August 30 2008
John Gay must resign
Geoffrey Cousins
John Gay must resign as chairman immediately. Demonstrably he has destroyed shareholder value and the board has failed to keep the market properly informed.
Read more here …
Pulp mill dead, say opponents
Nick Clark, Geoff Easdown Mercury
THE pulp mill project was declared “dead” yesterday as leading opponents turned up the heat on Gunns Limited. Leading Australian business figure Geoffrey Cousins, an outspoken mill critic, launched a scathing response after Gunns this week pushed the start of the project out to March, well beyond deadlines set by the federal and Tasmanian governments. And Premier David Bartlett said Tasmanians deserved to know by Christmas whether or not the project was going ahead. Mr Bartlett said the Government would not extend the sovereign risk agreement with Gunns past November 30 and financial support for the project would cease on that date. Mr Cousins said the controversial project was doomed. Read more here
Sunday: Open Day in the Styx
Vica Bayley Wilderness Society MR. Open day this Sunday 31st August from 11am, all welcome
The Wilderness Society is organising an open day in the Styx Valley this Sunday to encourage the public to visit one of the most carbon-dense forests in the world. Trained guides will be in place at five sites around the valley from 11am, to explain to the public the important role that protecting native forests can play in the battle against climate change.
Read more here …
Obama …
News, Commentary
Take your pick: Here
August 29 2008
Mill: the massive sleight of hand
ABC Online: Another blow for Gunns’ pulp mill plans
Tas economy will survive without mill: Premier
Dr Warwick Raverty
Alex (#17), You are right on the money, absolutely correct in every respect - and I say that as someone who saw Gunns’ inadequacies from the inside for all but the last month of the RPDC Assessment. Cowboys are exactly what I observed and it is that primarily that caused me to change my view from one of complete neutrality in February 2006 to the statement that I made on 14th March 2008, ‘With great reluctance, I have come to the view that Gunns are not a fit company to operate a kraft pulp mill anywhere, let alone in the Tamar. Unfortunately, with hindsight, all the evidence before me now strongly indicates that Hampshire was never a realistic option, because even in the heady days of low interest rates the whole project hung on the ability to continue exporting plantation woodchips out of Burnie at well over the $36 per bone dry tonne quoted in the press, while ripping 80% of the mill feedstock out of the island’s native forests at Forestry Tasmania’s FOI revealed prices between $8 - $13 per bone dry tonne. I strongly suspect that this massive sleight of hand was necessary to maintain cash flow during the construction and commissioning phases of the mill. In my time on the RPDC Assessment Panel the question of how much wood would continue to be exported was put frequently to Gunns, but was never answered. One of the main reasons why they withdrew unilaterally on 14th March 2007. I suspect Gunns realised that Christopher Wright was going to continue asking the same probing questions that Julian Green and Beca AMEC had asked. I continue to hope fervently that there is no-one silly enough to lend them the money. Read more, Comment here
Gunns admits pulp mill doubts
Nick Clark Mercury
GUNNS Ltd has conceded for the first time its $2 billion Bell Bay pulp mill may not proceed because of problems getting finance. In a statement coinciding with its annual profit announcement, Gunns also said it would not have finance for the mill finalised until the first quarter of 2009. The delay takes the project past the State Government’s sovereign risk deadline of November 30. “Whilst directors believe it is probable that the mill project will proceed to completion, the financing structure is yet to be finalised,” executive chairman John Gay said. “Gunns cannot state with certainty that such a structure will be achievable, nor can it provide an assurance that the mill project will proceed.” In other developments yesterday: Mr Gay said he would stand down as managing director by June next year but would remain as chairman of the board; Mr Gay confirmed Gunns could not do the project alone, saying it was the company’s intention to bring in a 50 per cent joint venture partner; He said there were no firm commitments for finance but “certain debt providers have indicated agreement in principle” and for other debt providers “discussions are ongoing”. Gunns has been on the back foot since the ANZ Bank decided in May it would not act as lead banker for the project. Read more here
Cognitive dissonance
Gunns latest: What Gunns reported today
Alex Wadsley
Mr Woodward’s general tenor - that the ‘public’ and journalists are misinformed is emblematic that Gunns and its advisers are suffering the cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias that they project on to their opponents and that they still have no clue how to win a public relations debate. Irrespective of ‘truth’, at this stage in the debate Gunns should be signalling that it has: taken onboard the concerns, it thanks the public for their involvement and lets them know that they are building a better project because of it. It is likely that Gunns would have done a lot better with more involvement by Pitt and Sherry early on in the approval process. If this had been the case then perhaps RPDC Commission Chairs Julian Green, and then Christopher Wright, would not have identified the Gunns’ impact statements as manifestly inadequate. Pitt and Sherry may have been able to identify the errors by Toxicos before they became the subject of public debate. They may even have been able to advise Gunns that perhaps the Tamar Valley was not the best site for a pulp mill, all things considered.
What might have been had Gunns not been run by cowboys and old men? Read more, Comment here
No more delays
Christian Garland
But some comments in the CMP are very worrying. The building is structurally sound at present but cracking of corner stones is increasing significantly and poses an obvious threat. The organ, the oldest of its type in Australia, is at serious risk from damp which could cause $100,000s of damage. Inexplicably, senior Anglican leaders have ignored advice for the organ to be played regularly by volunteers since the church was closed last year. They have also neglected to repair the large external door damaged by fire a year ago. The need to remove two badly eroded spirelets in July this year is further evidence that restoration and re-opening of the building should not be delayed any longer.
Read more here …
August 28 2008
Bartlett too small; Singhing the chorus
John Biggs
But no, Bartlett’s too small for the party heavies. There was no way he was going to allow—or be allowed to alllow—a repeal of the Bill. I also wrote to Lisa Singh and was very disappointed that she joined in the “Green stunt” chorus. In retrospect, of course I and others were being starry eyed. Maybe more research should have been carried out on what the outcome might have been. We are now worse off, more polarised, than ever before. Read more, Comment here
GM ban extension
ABC Online
Tasmania’s ban on genetically modified food crops is to continue. A Parliamentary committee chaired by the Primary Industries Minister, David Llewellyn, has recommended the ban be extended and reviewed in five years. Read more here
Fire Sale!
WITH Gunns’ Share Price Here struggling and the company reported to be having difficulty raising finance to build the pulp mill, some concerned residents decided the time was ripe, and indeed right, to help this fine Tasmanian business raise some funds to fast-track the project.
Our small effort, which we hope will be matched by other public-spirited citizens, will go some small way towards helping Gunns pick up some easy cash by flogging off a few unnecessary assets.
Obviously, the free market will dictate what prices Gunns should fetch for some of their redundant assets. But we, knowing the trouble Gunns is having, suggest the following bids should have some chance of success:
Auspine: Paid $335 million, but suggest offers above $100 million
Tamar Ridge: $10 million would be about right. Gunns can write the losses off against other assets.
Carlton Frame: $200
Les Baker: Somewhat less than Carlton
Robin Gray: A slab of Boags Draught
Also likely to be highly sought after will be documents confirming State Government approval of the pulp mill project, which one day, may prove to be an interesting historical artifact.
Happy bidding!
Gatesy and Jeff
Shame, Shame, Shame
Garry Stannus The Incident at the Parliament, convened in Launceston’s Albert Hall.
We had to pass through security, this took quite a while, and then we were free to sit down. We listened to a long address from Premier Bartlett and a reply from Jeremy Rockliff and it appeared that Nick McKim would not be allowed to speak. This was changed and he was given about two minutes - at which decision the gallery clapped and got told-off for it. The Speaker said if we did it again: “You know what you’ll be doing? You’ll be spending your time enjoying the sunshine outside.” Then Kim got his chance to introduce his Bill and after making his address he said “Well Premier, draw that line in the sand and ... reject the Pulp Mill”. He was roundly clapped and again we were chastised by the Speaker. When Bartlett got up to reply, a woman began yelling the word “Corruption” and she was grabbed by Security, roughly, and hustled off. We couldn’t hear Bartlett - he was too soft - and some started calling out “Speak up please!”. Security came back and hustled off the other two woman who had been with the first ‘Corruption!’ lady. I hadn’t heard them call out. One of them was in a wheelchair, they were no spring chickens. As they were being taken out, they too began yelling “Corruption!”
More pictures …
Professional media?: Not an online line anywhere (at 8.16am); imagine if it was about Princess Mary …
Read more here …
One man and his $2bn millstone
Typed in by … Paul de Burgh-Day
Financial Review - Weekend 23-24 August 2008
The costs have become almost unbearable for Gunns, its shareholders and the man who’s chasing his pulp mill dream, writes Ingrid Mansell …
Now the straight-talking timber tycoon is about to suffer two further blows. Next week he is expected to unveil plans to relinquish his role as chief executive of Gunns, as a peace offering to investors unhappy with his iron grip over the forestry giant. And he is also understood to be considering excising the mill project from Gunns and placing it into a separate venture, in an 11th hour bid to attract funding for the controversial project.
Read more here …
August 27 2008
You could have fooled me
Nostradamus
“Everywhere I have been, I have heard Tasmanians say to me, `David, we are trusting you to clean up this mess’,” Mr Bartlett declared to Parliament. “And that is what I am going to do. Step by step, piece by piece, this new Government in government will (put) mechanisms in place to ensure that Tasmanians can have absolute faith in their democracy and in all the mechanisms around their democracy.”
It was as Ms Neales pointed out, “a promise akin to a premier nailing his colours—and his political future—to the mast.” In a very real sense, this gives Jed Bartlett a very big advantage. It is a public commitment to cleaning the Augean stables and in a very real context the Premier has acknowledged that there is a mess to be cleaned up. This makes a very strange counterpoint to comments by a Mercury columnist on 25 August to the effect that there is no corruption in Tasmania and hence, no need for an ICAC-style body. Well you could have fooled me! I have watched certain developments over the past 10 years with a growing sense of dismay, knowing that the shadowy figures that hold the real power in the state have increasingly tightened their grip.
Read more here …
Singh holding to party line
Mercury
LABOR backbencher Lisa Singh has rejected as a cheap stunt a bid by the Greens to repeal the Pulp Mill Assessment Act. Parliament will debate a motion today to scrap the Act, which paved the way for the fast-track approval of the $2 billion Gunns pulp mill. Read more here
What happens when the media leaves?
J.L. Herrera
Now that the circus has moved on the Chinese will get stuck into Tibet, the western provinces, people who dared protest their eviction in Beijing.
If we want the excitement of the Olympics in an oppressive totalitarian society then we must also take some responsibility for what happens when the media leaves. We cannot simply leave China’s most vulnerable to their fate now that we have had our fun and glory. The world has bolstered China’s pride and its economy.
Legitimate protest now needs to remind China that oppression comes with economic costs. At the very least we need to monitor and respond to the human rights situation with the same level of attention we gave to the Olympics.
Yours sincerely,
J.L. Herrera (Mrs)
Focus on Gunns shares
Here: The Share Price
Nick Clark Mercury
SHARES in timber company Gunns Limited are expected to be suspended today as the market awaits an announcement on a $400 million capital raising. Gunns shares have not traded for four days since being granted a trading halt by the Australian Securities Exchange last Wednesday. Read more here
Transparency please, Mr Premier
Rebecca Hubbard Marine Campaigner with Environment Tasmania
The Bruny marine bioregion is just one of Tasmania’s nine world-class marine regions under pressure from climate change impacts, introduced marine pests and fishing. Just like national parks on land, marine reserves protect our unique marine environment such as kelp forests and the critically endangered Handfish, whilst allowing people to enjoy the environment through surfing, diving and kayaking,” explained Christian Bell of the Tasmanian Conservation Trust.
Read more here …
Call to restrict right to appeal
Damien Brown Mercury
A LABOR MLC says the public’s right to appeal against development applications may have to be restricted in an effort to weed out troublemakers.
It comes as the first water pipeline from the Meander Dam is held up because of an appeal. Members of the Legislative Council yesterday debated as a matter of urgency a motion calling for immediate changes to planning schemes to ensure developments were not thwarted by irrelevant appeals. Independent MLC Greg Hall used the opportunity to attack Greens groups for blocking the pipeline and other water developments “just for the sake of it”. It is believed the Resource Management Planning Appeals Tribunal has received an appeal against the first of four planned Meander Dam to Quamby-Osmaston pipelines. … Independent MLC Jim Wilkinson and Labor MLC Doug Parkinson agreed appeal fees may be necessary. Read more here
August 26 2008
Forest protest legal threat
Damien Brown Mercury
FORESTRY Tasmania is considering legal action against protesters in the state’s southern forests. It will be the first time the Tasmanian government business has pursued recovery of lost production costs since its high-profile failure to do so against Weld Angel Allana Beltran in February. Police Minister Jim Cox warned that a “lot has been learned” since the Weld Angel court case. The threat comes as protests in the Styx Valley intensified yesterday. Forestry Tasmania corporate relations manager Ken Jeffreys said there had been no protests for weeks because protesters knew their chances of getting coverage during the Olympics were slim. Read more here
Singh mill vote dilemma
Michael Stedman Mercury
DENISON Labor MP Lisa Singh is believed to be considering breaking ranks with her party again on the issue of the pulp mill. Tomorrow State Parliament will debate a Bill, introduced by the Greens, to repeal the Pulp Mill Assessment Act that granted fast-track approval for the $2 billion Gunns Ltd pulp mill. Read more here
ABC Online: Greens pressure Singh
Hospital: talk of poll
Anne Mather Mercury
HOBART City Council will consult the community about plans for a new waterfront hospital, with a possible poll to measure public sentiment. Read more here
PAL Policy Review
Bob Loone
Put clearly and simply the reviewed PAL policy facilitates unrestricted rights for MIS plantation forestry corporations to destroy our farms, cause ongoing economic losses, gross fettering, loss of agricultural production potential, and turn all but 4.3% of our farmland into unsustainable forestry plantations. All protection of farm destroying, unsustainable, plantation forestry must be remover from the policy.
Read more here …
The sale is off …
David Leigh
A while back I wrote a call for help. ( Urgent Help Needed ) Forest Enterprises were about to purchase 75 acres in the Ringarooma headwaters, for plantation. You may also remember a lady in distress on a neighboring property. Well, thanks to all of you who responded. The owners have capitulated and the sale is off, following your responses. Thank you.
August 25 2008
The Need for a New Forest Politics
Dr Fred Gale
The challenge is clear, the situation is urgent, and opportunities for the future are great. History has repeatedly demonstrated that the health and welfare of human society are fundamentally dependent on the health and welfare of a nation’s forests. Society at large, the US Congress, state legislators, and policy analysts at international, federal and state levels must not only appreciate this fact but also recognize that the sustainable management of forests can, to a substantial degree, mitigate the dire effects of atmospheric pollution and global climate change. The time to act is now.
Read more here …
$1m a day
Mark
Mercury A BILL to repeal the Pulp Mill Assessment Act is due for debate this week. The Tasmanian Greens’ Repeal Bill would render null and void any approvals under the legislation brought in under former premier Paul Lennon. Read more here
The Greens Bill: Aug24_Repeal_Pulp_Mill_Bill_K_Booth_ATTACH.pdf
Here: The Share Price
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act
Bob McMahon Restore Democracy Rally Launceston August 23 2008
I’m sure Gay, Gray and Lennon thought they were so clever down there in Lindsay St, stitching up the Pulp Mill Assessment Act – the fast track assessment – after trashing the RPDC, but now it has all gone horribly wrong. Gunns is in trouble and are looking for a foreign venture partner and a truckload of cash. Bartlett and his government have been dropped right in it. And so have we. Because of the way Gunns has managed its affairs and the way the State Government has pandered to Gunns’ resource ‘requirements’, Tasmanians are now exposed to foreign ownership of vast swathes of this island and vast swathes of our forest resources. Well done. Great result. Tasmania will be a colony once again – or a Third World country.
Read more here …
“Trust in Democracy” and Section 11 of the Pulp Mill Assessment Act
Peter Henning
It is one thing for government policy to be dictated by corporate power and interest, however unhealthy and destructive to the democratic fabric and to competing social, economic and environmental interests that might be. It is entirely another matter if corporate power has the capacity to instigate or to influence the inclusion of statute bars in legislation. The point is that the Tasmanian people have a right to know whether or not all their parliamentary representatives (Liberal and Labor en bloc in the House of Assembly, minus Terry Martin and Lisa Singh, and Labor and a majority of “independent” members of the Legislative Council) who voted in support of Section 11, actually voted for legislation prepared, or instigated or suggested or controlled by a corporate interest. Again, it is one thing for politicians to desert their representative responsibilities, as those who supported Section 11 did, because of some adherence to cosy and comfortable “caucus solidarity” arrangements, whether from misplaced party loyalty, incompetence, cowardice, complacency or sheer ignorance. It is something else altogether if they voted for legislation prepared outside the acceptable normal parameters of the public service.
Read more here …
Mill: What is credibility worth?
Mike Bolan
This was all brought back the other day when I read in the Examiner 21 Aug ...“Gunns resource and sustainability manager Calton Frame was the first speaker for the evening and claimed that the pulp mill will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.1 million tonnes a year.” Huh? Are we really supposed to believe that if we did nothing and just let all the trees grow, and left our forests to sequester carbon on their own, that we’d emit 1.1 million tonnes of CO2 more than by cutting down 300 sq kms of trees a year and converting them to pulp and wood smoke in furnaces? The public is left to wonder what kind of daffy smoke and mirrors accounting could possibly lead Gunns to that conclusion? Presumably it’s the same kind of benefits only tosh that they tried to pass off as an economic analysis in their IIS. Can anyone believe these kinds of claims?
Read more here …
Yabba Dabba Dooo
Mark
