Letter to Julia Gillard

Hon Julia Gillard MP
Minister – Social inclusion
3 December 2007

Social exclusion in pulp mill approval

Dear Minister,

Sincere congratulations on being returned to government, you have worked hard for the position and have clearly earned this important role.

Our organisation, A Better Australia, has been representing a number of community-based groups in understanding the impacts and costs of the Tamar pulp mill proposal. Unfortunately for us all, over 80% of all impacts were ignored entirely in the Lennon/Howard assessment process, and most of those impacts are in the ‘wood supply’ area declared not relevant by the proponent. What they did not understand is that the impacts are very relevant to the people in the area.

If the mill is to go ahead, we believe that all of its considerable implications should be known prior to it being built.

We write to ask that you commission a complete study of the social and economic impacts of the proposed pulp mill, including opportunity costs, so that effective decisions can be made about our future. None of this information was studied in the Howard/Lennon collapsed process.

On behalf of the community, we write again to point out that the governments of Australia have taken our tax and other monies yet denied the community any help or scientific support to protect them while subsidising the project proponent with nearly $15 million to prepare, and market, their proposal.

We argue that the approach was biased and illegitimate, as was the consequent decision, because major impacts on the community were deliberately ignored by those that we are paying to represent us. Simply, they refused to do the jobs for which we are paying them, despite the fact that the risks appear dire and would threaten a large community of Tasmanians. Instead our governments argued for the proponent.

People absolutely reject this means of deciding their future…a method that disrupts investments, peoples’ hopes and plans, all for the sake of satisfying one company that is already in receipt of massive subsidies. A petition of about 22,000 signatures demanding a return to due process was delivered to our Upper House but it, like all community communications, was entirely ignored by the State government.

We support your agenda for Australia. We need inclusive government that understands our environment, understands critical resource constraints, understands the unique needs of its people and takes all reasonable steps, including open planning, to protect the people – including having mechanisms to protect us from bad government.

We are seeking a way forward that deals openly and honestly with the potential impacts and problems of the proposal so that everyone can decide how best to prepare for the future, with or without a mill. At the moment there is virtually no information whatsoever about dealing with the costs or risks, and that’s risky!

That is why, under your policy of social inclusion, we are asking that the impacts on, and the needs of, Tasmanians be taken into consideration now, before any more damage is done. The ‘approval’ process has always excluded wood supply –between 200 - 350 sq km to be clearfelled and burned every year. The result has been to leave out massive social and economic costs and to create an artificially positive picture that advantages the project proponent at the expense of the community.

This has been social exclusion on a grand scale.

The forest clearance rate proposed will be one of the highest in the world, and the threats to our food producers from the tax driven conversion of food farms to plantations are dire and immediate. Yet none of this information has been explored because the community has been left out of the ‘fast track’ decision method.

Overall, we believe that the mill proposal threatens:

• Adverse climate change impacts (e.g. cutting and burning forests)
• Major economic threats from unstudied opportunity costs (e.g. loss of farms)
• Water availability as thousands of hectares of tree plantations suck catchments dry
• Rural food production industries as food farms are replaced with MIS trees
• Rural communities whose cash flow is drying up as trees take over
• Small businesses in tourism, farming, fishing, recreation and fine foods that rely on clean and green
• Health and education as hundreds of millions of dollars of public money are diverted to subsidise the pulpwood industry.

The main information based root cause we have identified is that no study of opportunity costs was carried out for the major forestry projects (e.g. 2020 Vision, Pulp mill) thereby plunging the government into the unknown, from which they could only be saved by paying subsidies or giving cost relief, that now appears to total over $200 million each year versus their posted profit of about $80 million.

In the context of our declining health, education and social support sectors, it is difficult to see how the subsidies can continue to be justified, particularly given the climate change and water implications of the proposal.

This is the core of the reasons that we propose an independent study by some organisation like Sydney University that has no logging industry connections. If the subsidies are ‘locked in’ with the approval, that could cost the public around $5 billion over the first 20 years of the mill. That kind of risk is surely worth checking carefully before making a final commitment.

Please understand, we do not challenge the legality of the pulp mill process. We challenge the validity of the ethical, moral and political breaches that have occurred, and that will keep occurring until policy changes are made.

I trust that you find the materials useful and informative.

We can answer queries and supply further information should you require.

Sincerely,

A Better Australia