Operation Smokewatch is about the community recording incidents of fires and smoke around Tasmania. The information from members of the public will be used by the community group "Operation Smokewatch" to lobby the government to protect human health.
Smoke smell and visibility are good indicators of very small smoke particles (PM 2.5). These particles are small enough to penetrate far into the lungs and cause significant harm to your health.
Take the intiative to protect human health and add your name to the petition for prohibiting aerial spraying .
Petition to the Tasmanian State Government to take action to immediately prohibit the aerial spraying of Herbicides/Pesticides/Fungicides over our water catchments.
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
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Media reports for December 07
24 December 2007
Tasmanians Against the Pulp Mill spokesman Bob McMahon says an investigation at the Tamar Valley site shows Gunns cannot be trusted to ensure the mill complies with safety regulations. Department of Environmental Management acting director John Mollison is investigating whether clearing at the mill site has breached the Federal Government's 48 environmental regulations.
Go to http://au.biz.yahoo.com
24 December 2007
Geoffrey Cousins says strategies to oppose the mill will continue as the politics of climate change heats up. Opponents of the mill are hoping climate change politics will recast the reading of those federal 48 conditions for its operation. The devil may be in the detail of adhering to the conditions for the mill's operator Gunns Ltd and its likely financiers, the ANZ and National Australia banks.
Read The Mercury.
21 December 2007
The George Town Council will hold an elector poll in January on Gunns’ proposed pulp mill. Questions will centre on the assessment process, the type of pulp manufacture and the location of the mill as well as whether or not residents believed the mill would have a net adverse impact on the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of the Tamar Valley and its residents. The general manager's roll to record all eligible voters will close on January 10 and results are expected to be released in February.
Read The Examiner.
21 December 2007
Gunns paid Rio Tinto $3.8 million for a 590 ha bush covered block at Long Reach on which it intends to build the pulp mill. But site clearance cannot commence until two modules of an Environment Impact Management Plan have been approved by the Federal Department of Environment, Water Heritage and the Arts. Each module would be considered by the Department and an Independent Expert Group of scientists. There is no fixed timeframe for approval.
An analyst's report by Credit Suisse speculated about a reversal of approval if an update of the chief scientist's report expected next month, was unfavourable. ANZ is expected to announce its decision once Gunns responds to Federal Government conditions. Contractors MacMahon Contractors and John Holland Group have yet to sign a construction contract.
Read The Mercury.
19 December 2007
Canadian pulp mill in New Brunswick cannot make a profit and closes permanently. UPM-Kymmene pulp and paper mills officials said that they had tried a number of measures since buying the mills seven years ago to make them profitable.
Read The Telegraph Journal from east Canada .
19 December 2007
Hobart City Council will investigate which of its $34 million investments are in banks linked with Gunns Ltd, after a poll showed huge opposition to the pulp mill. The council has voted to send results of its poll to federal Minister for Climate Change and Water Penny Wong, Environment Minister Peter Garrett and Premier Paul Lennon. The council will also report on it’s "direct investments in financial institutions associated with the proponents, with the intent that letters be sent to the institutions about the poll results and elector concerns".
Read the full story at The Mercury.
18 December 2007
ANZ said that it is waiting for an independent report before deciding on funding the Gunn's pulp mill. It is not yet clear whether it is financially viable for ANZ to finance the proposed mill. A shareholder raised concerns at the AGM that clearing forests for pulp could be a financial risk, given the prospect of carbon trading.
Go to the ABC.
17 December 2007
The Australian Greens is turning its attention to stopping the proposed Gunns pulp mill. Senator Brown, unhappy with the Labor government's failure to support fixed carbon emissions targets at the Bali climate change conference, said allowing the pulp mill to go ahead would be a greenhouse gas disaster. “One of the things that government should do is remove the $150 million public subsidy that Gunns is expecting for that pulp mill, which is going to increase greenhouse-gas emissions in this country by two per cent of itself”. "The first test, and it's going to happen in the next four weeks, for the Rudd government, is to give the thumbs down to the pulp mill.”
Go to www.canberra.yourguide.com.au
16 December 2007
Transport researcher Peter Mackenzie, writes about Australia’s haphazard transport system, and road deaths and injuries. Given the already untenable and deadly transport situation, I find it almost bizarre that the proposed Gunns Pulp Mill will feed significant additional numbers of log trucks and other heavy vehicles into the Tasmanian situation…
Read more at www.tasmaniantimes.com.
12 December 2007
Gunns has a net debt of $570 million. Its operating cashflow last year was just $21 million and most of the earnings came from MIS schemes. The people who are selling him the mill are promising to tip in $700 million in a sort of vendor finance deal. Gay is betting on $150 million coming from government, but has to go to ANZ for the $1 billion in debt, if not more. Leighton, the preferred tenderers to build the mill, have yet to provide an estimate.
See The Australian.
12 December 2007
New Zealand Green Party Co-Leader Russel Norman called on ANZ customers help to put pressure on the ANZ banking group to not provide finance for forest destruction in Tasmania. “I’m proud to be part of the second Australasian-wide day of action, with 25 events happening across Australia, Japan and New Zealand calling on ANZ not to fund the proposed pulp mill. It will lock in the destruction of irreplaceable native Australian forests, as well as releasing huge stores of greenhouse gases and contaminants into local water catchments.”
Read Scoop Independent News NZ.
10 December 2007
Gunns’ contractors working on the pulp mill project may have breached the mill's permit-approval conditions. Inspectors from the Primary Industries and Water Department are investigating. The Howard government imposed 48 environmental conditions on Gunns before it would approve the project, several must be fulfilled before construction can begin.
Read The Mercury.
7 December 2007
Gunns Ltd is moving to buy a 13ha block of land to develop its workers' village for 800 workers in George Town. However, they have yet to buy or lodge a priority notice for the purchase from Rio Tin for the 592ha pulp mill site at Long Reach.
A number of steps need to be taken before site clearance and construction for the mill. The federal department is considering drafts submitted by Gunns of the first two modules for the Environment Impact Management Plan. An independent expert group of scientists and a site supervisor also consider each module before approval.
Read The Mercury
7 December 2007
Opinion piece “Rudd and the pulp mill” by Peter Henning
‘Quite simply, on the basis of the whole approval process, which deliberately excluded examination of any social, environmental or economic costs within the state, and any examination of wood supply issues, the pulp mill is a classic example of the kind of neo-liberalism Rudd condemns. The failure of Gunns and the Lennon government to accept the legitimacy of a cost-benefit analysis in all its dimensions is a perfect exemplar of neo-liberal political action, which in Rudd’s words, “rejects the legitimacy of altruistic values that go beyond direct self-interest”’.
Read the full article at www. http://tasmaniantimes.com
5 December 2007
Environment Minister Peter Garrett said the federal government will not overturn approval for the Gunns' pulp mill after Lawyers for Forests launched another legal challenge against the project.
Read The Age
5 December 2007
Environment Minister Garrett will be forced to defend Malcolm Turnbull's approval of the Gunns pulp mill in the Federal Court, or else change tack on the controversial project.
A legal challenge taken by Lawyers for Forests is based on six grounds supporting the claim that Mr Turnbull failed to meet his obligations under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Central to the challenge is that Turnbull was not legally able to grant approval before knowing the outcome of a range of studies such as hydrodynamic study of the mill's 64,000 tonnes of dioxin-containing effluent to be dumped daily into Bass Strait. Lawyers for Forests believes the precautionary principle has not been applied, as required by the act.
A successful challenge would force Gunns into submitting a new application. It could result in a requirement that the studies be conducted before construction can begin. In the case of the hydrodynamic study, construction could blow out by many months and create further uncertainty for financiers yet to commit to the project. A new application would also raise the prospect of the project being subject to a separate greenhouse gas assessment.
Read more at The Australian
5 December 2007
Forestry Tasmania has revealed its operating profit has fallen from $25 million to just over $500,000 in the past 4 years. The Tasmanian Greens claim Forestry Tasmania's profits will continue to decline over the long term.
Go to the ABC
5 December 2007
Peter Garrett, new Federal Environment Minister, is facing a Federal Court challenge over Gunns' proposed pulp mill. Lawyers for Forests is challenging previous minister Malcolm Turnbull's approval on 6 grounds, including an allegation that the mill's impact on the marine environment was not taken into account. The legal challenge is listed for a directions hearing in the Federal Court in Melbourne in February.
Go to the ABC
2 December 2007
Argentine municipal and provincial governments are helping finance the pickets protesting the construction of the 1.2 billion US dollars Finnish pulp mill in neighboring Uruguay along the coast of a shared border river. The intensity and tenacity of the protests impeding access to international bridges linking with Uruguay, organizing incursions with speed boats along the river Uruguay and the River Plate and even marching in Buenos Aires before the Uruguayan and Finnish embassies surprised Uruguayan authorities which had suspicions about the sustainability of such “spontaneous” actions. The Botnia pulp mill begun production in November 07.
Go to www.mercopress.com
2 December 2007
How to turn $99 million worth of trees into a $17,000 loss. The Victorian State Government sold the equivalent of 4745 MCGs of native forests to private timber companies last year for less than it cost the Government to fell the trees and ship them to the buyers. Despite selling the timber for $99 million, and other revenue of $4 million, VicForests ended in the red with a $17,000 loss once expenses such as haulage were taken out, according to the agency's annual report.
Read The Age
Related pages
Gunns Tamar valley pulp mill, key issues
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).
Facts the Tasmanian Government and Gunns Ltd don’t want people to know about the proposed Tamar valley pulp mill, Tasmania, Australia. Timber company Gunns Ltd wants to build a ‘world scale’ pulp mill in the clean green Tamar valley. The proposal is planned to go ahead despite majority opposition from Tasmanians and Australians and massive risks to food production and fisheries, from air and water pollution, water shortages and release of carbon stores into the atmosphere.
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.
