Go Greener, Australia

Turnbull has approved the Gunns pulp mill in Tasmania. After rigorous scientific assessment, he’s increased the number of conditions imposed on the mill from 24 to 48. This’d be great if they were actually going to monitor any of those conditions after the mill is built. Since Gunns has always ignored regulations in Tasmania, the extra conditions will make any difference at all.

Turnbull says the mill will be “world’s best practice”, but this is a lie - chlorine bleaching has been discontinued by the pulp industry elsewhere in the world because it’s too toxic, but Gunns wants to use it for this mill. Meanwhile, they’re still allowed to chop down the native old-growth forests of Tasmania to feed to the mill to make pulp. Those native forests are the only home for many native animals facing extinction; now they’ll be halved in size, from 11% to 5% of the original forest that remains.

The good news is that just because Turnbull has approved it, it doesn’t mean it’ll get built.

• The Tasmanian Greens are still going to fight against it and say there are grounds for a possible High Court challenge to Turnbull’s decision
• Federal Liberal MP Ben Quin has resigned from the Liberal party over the issue and will contest his Tasmanian seat as an independent because the mill approval represents a “fundamental failure of democracy”
• Geoff Cousins is campaigning to ask the ANZ to refuse finance to the project

Some YouTube links

• Greens Senator Christine Milne explains why they won’t give up
• The Chaser: Premier Lennon and Pulp Millsy - since Lennon likes mills in his backyard, they visit his house with Millsy from Season 1 of Australian Idol

Federal Minister for the Environment, Malcolm Turnbull, has given himself a 6-week extension to decide on the Gunns’ pulp mill in Tasmania. He says he’s going to use this time to get a scientific assessment (something Gunns has tried to avoid) and go through the public submissions from activist groups.

The way I see it, he’s got 3 choices from here:

1. override Tasmania’s state government and prevent the mill from being built because it doesn’t meet Federal environment guidelines;
2. allow the pulp mill to go ahead because they think the economic/electoral benefits outweigh the damage to the environment;
3. stall until after the election because then they’ll either be able to do whatever they like, or it will be Labor’s problem instead; this works best if Howard calls the election right after the APEC summit finishes.

Each of these options means something different for the Liberal government in terms of which seats they might win or lose at the election. Insiders (video) on ABC and Larvatus Prodeo discuss this in detail. I realise that politics rather than good environmental management will probably decide the fate of the mill, but it’d be nice if *someone* were to discuss whether or not the mill is actually a good idea. Although 1 would be the best outcome in my opinion, I’m guessing they’ll go for 3. My fingers are crossed, anyway.

Federal Labor’s position on the mill is opaque, at best, or spineless, at worst. Peter Garrett (Shadow Minister for the Environment) has been questioned by Crikey and Insiders (video and transcript) but it’s a strictly non-committal party line all the way. I suspect (and again, fingers crossed) that they’re simply not being drawn on an issue they currently have no control over. As long as they’re in Opposition, there’s no gain for them in committing either way. This is frustrating, but unless they win the election later this year I doubt we’ll find out any more from them.

Also: I’ve previously mentioned Richard Flanagan’s excellent articles on the Gunns’ situation in Tasmania. You can read his article in May’s issue of The Monthly here (no direct link available, look for the link Richard Flanagan, Out of Control, May 2007).

A few places you can register a protest against the Gunns pulp mill in Tasmania:

The Australian Conservation Foundation sends an email for you to the Minister for the Environment, Malcolm Turnbull.

GetUp’s email comment camapign sends either a prepared email or your own comment.

Turnbull is accepting public comment until this Friday, 31st August. He’s probably going to approve the pulp mill, since he’s already given interim approval. However, there’s been a celebrity campaign against it recently, and it’s starting to become an election issue, so it may be possible to get stricter environmental standards applied to the mill than are currently proposed.

On Monday night I watched the 4 Corners episode about the Gunns pulp mill controversy, Grist to the Mill. Gunns, Australia’s biggest native-forest logging company, wants to build a pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, Tasmania. There are serious environmental concerns about the mill, and the community strongly opposes it, but the State Labor government has pushed it through all the review processes and waved away all legal requirements. Parliament votes on the pulp mill in 4 weeks, but Gunns has already arranged for development to start the week after that. Four Corners interviewed the people responsible for the environmental review of the mill, as well as protesters and supporters.

So what’s wrong with Gunn’s pulp mill?

The Wilderness Society has two videos on You Tube that explain the problems: Part 1 (10 mins) and Part 2 (7 mins). Some of the environmental problems the pulp mill will create:

• 80% of the trees it uses will come from native forests. This will destroy the forests in Great Western Tiers, North East Highlands, Ben Lomond, Blue Tier and the Eastern Tiers, which are habitats for endangered Tasmanian Devils and Wedge-tailed eagles.
• The sulphur and chlorine dioxide used to bleach the pulp will cause air pollution. The Australian Medical Association believes the pulp mill pollution is a health risk.
• The smell from the air pollution will affect the tourism and wine industry nearby. I know I wouldn’t visit a wine region that smelled like rotten eggs!
• It will dump 64,000 tons of effluent, with dioxins and furans, into the Bass Strait each day.
• The water pollution from the effluent will damage the Bass Strait fishing industry and endanger Humpback whales.
• It will draw 40 billion litres of water from the South Esk catchment region, and recycle none of it.

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