Having to fight this company on so many fronts, constantly arm ourselves with knowledge, travel to take part in preserving our values; Gunns are trying to wear us down.

But in spite of everything Gunns have tried, they still don’t have a partner, they still have to get special treatment from government to ensure they are not currently breaking the law, and they continue to contravene every possible social license.

Fighting against the pulp mill is definitely the good fight for our future.

I strongly object to Garry Stanus’ claim that I am a liar. This is a dreadful statement to make about me on a public website.

Let me assure everyone that we at Gunns did not complete the work in the Trevallyn Reserve due to bad weather - is there anyone out there who really doesn’t believe it rained non-stop in August?!! As for the permit - read it and you will see there was absolutely no problem for Gunns. The Clarification Bill passed by the Government was a doubt removal process that they wished to pursue.  Gunns had no role in it - we didn’t need to, we are very confident that we are meeting all the conditions of the permit to the letter.

Also please be aware that I have written to Bob McMahon and asked if the TAP Group would like to remove their plants before we re-commence work. If the TAP Group do not wish to retrieve their plants then we shall offer them to local residents before we commence work. We do need to remove them as that area has been revoked from the Trevallyn Reserve for the construction of a balance tank. By the way the sign posted on the rope is not a Gunns Sign.

Mr Stanus I would request that rather than denigrate my character on a website (hard to believe this meets the Tasmanian Times’ Code of Conduct) you come and see me and make your claims to my face.

Good on ya Frances. ...far more polite that Mr Stanus. But don’t expect a visit for a rational discussion, that won’t suit their purpose. Facts don’t support the hysteria.

“Frances Duffy” the company you choose to represent has constantly (in concert with this rabble who call themselves a parliament) sought to con, mislead , and lie to the Tasmanian people in regards to this pulp mill, in my opinion ! and i have no problem with stating such to any of the proponents anywhere ,anytime. 

  Also !  what of the projected plans for a second mill in the South of the State , should you get a mandate regarding the Tamar project having thus set a precedent.

  That information has been long known and i am told comes from within the Gunn’s organization and has been remarked upon many times , and as of this time has not been refuted.
  Perhaps you can inform us that no such plan is in fact planned for the future !
                       
                        Don Davey

I pity those who work for Gunns.

They have latched on to the most publicly despised company in Tasmania.

The company has had ample time, and countless opportunities, to change direction and engage community, and act in sympathy to the planet, but fails miserably in all areas.

Truth bending, spin and a heavy hand, are metered out as deemed appropriate, but the company’s values are not in the interest of community, it seems, and therefore those who work for them have a few choices.

They can be as one with these values, work under sufferance (a time line usually depends on circumstance), or walk away.

As the industry to which they dominate steadily implodes, and competitors from countries with conditions more suited to this high volume, low return enterprise, scramble for position, it appears that the woodchip juggernaut is going in only one direction.

I still think that there is time for Gunns to change, to become all it could be, but until they have a major shift of mindset, they are on a path to nowhere.

How many they will take with them is pure speculation, although large numbers have fallen by the wayside already.

The show rolls on….........

Oh diddums Francis Duffy. The pr girl for the big logging company.

You must be proud Francis.

Nice to see Gunns copping a bit of their own medicine.

Hey Francis, why dont you quit, and get a job defending all the workers and ordinary Tasmanians your dear logging company are screwing?

My goodness, some of you have a real chip on your shoulder! How about stepping out of your tunnel vision and considering all the positive things Gunns contributes to Tasmania, i.e.

All the local community sponserhip,
All the families supported,
All the revenue provided to landowners,
The taxes the company contributes,
The investments the company makes.

Maybe Gunns should take its business off shore? Perhaps Tasmania can’t afford to loose one of the few companies interested in investing in our future, especially when others a pulling out every week.

Look past your precious back door step and consider the big picture. Gunns and others are here for the long haul and support many many Tasmanian families.

I feel sorry for Frances Duffy…(Anonymous Personal Observation Deleted).

Frances, wasn’t the clearing actually ILLEGAL at the time it was carried out? Retrospectively, that’s (an illegal)  act, like a lot of the illegal logging which has been carried out in our forests.

If that’s the case, then I think you should be more worried about what might happen after the coming election or when a Royal Commission and/or ICAC is convened.

In the meantime, don’t you dare touch a single bloody leaf there. Your pulp mill pipe-dream has no permit or finance, therefore no work should be carried out. Isn’t that in the conditions along with the extra information you are required and yet to deliver to Mr Garrett?

#7
“All the local community sponserhip (sic)
All the families supported
All the revenue provided to landowners
The taxes the company contributes
The investments the company makes”

Numbers please, Jim.
I suspect that these perceived benefits are far outweighed by what this company is costing us taxpayers in massive subsidies (roads, bridges, MIS tax breaks, OS spruiking junkets, cheap feedstock etc)

Oh, dear, Frances! You are being a bit sensitive, aren’t you?
Gunns as a company is legendary for it lying ways…....TAP has a many-paged dossier on all the mis-truths this company has peddled over the years. Some of them are real howlers. I’m sure someone would be only too pleased to provide you with a copy - you only need to ask.
Anyone who works for this company is tainted and is, by implication, somone who doesn’t mind the odd porky.

#7. JIM
All the local community sponserhip,(sic)
All the families supported,
All the revenue provided to landowners,
The taxes the company contributes,
The investments the company makes.

1. They were recently trying to blackmail sports societies by telling them that if they didn’t actively support Gunns, they would withdraw their sponsorship and they were cutting back on these amounts anyway.
2. By converting farmland to plantations they are closing down farms and driving the workers off the land, which has a knock-on effect of depriving many people and their families and local communities that depend on agriculture of a living.
3. How about all the revenue LOST by landowners in failed MIS schemes and the benefits of these schemes to Gunns without compensation, etc.
4. The taxes Gunns contributes? What a laugh! The subsidies it receives from the government is a better description. They also pay minimum rates, no land tax and have been given free water and over 190 000 hectares of public land. Because they pay little or no taxes, local authorites are struggling and increasing the rates of residents to compensate , thus getting a further subsidy.
5. Investments? Nothing that doesn’t directly benefit the company. Perhaps you mean political contributions to the party funds? Recycling a bit of the sudsidies they receive?

‘Maybe Gunns should take its business off shore?’

The only good suggestion you’ve made!

(7) Let’s just consider for one moment just ‘how’ considerate Gunns is. Let’s look, at least partly, at the big picture and just how Gunns can affect many, many Tasmanian families and their backyards. Perhaps it is becoming apparent others don’t want to invest in a state that has a government so focused on a single enterprise, spins little more than rhetoric, ignores the reality and prefers to only play with and consider Gunns.

Word on the grape vine (well infact directly from a Gunns person employed specifically for such as poisonous task) is that the Gunns employed people who are designated to identify the naturally occurring Gum Beetle are now out in the bush trying to identify infestations… in readiness to start their poison regime.

The poor old gum beetle is a naturally occurring insect. Essentially all it does is assist nature in pruning leafy growth in gum trees and has done so for eons. Obviously it likes the new shoots of euc plantations.

Plantation managers choose to identify this poor little bug as a detriment to their business, so once identified in a plantation they spray to kill it. As far as I know there is no known, currently used pesticide used in Gunns plantations that will identify a gum beetle from any other insect. Therefore when they spray their poisons (generally by air) to eradicate the gum beetle they also eradicate every other insect in that particular area. 

Get your water testers ready, cover your water tanks, insure your organic farm, don’t eat the fish from creeks, duck for cover … Gunns are at it again….

Charles Gilmour

No Frances, I didn’t call you a liar, I wrote:

“Don’t you just love how Frances doesn’t mention the lack of permits that stopped the work, and how she tells the admiring audience that it was the wet weather that stopped them!” 

Yes, Frances, I’ve read the permits and I know the history of the revocation.  You don’t need to tell me about it.  Gunns and the Labor-Liberal govt got together and took part of the Reserve from us.  Simple, your side had the legislative power and have been prepared to use and misuse it. 

Too wet?  The record shows that your company took in heavy machinery and other vehicles, slashed a path from the archery club to the site of the proposed balance tank, in those very same wet conditions of which you write:

“Let me assure everyone that we at Gunns did not complete the work in the Trevallyn Reserve due to bad weather - is there anyone out there who really doesn’t believe it rained non-stop in August?!!”

Having slashed and chainsawed a broad path to the balance tank site, in this ‘non-stop’ August rain, your company then slashed the area where it plans to site the balance tank.  As well as this it felled the trees that were on the site – for this was bush and public land!  So where was the paperwork for that stunt?  Your company didn’t have it.  When the news of this and your company’s further intentions became public, Warren Jones confirmed publicly that:

“a number of pre-requisites had not been satisfied for the the [sic] final three work plans.” (“Gunns is accused of misleading statements” BY RACHEL WILLIAMS
07 Aug, 2009 03:03 PM Examiner )

[Warren Jones:  General Manager of the Environment Division/Director of the Environment Protection Authority.] 

Something you might take from this, Frances, is that a large number of Tasmanians don’t believe that Gunns can be trusted.  This didn’t just happen because we’re a disbelieving bunch, it happened because of the abuse of public process, the statements about the JVP pot of gold always just around the corner, the corruption inherent in a 20 year native forest wood supply contract for a mill that ‘won’t rely on native forest after a couple of years’.  Unfortunately, no matter what you say, because you represent this company, we can not trust you.  In your own heart, you must know that your company and the govt has set itself against the will of the people.  What’s the point of a meeting?

(10,12&13;) It wouldn’t matter if you where shown the figures for all of the various community sponsor ships, wages and taxes paid by Gunns to different parts of the State economy, you will only reject these figures just like you constantly reject all the other information that you are provided.

There is no possible way that you could ever accept them because then you wouldn’t have your sad little conspiracy theories to post day in and day out. Your lives must be so unfulfilling I pity.

Just when you think you’ve heard it all..“The Clarification Bill passed by the Government was a doubt removal process”. DOUBT REMOVAL PROCESS???

I hope Tasmania has a truly independent ICAC body sooner rather than later, then there will be absolutely no doubt about the existance of cronyism, backdoor deals and shonky practices by the State Labor Grubbiment in kow-towing to Gunns Ltd. commercial interests.

As for Gunn’s so called contribution to the community, they can shove it! I boycott every Community group, event, T.V. station, radio station and building that has anything to do with Gunn’s, as does my family. You might be part of the Gunn’s apparatus Frances, but most of the readers here see corruption and corporate greed for what it is, and have no part of it!

Take your bat and ball and bugger off!

Re #15
No, go on, don’t weasel out of it. Provide the figures. Don’t try to think for us, we’ll do that ourselves.

If you can’t back up your claims, don’t make them.

Good to see Ms Duffy reads Tasmanian Times and posts under her own name. Frances, there are some issues I would like to raise with you. First, is the relocation and resettlement of the whole of Rowella, Kayena and Deviot and possibly Beauty Point. We both know this responsibility falls directly onto the shoulders of whoever is Premier of Tasmania. After all, Gunns do not write their own planning schemes, and this totally botched assessment, carried out by politicians and not by a proper planning authority, has produced the pathetic situation of vineyards and orchards just hundreds of meters from one of the worlds largest pulp mills, chlorine production plants and ‘dirty’ power stations.
My question is this. How many billions of dollars will Gunns Ltd be donating to Will Hodgman or David Bartlett to help fund Tasmanians largest residential relocation? Surely you would not expect Gunns foreign investors to be financially benefiting at the expense of Tasmanian residents already bled dry by decades of Gunns Ltd shifting assets out of Tasmania. Also could you tell me if George Town is now in the same ‘heavy industrial area’ that was extended south to the wood chip mills?
If not why should the ‘heavy industrial area’ only go south from Rio Tinto Alcan but not north?
Why is the ‘heavy industrial area’ only south and east but not west and north? Also why ship wood chips from Victoria to your proposed pulp mill when that takes them further away from the Chinese market? Would not a company with plantations in Victoria build a pulp mill there closer to the world markets? Over to you Ms Duffy.

Gunns litany of ‘porkies’ can be found here;
http://tapvision.info/node/509

All on the public record and referenced. It is in PDF.

Frances, if as you claim that bad weather prevented clearing and not proper procedure, then how was the pulp mill site removed of vegetation during that same timeframe?
Perhaps weather conditions are different there, a little more tropical.

Jim, (also a Gunns employee), I would like to see the other side of the coin and all of the subsidies, (both monetary and infrastructure), that Gunns receives.

I would also like to see the amount of forest harvesting contracts that Gunns have slashed, the downtime with forced closures of the chip mills and the number of recent redundancies - both voluntary and forced within Gunns.

From numbers that I know of the figure is hovering around close to 20 in the North, or is it more?

The company does manipulate the facts a little.
At this years AGM we were told that the pipeline for the mill was a goer. Landowners had allowed it through.

Two years ago, (again at the AGM), John Gay assured shareholders that ANZ was financing the mill project.

Both claims have proven false.

(15) Mary said, “… you will only reject these figures just like you constantly reject all the other information that you are provided.”

Mary, who is rejecting information? I can’t see how talking to a Gunns employee and being given direct information, which I believed was in the publics best interest to pass on as quickly as I could,  can possibly warrant my life being called “… so unfulfilling”, let alone be lumped as a sad little conspiracy theory.
Jim said “Look past your precious back door step and consider the big picture.” Interestingly enough I have done that. And in addition, instead of just listening to the opinion of those at the very top of the Gunns chain, I have talked to quite a number who actually do the work in and around Gunns and those who have had to/forced to give up what was precious to them in the name of all support for Gunns.  I find Jims above comment quite at odds with the “Good Neighbour Charter’, which Gunns purports to uphold.

Apparently a Gunns director’s front door mat was so precious to warrant a media/police frenzy. However those whose land, businesses, jobs, health, water supplies, children’s futures are indeed more precious to them than a mightmare of a dream of a couple of people, appear to be sadly relegated to … basically inconsequential in the Gunns ‘big picture’.

The states water is so precious to everyone, we simply can’t live without it. I can’t see how - firstly, destroying the natural infrastructure that helps to create, support, supply fresh water and - secondly, ignoring safety and health issues, just so – thirdly,  Gunns can take vast amounts of it to degrade and poison further is in the best long term ‘big picture’  interests of Tasmanians.  You can well say it’s sad … I tell you I am ashamed if that is the best I and my fellow Tasmanians can do for our kids and grandkids legacy.

After talking to forest contractors; forestry and Gunns workers; a government water tester; FT; FPA; government ministers; shafted sawmillers; people who are threatened by the burning and poisoning, and my own personal on the ground experiences, I think I’ve got a pretty big picture overview based on information - which I don’t think could be called ignoring ‘all’ information - but rather, trying to get a balanced view…. as opposed to a single vested interest view. 

Try your luck at flogging a melting igloo to an Eskimo …

Charles Gilmour