a millstone around our neck

A millstone around our neck
THE MERCURY
March 05, 2011 10.07am

Award-winning Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan gives his personal views on the proposed Gunns pulp mill in the Tamar Valley

GUNNS, once the billion-dollar super company of Tasmania, is today on its knees and needing its pulp mill to simply stay in existence.

Ironically, Gunns now desperately needs the support of conservationists - the much-vaunted social licence - to get a funding partner that will help finance the mill.

The worst-kept secret of recent months is that Gunns has played those negotiating the Forest Principles on behalf of the environment movement like a cat with a mouse.

The secret deal the conservationists have been offered is staggering: in return for the ending of native forest logging they are to run dead on the pulp mill.

I hope that handful of negotiators representing the many have not, through naivete and out of fear, succumbed to the arguments of Gunns and signed off on such a sickening deal.

They can prove they haven't by stating that they will resume strongly campaigning to stop Gunns' pulp mill and continue for as long as it takes.

I don't belong to the Wilderness Society, Environment Tasmania or the ACF, or for that matter any group or party. And here are four reasons why, whatever deal has been struck, I won't be supporting the Gunns Tamar Valley pulp mill.

1. Gunns and Greg L'Estrange have spent much time telling all who will listen that their mill proposal is better than John Gay's original proposal.

John Gay frequently said similar things.

Perhaps they will only use plantation stock.

John Gay said that too in 2004.

Perhaps the odours and water pollution will be reduced.

But who can say? Even if the Federal Government revises some levels down, are they safe? Is the mill safe?

There is a very simple way Gunns can prove to the Tasmanian people that all that they say is true take their new plans back to the RPDC and have the mill properly assessed.

Let the mill be fully tested in its entirety by an independent and expert process not subject to political interference.

But of course Gunns haven't.

And Gunns won't.

2. Let's presume Greg L'Estrange and the new Gunns are genuine, that they build the new mill with fine hopes and pure hearts.

But on day one, there are problems with water pollution.

In week two poisonous odours settle over Launceston.

In year three depressed market conditions lead Gunns to begin to use a certain percentage of native forest in their feedlot.

And about all this, what can Gunns and the pure-hearted Mr L'Estrange do? Well, little or nothing, because they have a mill to run, money to make, and if remedial works fail they cannot shut the mill down because that would be the end of Gunns.

At which point many Tasmanians might look to their legal rights.

Except under Section 11 of Paul Lennon's Pulp Mill Assessment Act, drafted under the supervision of Gunns lawyers, they have none.

The Gunns mill exists above and beyond the law.

So if Greg L'Estrange is genuine, insist to the Tasmanian Government - whose support for Gunns remains their one and only principle in running Tasmania - that they repeal Section 11.

But of course Gunns haven't.

And Gunns won't.

3. The bad faith displayed by the forest industry over recent months makes it clear that they are not people who can be trusted.

The chainsaw Camorra on big pay packets are still there in key positions in the bureaucracy, the Government and the industry.

Who is to say that if a pulp mill were given away for the native forests that they will keep their word?

Who is to say that they won't be back chainsawing and burning old-growth forests next month or next year, renaming old growth as regrowth, and regrowth as plantations?

That legislation won't be retrospectively altered?

Because without the old rackets, what purpose or power or pay packet do the old men have?

4. Gunns' history in Tasmania is one of recorded corruption, intimidation and coercion.

At various times it has used bribes, lawyers, politicians and media to get its way and its will, which is simply more money.

In consequence of Gunns' determination to get their mill built, Tasmanians from 2004 onwards witnessed a debauching of public life that was sickening and without precedent in our island's history.

Parliament was perverted to the point of near irrelevancy, the public service cowed and neutered, while intimidation, legal thuggery, character assassination, threats, the wrecking of careers, the overriding of processes, and cronyism became the order of day.

To agree to this mill is to say to everyone in Tasmania - every politician, every businessman, every citizen - that in the end might is right, that the only law is the dollar, and that the corruption of our public life is not only acceptable but the only way to get anything done in Tasmania.

If we are ever to escape the hopeless cycle of environmental destruction subsidised by our taxes leading into yet another financial crisis, we need government by politicians engaging with the very real issues that confront Tasmania with a sense of responsibility to the people, rather than servitude to Gunns' bottom line as their only purpose.

Not the cake Lara Giddings, in a Marie Antoinette moment, described Gunns' mill as, but the bread of real government.

Some years ago I spoke at a rally of fifteen thousand Tasmanians opposed to the Gunns Tamar Valley pulp mill.

I said if it came to it, I would stand between the machinery and the site and go to jail in an attempt to stop the mill.

I then asked those who would stand there with me, who would also go to jail, to raise their hands.

An overwhelming majority raised their hands.

No matter what deal has been done, I haven't changed my mind.

Nor, I strongly suspect, have most of those who raised their hands that day.

The one certainty that Mr L'Estrange, Mr Kelty and any prospective financing partner need to understand is this: whatever the backroom deal, there is no social licence.

What we have instead is a fundamental social betrayal

And if it takes thousands of Tasmanians going to jail to stop the mill, then we will go to jail, and we will keep going to jail until this mill is stopped.

Because only then will this shameful period of our history be ended and Tasmania finally be able to move forward.