Gunns’ approval for mill ‘invalid’

Matthew Denholm

May 11, 2009


STATE approval for Gunns Tasmanian pulp mill is invalid and wide open to legal challenge, according to an analysis to be published by a leading administrative law expert.

Michael Stokes, University of Tasmania senior law lecturer, told The Australian his detailed analysis revealed an apparent fatal flaw in the mill assessment process.

The flaw was a “time bomb” for the $2 billion bleached eucalypt mill, proposed for the Tamar Valley north of Launceston, providing solid grounds for a legal challenge.

Mr Stokes’s analysis concludes that the assessment of the project by consultants under former premier Paul Lennon’s fast-track process failed to comply with Mr Lennon’s own fast-track legislation.

“These are not just minor, little things; these are big things - it’s quite clear that the assessment done was not mandated by parliament,” Mr Stokes told The Australian.

The Pulp Mill Assessment Act - introduced by the Lennon government to fast-track the mill outside the independent planning process - allows approval for the project if consultants recommend it can proceed.

Under Section 4 of the act, this can only occur after the consultants “undertake an assessment of the project … against the (pulp mill) guidelines”.

However, the consultant hired by the Government - Scandinavian firm Sweco Pic - conceded in their assessment report of June 2007 that they did not assess the project against 15 of the mill guidelines.

Sweco Pic said these guidelines related to “permit conditions, monitoring and the operation of the pulp mill”.

“At this stage of the project development, it is not practical to undertake an assessment of these latter requirements,” their report said.

However, Mr Stokes said it was not open to Sweco Pic to restrict the assessment in this way. “These deficiencies are so major that we don’t have an assessment required by the act,” Mr Stokes said.

“Therefore, there was no power (held by Sweco Pic) to recommend the mill go ahead and therefore the permit is not a valid one.”

Without a valid permit, construction of the mill could not begin and Mr Stokes said the problem could not be easily overcome.

A Gunns spokesman rejected Mr Stokes’s legal analysis as “ridiculous” and insisted the company was confident in the legality of the state approval and permit. However, he would not say whether this view was based on a legal opinion. “We’re not going to make any comment (about that),” he said.

It is understood anti-mill groups are aware of the nature of Mr Stokes’s analysis and that it could be used in a new legal challenge to the project.

Section 11 of the act limits the rights of appeal against any approval or assessment “under this act”, but Mr Stokes said this would not prevent court action if the assessment was invalid.

He also believed that as the permit was in part issued under the State Land Use Planning Approvals Act, it might expire two years after issue - late August this year - unless the mill was “substantially commenced” by that time.

There is speculation this is why Gunns may have recently moved equipment to Tasmania.

Gunns does not yet have federal approval to operate the mill, but has been given federal clearance to begin construction. It is yet to announce a joint venture partner or financier.

Workers kicked out by logging ban

Tony Koch

May 11, 2009


THIRD-GENERATION sawmill hands are among the dozens of timber workers who have lost their jobs after a Queensland government decision to lock up hardwood forests in southern Queensland to appease green groups who give the Labor Government electoral support.

Scores of apiarists also expect to lose their livelihoods, including many who bring hives from Victoria to the blue-gum forests before returning them to pollinate the valuable almond orchards around Mildura.

The western hardwood forests, which are to be closed to logging and bee-keeping, produce almost half of Queensland’s annual honey production.

National Party senator Ron Boswell yesterday met several of the displaced workers at Allies Creek, a logging camp that had been operating in the Boondoomba State Forest, 300km northwest of Brisbane, since 1944.

The village has 15 houses, two single men’s barracks, a community hall and massive covered timber treatment sheds.

In line with their agreement to stop the logging, the Queensland Government bought the property and leases back from the Crooke family, who established the logging business 65 years ago.

Last Saturday the entire camp was auctioned - selling for just $270,000. A casual caretaker is the only person now living at the site that was home to a constant workforce of up to 60 people.

“The abandonment of Allies Creek - the jobs, the families, the community, the complementary mix of land use - is the price paid to secure Green preferences at elections by the Queensland government,” Senator Boswell said.

At the March 21 Queensland election, the Greens directed preferences to Labor in 14 key marginal seats, helping Ms Bligh to a historic fifth-term win for Labor.

“This is not about protecting the environment,” Senator Boswell said. “It is yet another example of the Labor Government, particularly in Queensland, demonstrating how it feels it can treat people’s jobs and livelihoods as though they are poker chips to be traded away with the Greens.

“They did it with so-called wild rivers in the north, tree-clearing in the west, carbon trading all over the nation, and now they kick the most defenceless - the humble, hard-working families tucked away in a hardwood forest at Allies Creek.”

The sawmill’s former owner, John Crooke, said it was appalling that a government could ignore the real benefits of an operation such as the one his family had run for decades so that political deals could be made.

“My father built this business and we had the most modern equipment available - state-of-the-art, computerised machinery - and we showed the forests can sustain the harvesting rate upon which we operated,” Mr Crooke said.

“My father logged an area here 60 years ago, and that has been allowed to regrow so the new timber is ready now to be harvested. But it won’t be because of this decision to stop our operation and deny us access to any timber, throwing out of work the 50 or 60 people we had employed on the site over all that time.

“There are dance floors, gymnasiums and homes - hundreds of them throughout Australia - that have used the eucalypt and ironbark timber we milled here; it is famous. But no more; it will now revert to an unsupervised forest that will quickly become a massive fire hazard because nobody is taking proper care of it.”

Garry Meiklejohn, 53, has worked at Allies Creek for the past 17 years and says it is unbelievable that a viable business that was doing positive things for the environment could be the subject of an election deal brokered by the Bligh Government.

“Worked the way it has been, this forest could easily sustain another 60 years’ harvesting,” Mr Meiklejohn said. “People are being tricked now into believing it will just be a beautiful forestry area, but the truth is that, without thinning the trees and making sure fuel does not build up each year, it is a fireball in waiting.

“It has really been sad to see everything being sold and the mill go silent. This was a great place to work and we produced a top-quality product that we were all proud of.

“I had to say goodbye last week to my mate Ken Parish, who has been here for 35 years as a mill worker. He actually retired, but would not go and came to the mill every day and pottered around - he liked it so much. But he was told like the rest of us that he had to get off the premises because the Government had declared that we could not have any more logs.”

Apiarist Roy Barnes said the forests surrounding Allies Creek provided sites for tens of thousands of hives each year that the blue-gum trees flowered, but the Queensland Beekeepers Association had been told they would not be getting access to the hardwood forests in future.

Garrett a ‘warbling twit’ over parrot

Mon May 11 2009

Environment Minister Peter Garrett is a “warbling twit” for putting the protection of a vulnerable parrot before the jobs of 1,000 timber workers, the federal opposition says.

The federal government reportedly has ordered the clear-felling of red gum to cease in the Central Murray-Darling region, near the NSW town of Deniliquin, because of concerns about the future of the Superb Parrot.

The parrot - listed nationally as “vulnerable” - nests in the hollows of red gums.

The decision was overkill, opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt said.

“There are a lot of them out there,” he told Fairfax Radio Network, adding the birds were well managed by the local timber industry.

The vulnerable people were the workers whose jobs were about to be extinct, he said.

If Mr Garrett won’t reverse his decision, then it will be up to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to step in and overrule the minister’s decision.

The NSW state government has expressed concern over the order to stop timber production.

“It actually gives me a great deal of delight to agree with the NSW government on something,” Mr Hunt said.

“As one person put it to me this morning, you’ve got the warbling twit protecting the green leak parrot but sacrificing 1,000 jobs.”

However, an environmental lobby group has praised the federal government’s decision ban logging of red gums.

The National Parks Association (NPA) of NSW said the state government has been caught red-handed illegally logging red gum wetlands in state forests.

“It is appalling that the government, which should be setting the highest standards in environmental management, is in fact flagrantly flouting the law,” NPA spokeswoman Georgina Woods said in a statement.

“The NSW government prosecuted a private landholder this year for illegally clearing Ramsar-listed wetlands, resulting in a fine of more $400,000, yet now demands that the law not apply to its own logging agency for the same offence,” she said.

“Patch-clear-felling of internationally significant forests for cheap firewood is not a solution to the economic woes of the Riverina region.”

However, the NSW timber industry says the logging will not affect the Superb Parrot.
NSW Forest Products Association director Russell Ainley said the Superb Parrot nests in trees along the edge of the forest.

He said it feeds in the grasslands and logging did not disrupt its habitat.

“It’s by no means spread throughout the forest,” he told Fairfax Radio on Monday.

Mr Ainley said the industry employed practices that ensured the largely bright green Superb Parrot and other endangered species were protected.

“Nobody does any clear-felling of the red gum forests,” he said.

An approved and internationally accredited system was also in place to re-grow the forests after trees were cut down, he said.

Mr Ainley said that if the ban was to proceed, 320 jobs would be cut immediately, affecting about another 537 jobs in the Riverina.

A spokesman for Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett says the federal government has told Forests NSW to stop logging in around half the available logging area, until an investigation of the area’s future is completed.

The government is concerned about the wetland, which is listed as “of international importance” for conservation reasons.

It is also concerned about the welfare of the Superb Parrot, which lives in the area and is listed as a vulnerable species. There are fewer than 5,000 breeding pairs left in the wild.

“Subject to those discussions, forest harvesting will still be able to go ahead in a large part of the forest,” the spokesman said.

“The commonwealth is examining a range of options to allow for this to happen.”

“This is an important question of balance, protecting habitat and internationally-listed wetlands with the need to protect jobs in the region.”

The federal and NSW governments are still discussing the issue, the spokesman said.

Later, Mr Hunt told reporters that if the federal government wanted to help protect the parrot, it should fund a breeding and recovery program, not shut down logging.

Federal Liberal MP Sussan Ley, whose Farrer electorate includes the wetlands where the parrots are located, said there were 11 timber mills on the NSW of the Murray River.

She accused Mr Garrett of being “very heavy-handed”, adding conservation rules allowed sustainable logging in the area.

The NSW government said it would need “a lot of convincing” that a partial logging ban was needed to protect wetlands and parrots.

NSW Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald said he would meet with his federal counterparts as soon as possible to discuss the logging ban.

Mr Macdonald said he was concerned that hasty action on the issue would cost “many hundreds of jobs” and wanted logging to continue.

“I believe that the operations in the forests do not really challenge the… survival of this particular parrot,” Mr Macdonald told Sky News.

The Superb Parrot flew long distances each year so it did not appear the area must be quarantined from logging, he said.

“I’d need a lot of convincing, but I’m happy to listen to the evidence.”

Mr Macdonald said logging was only carried out in small areas, around 50 square metres in size, in the forests in question.

He said a $2 million environmental impact study was due for release on June 1, adding it would be wise to wait for that before making decisions.

SAVE THE MARY RIVER SPECIES, MR GARRETT

Media Release Office of Senator the Hon Ian Macdonald
Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia

A call was made today for the Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, to use his powers under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act (EPBC) to save the three rare species in danger due to the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam.

Queensland Liberal Senator Ian Macdonald, who was a member of the Senate Inquiry into the building of Traveston Dam, said that instead of destroying jobs by halting logging in NSW, Mr Garrett should use his Ministerial authority to do something sensible instead, like stopping the building of Traveston Crossing Dam.

“The Mary River Turtle, the Mary River Cod and the Lungfish are all currently threatened due to the proposed Traveston Crossing Dam near Gympie. Under the EPBC Act, Mr Garrett has the power to stop the construction of this dam and save these three species,” Senator Macdonald said.

“Since becoming Environment Minister, Mr Garrett has used his power under the EPBC Act to save threatened Cassowaries near Cairns, and a Parrot in NSW, but continues to ignore the three species threatened by this proposed dam in the Mary Valley.”

“Mr Garrett has set a further precedent here. He had already used his discretion to save the Cassowary, but now he has ordered a State Government to cease work on a project because of a rare parrot.”
“Mr Garrett should act consistently and order the Queensland

Government not to proceed with the construction of Traveston Dam, so that the Mary River Cod, Turtle and Lungfish can all survive,” Senator Macdonald said.