Whish deserves a Victoria Cross for his continual defiance of the ‘Tasmanian Way’in asking hard questions about this diabolical proposal and the lack of due process with regard to the approval process. It’s refreshing to find someone who is able to articulate a rational opinion on this divisive topic based on science, economic modelling and environmental concerns as opposed to the same tired old pro-forestry/ conservation dichotomy to which many people are immune.
The Tasmanian public owes Surfrider a debt of gratitude for their persistance in making the government and the proponent more accountable in forcing them to release more data on the potential impact of any effluent on Bass Strait.
One can only imagine the personal drain a task like this would be.
Perhaps most telling is that many people have more time for a bunch of surfers than Paul Lennon..

Good on Ruth Forrest for stepping out and having a closer look and speaking to the people who have been affected.

Good on the Flinders Island Council for trying to protect Tasmania’s clean, green image.

Shame on the Launceston and West Tamar councils.

But what are the far Northwest councils position on the up stream effects of the pulp mill? Do they have concerns about the pulp plantation feedlots, the effects on Tasmania’s clean, green image, on our developing local tourism industry, on the quality farming land, water catchments, the environment and endangered wildlife?

“Plantation concerns on council agenda”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/31/1993314.htm
“A north-west Council will investigate the effects of plantation forestry on prime farming land in the next few weeks. Private Forests Tasmania says timber reserves have increased by 40 percent in five years, with the biggest growth in Burnie, Waratah-Wynyard, Launceston, Kentish and Central Coast. The Burnie City Council has agreed to hold a private meeting about the spread of tree farms, at the request of Alderman Malcolm Ryan. Alderman Ryan says he plans to raise evidence about water use and losses in agricultural production. “We’ve already seen Toll importing 28 containers a week of frozen broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots.” “They were importing milk here, a couple of weeks ago for Fonterra,” he said. “Greenhams recently cancelled a beef shipment, because they didn’t have enough beef to fill the order.” “We want to support and have a sustainable agricultural industry here, within the Burnie municipality,” said Alderman Ryan.”

Alderman Ryan should be congratulated for pushing for such reports. We would hope and encourage Circular Head Council, and ALL councils would also look closely at the effects of plantations on resources and healthy productive industries in their municipalities.

But what are the Wynyard and Circular Head councils overall position on the current sate of affairs over the pulp mill and it’s associated industry? Where is their voice? As we watch our best farming land and water catchments systematically destroyed, rural communities chip by chip, shut down, will these councils also look at the environmental, social and economic, long and short term impacts of the cut, burn, poison, chip and pulp industry?

The far Northwest is still a relatively high rainfall area. It has some of the cleanest air and water in the world. This should be protected for sustainability in healthy, quality industries, not destroyed for a relatively short term gain. 

33% of Tasmania’s dairy farms are in Circular Head alone. With productive prime beef, and vegetable growers, oyster farms, and associated industries relying on good quality water and good rainfall; the massive tracts of destruction of forests ongoing in the area, destroying the opportunity for a sustainable forest industry and the quality and quantity of water, and the dire effects on rainfall, it would seem paramount that Circular Head Council also look seriously into land use and proper sustainable industry practices.

Maybe Circular Head Councilors could invite Ald. Ryan and Ruth Forrest MLC to share with them their information?
Cont…

Cont ...
“New water allocation rule for commercial forests” (ABC)

“New commercial forests in south-east South Australia will need a licensed water allocation to cover the volume their trees draw from the ground. Environment Minister Gail Gago has told Parliament the allocations will be needed where ground water is six metres or less from the earth’s surface. The new rule took effect yesterday. For existing plantations, the South-East Natural Resources Management Board will consult the community and develop a draft plan.”

Tasmania should well follow suit. But considering the huge amount of water plantations draw from the ground, reducing runoff into streams from which some farmers have to draw their water from, should not food systems take precedence over pulp wood plantations? Should not communities water requirements take precedence? As plantations are often upstream to farms, communities, and seafood producing estuaries, considering also their associated poisons, should not plantations be limited only to areas that will not affect water quality and quantity on surrounding and down stream food producers and communities?

As many rural areas are not connected to town water systems and rely solely on their water catchments and rivers and streams and rainfall to supply their water, protecting water catchments is of paramount importance. In councils allowing forestry operations in their district, they also have a duty to ALL their citizens to ensure healthy and sustainable water supply’s and that these are not threatened by adverse industry. Once these creeks and catchments are destroyed it is too late. And in an era of climate change, is not protecting natural water systems, ensuring the sustainability of freshwater, critical?

“Council employee ‘destroyed threatened species habitat’” (ABC news)

“New South Wales National Parks says the Land and Environment Court’s decision to convict a council employee for breaching environmental laws sends a clear message to corporations and their staff. The former director of infrastructure services at Port Macquarie-Hastings Council was found to have knowingly destroyed a threatened species habitat by authorising land clearing and road works in the Thrumster area four years ago.
Geoff Freeman faces a possible fine of over $100,000 and a year in jail for two breaches of the National Parks and Wildlife Act. National Parks spokesman Lawrence Orel says both individuals and corporations have responsibilities under the act. “It’s pleasing to see that the court has made this decision, but it does have a little way to go in that sentencing has yet to be pronounced,” Mr Orel said. “It’s important for people to appreciate that protecting our threatened species is something that applies across both corporate entities and indeed can apply to individuals.””
Although this is in NSW, could it also apply here in Tasmania?  Are Tasmanian councils and their employees also leaving themselves exposed for potential law suits? Convictions and fines? With inappropriate roads and creek crossings; destruction of water catchments; and threatened species habitat destroyed by forestry operations threatening rare and endangered species such as the Giant Fresh Water Crayfish, Grey Goshawk, Wedge tailed Eagle, and the DFT free Tasmanian Devil, are councils ensuring their authorizing of forestry plans, with their destructive forestry operations, in areas renowned for these species, and alongside reserves and parks, are infact protecting these species? Are these iconic species not worth more in the eco tourism industry and in the biodiversity chain, rather than destroyed through habitat destruction?
“Scientists urge Govt to expand nature reserves”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/08/1999561.htm
“A panel of scientist has called on the federal and state governments to expand the number of nature reserves in Australia in a bid to protect shifting animal populations.”

“Frankenforests: GE Trees Threaten Ecosystem Collapse”
http://www.alternet.org/environment/58477/?page=1
“The industry is looking for a way to make more money, damn the consequences. What’s driving this is not environmental concern, but mass production – you can’t say that’s environmentally friendly,” says Lohmann.”

“Compared to crops that have been cultivated for thousands of years, trees are ‘wild’. If a GE trait enters a forest species, the implications could be absolutely horrendous. We could see the ecological system weaken and collapse. Without the forests, we’re sunk.” Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher – Ph.D. in molecular genetics.
Cont…

…cont.
Reprinted from “Genetic Dialectic – The Biological Politics of Genetically Modified Trees” Courtesy of Eco-Nexus.

“The Industrial Pulpwood Plantation Tradition

The factory-like order of industrial pulpwood plantations, with their ranks of even-aged trees of the same species marching over large landscapes, is closely tied to the political development of the factory itself. The basic design for the paper machine used today was developed in the 1790s largely as an attempt to transfer control over paper-making knowledge from restive artisans to factory owners. The new device encouraged increased plant scale, increased consumption and increased physical centralization. It also encouraged the use of wood — which was more easily stored, more available and more easily transportable than agricultural wastes or rags, as well as being less labor-intensive — as raw material. Reliance on wood in turn encouraged the already-existing trend toward state control over forests. It also helped foster reliance on large, heavily-mechanized and -capitalized, water- and energy-intensive mills. One outcome was large-scale deforestation and the creation of vast, simplified catchment areas of uniform raw materials — industrial plantations, or “fields of fibre”. Increasingly sited in the South, where land is cheaper, growth rates faster, and regulation less restrictive, such enclaves are intolerant of other land uses such as agriculture, gathering, grazing or wildlife preservation. Requiring centralized legal, political and biological control, they
also provide few jobs for local people and have provoked local resistance in countries ranging from Indonesia and Thailand to Portugal and Chile. The grand scale of pulp and paper operations makes state subsidies indispensible, whether in the form of free infrastructure, tax breaks, cheap land, suppression of local opposition, or low-cost university research services. The enormous size of each factory added to the sector, meanwhile, fosters savage boom-and-bust cycles which encourage periodic increases in demand. Paper executives insist that this scale is necessary for “efficiency”. But even if one disregards the issue of whether or not any industry so subsidized can be regarded as “efficient”, obvious questions remain. Who or what is this “efficiency” for? A typical US citizen uses 60 times more paper than an average Vietnamese, yet the literacy rates of the two countries are virtually the same. (See Table: “For Whom Is Paper Produced? Is Paper Consumption Correlated with Literacy?” p.4.) In fact, some 58 per cent of current
world paper production has nothing to do with writing and printing, but is used instead in packaging, tissues, and other uses; and even a large proportion of writing and printing papers go toward junk mail and other types of advertising. The scale of the industry and its associated need to simplify landscapes and entrench high demand are products not of some disembodied need for “efficiency” but of a wider politics and culture.”

Maybe its time for a decent, long term vision to be realistically and holistically looked at in Tasmania. Maybe instead of one mans, the Prime Minister’s law, filtering down and holding the people and states over a barrel, it should more closely resemble the people’s wishes, through their councils and into their government. Isn’t that the way it is supposed to be? Or is that all too simple?

Not sure how it got into this particular thread, but the quotation in comment 3 above entitled “The Industrial Pulpwood Plantation Tradition” is spot on. And tragic.

Apart from its obvious relevance to Tasmania tody, it generalises into one of the best illustrations of the way we humans have, over decades of apparent comfort, ceded control over our lives, our land and our other basic support systems to inhumane megastructures, half institutional, half technological, which continue to push us around like pawns in a chess game until the time we no longer serve them a useful purpose and are then just spat out and rolled over.

Forgive me if I’m a pessimist! But if this pulp mill business should somehow happen to turn out for the best - if people like Ruth Forrest have learned something useful, and if the spirit of Terry Martin - which might just be starting to infect Lisa Singh and hopefully others - is allowed to win the day, I could reconsider that position.

The present situation in Tasmania comes that close to being the ultimate litmus test. Alarming and precarious as it is, it certainly (like war) presents us with the chance to expose the worst and the best in people.

Shortly we will know whether ethics, commonsense, and the opinions of the numerous but individually powerless have any relevance to the way in which our society shall be run. Charles and Claire are right - that IS the way it is supposed to be. There are indeed plenty of snakes in the grass who’ll tell us that “that is all too simple”, but they are wrong. Their layers of complexity don’t do us any good. The truth has always been simple.