Gunns, Part 1

The Four Corners program last night was a report about the proposed Gunns pulp mill. The proposal is very controversial – as any and all forestry proposals in Tasmania are. Over the last couple of decades, forestry debates have been one of the major issues of Tasmanian politics, and so any proposal like a pulp mill was always going to be controversial.

The program was aired to coincide with the final approvals for the mill, which were due to be passed through parliament today, and it documented the whole sorry saga. Apart from the fact that any proposed mill would annoy the Greens, there has been the mess that is the approvals process. That’s the main heart of the controversy. It looks like the mill has been given an easy run around the proper approvals process, and that there is a political fix in place to make sure the mill goes ahead.

That’s the main concern for me – that the approvals process has been compromised in such a way that it looks like it was fixed. The proposal was supposed to go to the RPDC (Resources Planning and Development Commission) which is an independent body. That independence is supposed to ensure impartiality, and so inspire trust in the general community. The initial Gunns IIS (integrated impact statement) that was presented to the RPDC was sent back as being flawed. The RPDC found holes in the IIS, which was around 10,000 pages long and presented late. Holes included failing to address odour emissions, for example.

Instead of re-doing the IIS and re-presenting it to the RPDC, Gunns went to the government. This is where the political fix came in. Premier Paul Lennon has always been a supporter of Gunns, and the forestry industries. He’s a Labor premier, so supporting industry and union worker is fair enough, but he is seen as being too close to John Gay (CEO of Gunns). Gunns withdrew the pulp mill proposal from the RPDC, saying that the process was too long. Gunns said that if the project wasn’t approved by August 2007, then it would not go ahead.

Paul Lennon then announced that the parliament would pass a special bill allowing the mill to go ahead anyway, despite the fact it was no longer going to go through the regular state planning procedures. The new procedure would allow parliament to approve the project, and hired outside consultants to provide a report on the impacts of the mill. The consultants were allowed six weeks to provide this report, aiming to meet the deadline announced by Gunns. The RPDC had taken over a year to reach the stage it did – partly because of Gunns delay in providing information.

The consultants report was favourable, allowing Paul Lennon to say that it would be a good project for Tasmania. But the terms of reference for the consultants report were much tighter than those given to the RPDC, and so didn’t address all the concerns raised previously. So it is pretty much certain that the mill will be built, after the state parliament allowed it to get around the normal planning approvals.

That whole saga is a disgrace, in my opinion. Now that the planning requirements have been relaxed for this project, how can we really know that it is going to meet the world-best standards? We just have to take the word of Gunns and government that it will be so? On a project the size of this one, we shouldn’t have to take it on trust. Allowing the RPDC to complete its study would have given the proposal much greater credibility.
Gunns should have answered the RPDCs’ criticisms, rather than trying to go around it. They raised valid questions, pointed out holes in Gunns arguments, and gave a voice to community concerns. All of these issues have been side-stepped, which just allows distrust and anger to grow. Personally, I think the government was really stupid to allow this to happen.

There were always going to be political issues around the pulp mill. The Greens got their first foothold in parliament due to an earlier pulp mill proposal in the early 1990s (?). They were always going to protest the new proposal – that was a given. People are used to the Greens protesting by now, since it seems to be their main way of operating and getting attention. But the government has just given the Greens much greater credibility by the way it has handled this proposal. If the government had really wanted to address the environmental concerns, this was definitely not the way to do it. It just gives more ammunition for the Greens to work with in the future. The government should have expressed its support for a pulp mill, but also for its independent planning procedures. That way it would have been pro-industry and workers, but also could have answered the critics who say it doesn’t care about environmental issues. And it would also have looked good in standing up to big industry. But that’s just my opinion…

The mill will go ahead, and will continue to be controversial. And there are still lots of environmental questions that, in my opinion, haven’t been properly answered.


Links : The Dead Roo, 4 Corners