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Australia:
The many subsidies enjoyed by Gunns in Tasmania
A short while ago on the international
tourist scale, Tasmania was voted the second most beautiful location
to visit in the world. It has spectacular mountains and ancient
forests, pristine beaches, an abundance of unique wildlife, a
cool temperate climate and a low population.
Much of this has been declared World
Heritage and there are walking and hiking trails that are breathtakingly
beautiful. Despite its small size, it also has some of the best
farmland in Australia enjoying a generally good rainfall, and
is proud of its 'clean, green image'.
But the very thing that makes it so
attractive has also spelled its potential downfall, for it is
not just the tourists and inhabitants who want this, it is also
a magnet for predators. These come in the form of the timber giants
and the logging industry - businesses that see our heritage purely
in terms of money. Now they are destroying what should belong
not only to the Tasmanians, but the whole world.
But it is largely endemic, for the biggest
danger is actually home-grown. For many years the Tasmanian firm
of Gunns has gradually gained control of not only the forests,
but also the government, to such an extent that it now virtually
owns the entire State. It is the largest single company in Tasmania
and one of the largest woodchip suppliers in the Southern hemisphere.
It currently exports more woodchips than all the other Australian
states put together, and this one is by far the smallest of them
all, with a population of a mere 500,000. Gunns is referred to
locally as "The Gunnerment', for such is their influence.
Now they want to build a Pulp Mill, and the State and Federal
governments have stood themselves on their heads to oblige. Huge
subsidies and funding have been poured into this project, and
in return, Gunns has become a major donor to ALL party political
funds. Despite almost complete opposition from the people of Tasmania,
who in poll after poll have stated categorically that they don't
want this mill and all the other nasties that go with it, it has
nevertheless been rammed through on a fast-track approval process,
short-cutting all environmental assessment factors with minimal
rules applying to them. In fact, they have been exonerated legally
from any damage claims against them that might arise in the future
from their actions!
Along with the Mill have come the Managed
Investment Services (MIS) companies. These are huge multinational
corporations that deal in tax-exempt 'woodlots', otherwise known
as monoculture plantations. The Federal Government has granted
this tax-exempt status on the fallacious grounds that growing
plantations can be used as a carbon sink and can be traded off
against industrial pollution. As Australia has not ratified the
Kyoto Protocolo, this gives the government an excuse to continue
with the greenhouse gas emissions from its heavy industry, Australia,
at 22 tonnes per person having the highest CO2 rating per capita
in the world!
The fallacy of this lies in the fact
that plantations are merely a longer term rotational crop and
are not a carbon sink as claimed, and no carbon dioxide can actually
be offset. For it to be a carbon sink, the timber would have to
left standing for a period of 50 years or more. The thirteen year
growing period is an illusion used by the politicians and the
MIS companies to justify these crops. After the first thirteen
years, this becomes an annual harvest - merely a continuous production
cycle that adds the same amount of carbon dioxide back into the
atmosphere as has been offset. We have gained nothing from the
process, except the MIS companies have made a lot of tax free
money and the Government continues to allow pollution elsewhere.
But that is only one aspect. With their
tax-exempt status, the inflow of investment money is such that
the MIS companies are now buying up all the existing farmland
in Tasmania for conversion to monoculture plantations. Gunns itself
is one of these companies. They can outbid any genuine farmer
for this land, and recently have used their money and influence
to have plantations defined as a 'crop', and then changed the
laws regarding the Protection of Agricultural Land (PAL) Act to
give this new 'crop' precedence over all others. Under the law
as it now stands, plantations are exempt from all the other laws
and planning schemes that govern genuine agriculture, and they
pay neither land tax nor rates. The profits from this operation
are such that the first 'crop' sold, not only makes a profit for
the company in its own right, but it gives to them the land free
of charge. After that, everything is sheer profit.
However, it is not these plantation
crops that Gunns requires to feed the Pulp Mill. Those are for
the export woodchip market. What is being fed into this mill is
the remaining old growth forests that make Tasmania so unique.
In a private deal surrounded in secrecy, Forestry Tasmania has
given to Gunns twenty years access to the remaining unprotected
forests of the country at a rock bottom price. What they pay is
a mere AU$12 per tonne, which is half the price of plantation
timber. Even this is not guaranteed, for it has been fixed to
the international price of pulp, and if this goes down, which
it is expected to do, then the price Gunns pays for its timber
also drops, and if it falls below US$500 per tonne, this price
will go negative! In short, we will be paying Gunns for destroying
our forests.
As unlikely as this may seem, it is
almost at that situation right now, where Forestry Tasmania has
made a ZERO return to the state coffers for the past two years,
and prior to that was only achieving a price of AU$2.61 per tonne.
Yet Gunns itself posts huge profits, all of which head offshore
to the mainland and international shareholders. The benefits to
Tasmania are the few crumbs that are paid in minimal wages to
the subcontractors who cut and haul this bounty to the 3 huge
chipping mills - currently 3.5 million tonnes per annum, increasing
to 8 million tonnes when the mill comes into production.
The local Government is fully complicit
with this and has resisted strongly any calls for investigations
of corruption by either a local Crime Commission or by a National
Royal Commission. Every major politician in the state and country
seems to be in bed with these timber giants, and one wonders exactly
how and where some of these major subsidies that they receive
are being spent. It is not insignificant that two ex-Premiers
of Tasmania are now on the Board of Gunns.
By Barnaby Drake, e-mail: beepics@bigpond.com
