Environment Tasmania (ET), the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and The Wilderness Society (TWS) launched television and radio advertisements on March 30 that call for an end to logging in native forests.
The ads feature University of Tasmania biologist Peter McQuillan, who says: “We need government to implement the agreed forest solution”.
He was referring to the , which was signed by the three environment groups, logging industry groups and the foresty union in October 2010. Yet there doesn’t appear to be much of an agreement.
The “independent” facilitator appointed to help turn the “principles” into a plan, ex-union leader Bill Kelty, said on March 22 that all signatories to the statement must support the Gunns pulp mill in the Tamar Valley if there is to be a forest deal.
He said: “It was clearly understood by the signatories that they would support ‘a pulp mill’ but there is clearly now only one proposition available at the moment.”
Kelty confirmed that he has had talks with Gunns managing director Greg L'Estrange and a possible joint venture partner for the $2.3 billion pulp mill.
The three environmental organisations (ET, ACF and TWS) that signed up to the Forest “Statement of Principles” compromised on the question of a pulp mill, on allowing current Forestry Tasmania wood-supply contracts to continue and on allowing plantation timber for wood-fired power stations.
In return, they extracted a promise from the industry to protect many areas of high-conservation value forests targeted for logging.
The statement included an agreement to: “Create a strong sustainable timber industry including the development of a range of plantation based timber processing facilities including a pulp mill.”
Despite the groups’ public opposition to Gunns’ proposed pulp mill, the only proviso included in the agreement was the sentence: “There will need to be stakeholder consultation and engagement with the proponent, [environmental] NGOs and the community.”
In an email to its members on February 23, TWS said: “While Gunns have taken a number of positive steps to address some critically important issues, including a public commitment that the pulp mill would not use timber from native forests, we will continue to oppose the pulp mill on a number of grounds including its location, its impacts on the marine environment, its use of fresh water and the discredited, fast-tracked approval process put in place by the Lennon government in 2007.
“We also acknowledge that the majority of local residents and Tasmanians remain strongly opposed to the Tamar Valley pulp mill.”
However, none of the three groups appear to be actively campaigning against the pulp mill as they have done in the past.
For example, TWS did not promote the March 20 anti-pulp mill rally in the Tamar Vallley at its big public forum in Hobart on March 15. Nor did it email its members and supporters about the rally. Despite this, a TWS representative spoke at the rally.
The agreement included a commitment to begin a moratorium on logging in the listed native forests by March 15. However, this has not happened.
Instead on March 11 to a six month “transition period” to finalise arrangements. In that time, the groups said native-forest logging would continue to fulfill current wood-supply contracts — in other words, business as usual for another six months at least.
Forest campaign groups Still Wild Still Threatened (SWST) and the Huon Valley Environment Centre (HVEC) continue to carry out direct actions against logging operations in high conservation-value forests in the south of the state.
HVEC announced its withdrawal from the Forest Reference Group and all involvement in the Forest Principles negotiations on March 19. SWST announced on March 31 that it had also withdrawn.
SWST spokesperson Miranda Gibson : “The current process is failing to deliver forest protection. It has been five months now since the forest roundtable deal was signed and yet it is still business as usual for the forest industry.
“Every day we are seeing irreplaceable old growth forests falling, with over 30 coupes being logged in high conservation value forests right now. An additional 5000 hectares of forest could be lost to industrial scale logging over the next six months.
“This is unacceptable and clearly a breach of the good faith of the entire negotiation process.”
Anti-logging and anti-pulp mill activists not the only ones unhappy with the negotiations.
People who want to see the state move away from both logging native forests and plantations towards a more diverse economy are also worried.
Bob McMahon from TAP into a Better Tasmania told 鶹ý Weekly on March 4 that he was concerned about the vision of Tasmania as “Plantation Isle” with “a world-scale pulp industry future and all the social, economic and environmental implications that would entail”.
Lesley Nicklason from Friends of the Blue Tier (a group formed to campaign for the protection of an area of native forests in north-eastern Tasmania) spoke to GLW about the forest negotiations on March 31.
“Nothing’s happened so far which has been really disappointing, but walking away from the whole thing takes us back to square one,” Nicklason said.
“I really hope we stop native forest logging but not at the expense of the pulp mill. We are opposed to any pulp mill and we are opposed to the plantation industry as it is today.
“We live surrounded by plantations and all the problems they cause (including recent documented cases of drinking water toxity). If they were genuinely going to reform the industry, plantations would not be allowed in water catchments, on prime agricultural land or over such large areas and they wouldn’t allow chemical spraying.
“The appropriate areas of land left for plantations would not provide enough wood to feed a pulp mill.”
McMahon criticised the prospect of Gunns’ receiving millions in taxpayer-funded compensation for surrendering its native forest logging permits.
The August 11 Australian Financial Review said that “Industry sources believe Gunns could receive as much as $200 million in compensation for exiting those contracts”
TWS’s Vica Bayley told GLW on March 15 that TWS supports such compensation payments for Gunns and other logging companies as it believes this is the only way to end logging in high conservation value forests.
But in September 2010, before the forest negotiations began, that it planned to end its native forest logging.
In a March 10 letter to the Australian Stock Exchange, Gunns said that it would seek of its eucalypt plantations.
Over the past few decades, the forest industry has trended away from saw log processing and towards woodchip exports.
With the downturn in global markets, the higher Australian dollar and a demand for FSC certified timber products, Gunns has downsizied many of its operations and woodchips have sat piled up on the docks.
Gunns share price reached a high of $4.45 on January 4, 2005. It had dropped to $0.62 on April 1.
On March 31, Gunns closed its last sawmill in Scottsdale, sacking 120 workers. Gunns has also closed its woodchip mills at Hampshire and Long Reach It announced an eight week halt in production its remaining woodchip mill at Triabunna on April 1.
With the industry struggling to find markets for its non-FSC certified, native forest products, it is not hard to see why struggling companies like Gunns are salivating over the prospects of government bailouts.
On March 23, Tasmanian Conservation Trust director in the Tasmanian Times: “The government’s only instructions to Forestry Tasmania, Minister Bryan Green’s 9 March letter, repeated its long-held commitment to maintain wood supply to industry and not to force buy-backs of licences.
“It also supports Gunns’ Tamar Valley pulp mill. It appears that the state government will consider protection of forests only if a logging company wants to sell back their wood licences, and Gunns is the only logging company considering selling its licences. So the ‘forests for the pulp mill’ is the only deal on offer by the government.”
TAP into a Better Tasmania spokesperson Bob McMahon said: “That the blatantly undemocratic, rigged and secret ‘roundtable’ negotiations and the ‘forest principles’ that resulted (including in principle support for plantations and ‘a pulp mill’) received the enthusiastic support of the ALP is no surprise.
“That the Greens have also been enthusiastic supporters of the undemocratic negotiations as constituted, and the ‘forest principles’ that resulted from the illegitimate process, is deeply distressing for the community and incredibly damaging to the Greens themselves.”
That same day, Greens leader Nick McKim (a minister in the Labor-Green government) said: “Mr Kelty has assured me personally that he has not issued any ultimatums to anyone participating in these talks, and that ongoing discussions are occurring within the signatories.
“The Greens have stated consistently that the Gunns‘ Tamar Valley pulp mill proposal should be determined outside this process.
“The only way that Gunns could hope to obtain any form of community support for their pulp mill proposal, which is clearly absent at the moment, is for the company to resubmit it back to the state’s independent planning body.”
The state parliament’s Legislative Council is holding a separate inquiry into the transition out of logging public native forests which will begin taking evidence in early April.
More than 1600 people attended a rally against the pulp mill close the site on the Tamar River, north of Launceston, on March 20. Friends of the Tamar Valley held a 650-strong public forum against the pulp mill in Launceston on March 29, featuring speakers Professor Quentin Beresford, Steve Biddulph and Greens Senator Christine Milne.
A mass rally against the pulp mill is planned in Hobart on May 14, organised by TAP into a Better Tasmania. The theme of the rally is “Democracy Betrayed — Tasmanians Betrayed”. TAP into a Better Tasmania said: “We will be working with all like minded groups to make this the largest political event and rally in Tasmania’s history.”
Organisers intend the rally to focus not only on the pulp mill, but other environmental and social justice issues.
For example the protest “will also focus on the relentless destruction of Tasmania’s environment … the utter contempt being shown towards the treasure house of precious Aboriginal artifacts … the steady deterioration in our health services and hospitals …
“We are demanding an end to the relentless tendency to place the profits of foreign and mainland owned corporations ahead of the health and well-being of people.”