pulpwood

Gunns have or are negotiating various agreements with State and Federal Governments over the planned pulp mill. This page is monitoring the negotiating process and its failures from the perspective of fair dealing, democracy and fulfilling the requirements of the EPBC Act.

Pulp and paper expert Dr Warwick Raverty, reached the “sad conclusion that Gunns is not a fit and proper company to build a pulp mill anywhere” in Tasmania (14 March 2007). That conclusion is supported by the Gunns Dossier: Pulp Mill Smoke and Mirrors, a record of 186 statements from CEO John Gay and Gunns Ltd, and State and Federal governments relating to the planned pulp mill in the Tamar Valley.

The statements have been collated by TAP Research from media reports, documentaries and publications from 2004 to the present and are hyperlink referenced for easy checking. The ‘Gunns Dossier’ will be updated periodically as new evidence emerges.

Please send your message to Mr Rudd to say no to the pulp mill and that you want to protect forests for our climate and future generations - not pulp them for short-term profit. Go to online petition

12 August 2008 - TAP  kicks off two weeks of civil unrest

Calendar of events

15 August Friday 2.00-3.00pm West Tamar Council Chambers at Riverside.
Demonstration to impress upon the West Tamar Council that the ratepayers will not tolerate the Council allowing Gunns free access for the proposed pulp mill pipeline to land owned by electors.

A Better Australia and TAP conducted two workshops with approximately 120 members to plan strategies to stop the pulp mill.

Sorted outputs from TAP/ A Better Australia presentations on 21 Jan 2008

What concerns does audience have for the future?

Social issues

• Ignorance & apathy of public
• Disempowerment of the young
• Lack of education & political education for our young
• Fragmentation of community into dysfunctional nuclear families
• Dysfunctional entrenched political thinking
• Insanity
• Loss of jobs to overseas call centres
• Lack of engagement in political process
• Lack of engagement in local government process
• Inability to distinguish between needs and wants
• Poor understanding of power of vote (not enough Green votes??)

Unrealisable expectation

The next TAP public forum in the series will be on alternative futures for our forests.

When 7pm - 9.45pm Monday 25 February 2008.

Where Riverside Community Centre, off Brownfields Lane behind the Riverside High School, West Tamar High way, Launceston.

Speakers
Speakers
Mike Scott (engineer) email - Mike_Scott@acl.com.au
Frank Strie (master forester) email - schwabenforest@connect.net.au
Kim Booth (Greens MHA) email - kim.booth@parliament.tas.gov.au

Decisions by Forestry Tasmania about the State's forests centre on producing one main low value product – pulp wood, but at what cost?

A detailed complaint about Gunns’ public marketing program to gain community support for the pulp mill in the Tamar Valley in Tasmania has been sent to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

Pulp mill apologists have represented the mill as an economic boon to the state but they have concealed the huge public subsidies currently being paid, and still to be paid, to help the project be ‘profitable’.

Our governments are paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year to prop up our unsustainable pulpwood industry, money that is sorely needed by our essential services, particularly health and education. If the subsidies being paid to support the pulp mill and the logging industry were used instead to properly fund our hospitals and schools, then we would have worthwhile health and education services populated by properly paid staff and equipped with modern technologies.

The Tasmanian Government has not investigated the financial risks of the mill to the State and documented the subsidies. The economic viability of the pulp mill has not been tested in public.

Below are five documents of the financial impact of Gunns' proposed pulp mill that attempt to redress this important gap in the assessment.

1.  Landowners to carry risks of Gunns' pipeline (added September 2008)

The Tamar valley pulp mill story is complex but cut to the chase here.

Read the Gunns Dossier: Pulp Mill Smoke and Mirrors

Pulp and paper expert Dr Warwick Raverty, reached the “sad conclusion that Gunns is not a fit and proper company to build a pulp mill anywhere” in Tasmania (14 March 2007). That conclusion is supported by the Gunns Dossier: Pulp Mill Smoke and Mirrors, a record of 186 statements from CEO John Gay and Gunns Ltd, and State and Federal governments relating to the planned pulp mill in the Tamar Valley.