoy Beach, Beechford, Lulworth etc.

• The Draft IIS (Integrated Impact Statement) in its Social Impact Assessment addresses the community concern with ‘property price fluctuation’. For Georgetown property values the social perception is ‘boom and bust’ – boom during the construction phase (2 years) and bust when the construction finishes. Community perception (not included in IIS) is that coastal property values (notably Bell Buoy Beach) will not boom, only bust.

• Commsec (Commonwealth Bank) advice to Gunns’ shareholders is SELL NOW. It is assumed the same advice applies to waterfront property owners right along the coast. The golden age of a clean sea and pristine coastal ecology is over. That is the overwhelming community concern.

• Fishing is finished. Other recreational use seriously devalued: boating, surfing, swimming, diving. Tasmania listed by National Geographic in Jan 2004 as the world’s second best dive destination. Barrel Rock, 400 metres from Low Head Pilot Station is a spectacular dive site. It’s future is compromised.

Mike Bolan Addresses the Issue of the Gunns Draft Integrated Impact Statement.

2006-07-21T12:58:00.000+10:00

Introduction: Mike Bolan addressed and workshoped the GUNNS IIS at the TAP (Tasmanians Against Pulpmill) at one of the group's now regular fortnightly meetings – 7pm Thursday June 20 Riverside West Tamar Council Chambers.

Mike is a complex systems consultant & strategist with worldwide experience at all levels of organization. The largest project he has been engaged in was worth 1.5 billion dollars – a project now worth 5 billion dollars

Mike asked and garnered questions to do with the GUNNS' IIS and how to evaluate current situation! Questions such as:
• What are the community impacts?
• Where is the evidence based analysis?
• Where is the simple presentation of independent research outcomes?

What is the current situation?
• The community is uninformed about the proposed mill’s impacts!
• The Community has had no real input!
• There is a total bias in favour of proponent!
• The Laws have been changed for convenience of Gunns!
• The IIS impossible to respond to!

What can be done?
• Inform the community about possible impacts – Digital systems offers a way forward!
• Demand representation by governments and governance – Local, State & Federal!
• Represent yourselves and build social networks!
• Create new information pathways – Websites et al!

Who might help?
• Anyone adversely affected by the proposal!
• Your local businesses!
• Local residents and their networks!
• Individuals and organisations interested in free markets!
• The Free Trade Association!
• The Competition Council!
• The Stock Exchange!

Evaluating the IIS: Ask yourself, your friends, your neighbours, whoever, does it adequately deal with potential concerns? • Pollution • Toxins • Effect on ecologies • Traffic • Water • Legal • Business continuity, survival and insurance • Property values • Service access (e.g. trades) • Nature of democracy in Tasmania • Access to forests • Tourism industry impacts • Impacts on rural centres (their cash flow) • Instability of the proposal • Potential changes of corporate ownership

If the answers to questions tend come up on the negative side, then guarantees should be insisted upon! After all, if Gunns’ management is actually confident about their proposal then there should be no problem in providing hard and fast guarantees to their shareholders and the Tasmanian community alike!

Why Gunns management shouldn’t prepare the IIS
• They are not authorised to care for the public!
• They are only authorised to make profits!
• They have a vested, conflict of interest!
• They do not have the expertise to define impacts!

Who should prepare the IIS? An independent party that represents the community and one that has the requisite expertise.

OTHERWISE THERE ARE TOO MANY RISKS!!

To contact Mike Bolan email mbolan@tpg.com.au

Graphic supplied by zingHOUSE

Frank Strie Comments on The Gunns Draft Integrated Impact Statement

2006-07-21T00:36:00.000+10:00

Frank Strie, forester and forest activist living on the Tamar, at a media conference at Tail Race Park on the Tamar June 20 2006 made the following points:

• The Gunns Draft IIS is rich in the assumptions it makes, the charts it contains and the growth models it projects;

• Tasmania’s production forests are characterised as wood factories with reduced ‘forest values’;

• It assumes that tree crops in Tasmanian communities’ water catchments are not only sustainable but also that they can be extended;

Furthermore it is assumed:
• that the industry growth predictions the Draft IIS asserts are factual; and
• that the current forest practices are sustainable.
while in reality these assumptions are based on ‘desktop modelling’.

Fran Strie asks:
• What does the forest floor tell us?"

• What do the pictures now available from outer space tell us?

Check out GOOGLE EARTH and ask where is the resource!

On the ground it is clear that plantation logs are becoming thinner and smaller and thus less valuable.

The pulp mill proposal, if realised, will set Tasmania on a course where it’s rich, diverse, mixed aged forests will be converted on a massive scale to degraded monoculture landscapes.

Who owns the resource that the proposed pulp mill aspires to consume?

Given that the resource (the pulp mill feedstock) is to come from public forests and public plantation land, largely, the community of ownership and interest must have access to the information regarding prices being paid for the resource, the volumes being produced, the volumes sold and the volumes to be retained. Currently that is not so!

Any project be it a pulp mill, a saw mill or veneer mill needs:
• to be based on sustainable resource management practices;
• to recover by-products from sustainable forest and catchment management strategies;
• to be supported by the communities who share ownerships in the resources held in their forests; and
• to be able to win FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification

Frank Strie essentially asks, are the growth predictions assumed in the DRAFT IIS realistic? He provided the following information which seems to suggest otherwise.

Despite the fact that most of the literature is telling us that Eucalypts and pines perform fastest in the artificial, exotic tree plantations of South America where they base their feedstock production rates, and realistically so, on just 15 cubic metres, per hectare, per annum

http:/ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33898

Gunns CEO, John Gay, has a different story to tell.

Mainland Australian media (The Age & SMH) quoted John Gay as saying that Gunns feedstock plantations will produce (calculated using his numbers) a sustainable average, net wood yield over the whole available plantation estate in Tasmania of 28.57 cubic metres per hectare per annum within five years.

STORY: Gunns denies it will pulp native forests

Somewhere there seems to be a credibility gap!

The Need Keep Talking

2006-07-20T09:52:00.000+10:00

There is a need to keep talking about what it is that is at stake in regard to the proposal to build a pulp mill in Tasmania's Tamar Valley. There are many messages that need to be discussed and the positions they come from will be varied. Readers of this BLOG are encouraged to leave their comments and to contribute to the discourse.

Simply, email the editor!