Forest Wars

Gunns’ proposed pulp mill near George Town, Tasmania, has the potential to become a replay of Western Australia’s ‘pressure cooker’, according to Dr Judith Ajani from the Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU. At the end of the nineties public consciousness clashed with native logging and turned to violence when Wattle Camp, a female protestors’ site in WA, was raided by balaclava clad forest workers brandishing baseball bats, sledgehammers and axes.

Dr Ajani, author of The Forest Wars (MUP) warns, ‘There has been a shift in peoples’ attitude. Climate change is now of great concern to ordinary people, not just so-called environmentalists.’

Forests have made the election shortlist in two of the last four federal elections. ‘Australia’s long-unresolved forest conflict has been the make-or-break factor in federal elections for the last few decades, with both parties often arguing that the four-decade-old forest conflict has no practical solution,’ she says. ‘They are wrong.’

Senator Bob Brown of the Australian Greens agrees. Speaking of Gunns’ proposal to build the $1.4bn pulp mill he said, ‘The mill’s direct impact will revolt voters not just in Bass but elsewhere across the nation.’

Gunns is Tasmania’s largest hardwood (native) producer, operating three veneer factories, (in Tasmania and NZ), five sawmills and four woodchip export ports in Tasmania. They export eucalyptus woodchips produced from sawmilling residues and residual pulpwood, ‘a small amount’ of which comes from old growth forests.

Executive Chairman John Gay said, ‘We have worked with the world’s top engineers to design the mill, we contracted Australia’s best toxicologists to analyse any environmental effects, we engaged a leading university to model economic impacts and we have employed international pulp experts to join the Gunns team on a permanent basis.’

Gunns owns 185,000 hectares of freehold land and manages in excess of 110,000 hectares of plantations. They employ about 1700 people and have a turnover of approximately AUS$700 million.

Concern for native forests is not new. In 1865 George Perkins Marsh suggested that deforestation would result in erosion, floods, climate change and loss of plants and animals. Forest ecologists advocate 200 year rotations of native trees to ensure the self-regenerating capacity of native forests for biodiversity conservation. The same time disparity exists between woodchips and water and woodchips and carbon sinks. However, eucalypts take just 10-15 years to provide logs that can be woodchipped.

Gunns argue that the ability to dispose of residues is a responsible use of a resource and an effective means of adding greater value to the timber harvested from Tasmania’s forests, claiming, ‘If not used for this purpose these residues would be burnt as a waste product from sawmilling.’

But native forest woodchipping accounts for 80-85% of the log cut in Tasmania. In Eden, NSW, another primary site of native logging, 90% of saw cut goes to woodchipping.

The profits on exported woodchips are big. According to Dr Ajani sawmilling props up the woodchipping industry with policy being driven to do so for decades.

Native forest woodchip exporters rarely report their profits, instead masking the information by integrating it with other business activities, like sawmilling and pulp production. Dr Ajani reports that Eden’s South East Fibre Exports, almost entirely a woodchipping exporter, has averaged a 34% profit over the past 30 years. Most businesses, she explains, enjoy only 10 or 15 %. ‘I see no fundamental reason why native forest chip-exporters in other Australian states have not enjoyed similar returns.’

Their reasons for keeping quiet about profits are open to interpretation. Dr Ajani suggests an eagerness to keep new competitors out of the market as well as avoiding more bad publicity in an already unpopular business.

Dr Ajani has 22 years of experience with forestry research and policy. She managed Victoria’s industry policy for the state’s industry department in the second half of the 1980s and has briefed numerous ministers and opposition party members as well as contributing to the successful policy outcomes in Queensland and Western Australia.

She says, "In my view the federal ALP in opposition (slightly over a decade) appears to have given little time to understanding the enormous changes happening in Australia’s forest industry: the dominance of plantations in Australia’s manufacturing of wood products; the concentration of employment in plantation processing; and the dominance of woodchipping in most of Australia’s major native forest logging regions."

"Labor’s forest policy hasn’t moved since the 1980s. The party burnt its fingers over bungled forest policy in 1994, and again in the 2004 federal election and ever since has swept forest policy under the carpet. If Labor finds itself dragged back into forests in the forthcoming election, it faces the prospect of being out smarted by the Liberals, once again."

Senator Bob Brown agrees. "Shadow environment minister Peter Garrett is the key here," he said, speaking of the Gunns mill. "He will turn a huge swag of votes Labor’s way if he insists the mill be fully and properly assessed before Federal Labor says yes or no to it."

But Senator Christine Milne (Australian Greens) and Tasmanian Greens’ pulp mill spokesperson Kim Booth, said the Liberals in Tasmania can’t have it both ways either. Although Gunns assert the mill is environmentally sound the Resource Planning and Development Commission and Sweco Pic, a major consulting and engineering company, found it would pollute the Tamar Valley airshed and Bass Strait.

"This mill would take 30 billion litres of water from Tasmanians each year, then turn it into effluent containing dioxins and other organochlorines, and dump it into Bass Strait where the scientists tell us there are flushing problems. Malcolm Turnbull should be appalled by this excess," said Senator Milne.

Mr Booth said, "We’re calling on the Liberals - State and Federal - to stand up for Tasmania."

What must be done? Dr Ajani believes it will be individuals who will be instrumental in implementing a workable forestry policy. She feels alliances within the major power sectors will stop the necessary progression from coming from any of the major players, and instead expects, or hopes, to see individuals like Queensland’s Aila Keto of the Australian Rainforest Conservation Foundation who successfully challenged her state’s policy.

The Big Switch www.thebigswitch.org.au is a new website which aims to get 100,000 Australians to sign a climate pledge and tackle their local MP. The joint venture, produced by Greenpeace, Australia’s Conservation Councils and GetUp! sent all 150 federal MPs a survey consisting of 10 main questions, and sub-questions, asking about their commitment to such climate issues as nuclear power, the coal industry and native logging. Their answers have been collated and are displayed on the site along with an easy to read rating. The aim of the site is to empower ordinary people, and give them a voice. People are encouraged to approach their local MP with climate related questions and the site even suggests ways to go about this.

Steve Campbell, head of campaigns at Greenpeace, said: "We know that Australians are concerned about climate change but it’s hard for people to cut through the political spin. The Big Switch shows voters what their political representatives are doing. We want people to know that it’s their right to demand their MP takes appropriate action on climate change."