John Watson (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Gunns Ltd is the largest hardwood chip operator in the world. In fact, it is Tasmania’s largest private landowner and a major employer in Tasmania, employing over 1,200 people. As the Senate would no doubt be aware, this company from time to time attracts a lot of attention. I am concerned about and will address tonight some of the inaccurate green group slander that is directed towards the customers of Gunns in Japan. I think it is quite abhorrent and quite un-Australian. I have here a letter sent to a Japanese customer of Gunns Ltd by one of these so-called green groups. An extract of the letter reads:

We are writing to you to reiterate our request to hold a meeting with your company during our upcoming visit to Japan on August 2nd - August 8th. Rainforest Action Network is very concerned that we have been unable to arrange a meeting with your company and hope that this issue can be resolved prior to our scheduled time in Japan.

Rainforest Action Network … would like to be able to engage in constructive dialogue with your company to address some serious concerns related to your supply of wood products, especially from Gunns Limited in Tasmania, Australia. You should be aware that Gunns currently engages in logging practices that are listed amongst the worst in the developed world according to the World Conservation Union.

This comment is a complete misrepresentation of both Gunns and the World Conservation Union. In fact, Gunns has some of the best logging practices anywhere in the world, so it is a complete fabrication from this group. The letter continues:

As an honourable company—

that is, a company in Japan—

who we trust is interested in maintaining responsible practices and protecting your company’s reputation, it would seem as though your company would make constructive dialogue regarding a controversial supplier like Gunns a top priority. RAN has worked with many of the world’s largest timber and paper companies to help find solutions to problems such as these in the past.

This so-called pressure green group, RAN, boasts of bullying other corporations with disruptive and misleading protests. They not so much work with companies as force them to accept their views—or else! Sheer thuggery. The letter continues:

Although you appear to believe all the statements of your suppliers and supporting governments, you must know that these parties can profit from deceiving you.

How outrageous! The letter goes on:

Also they may indeed intend to compete with you if they build the new pulp mill. Thus, you could only benefit from listening to the voices of important stakeholders.

Who are these important stakeholders? Rubbish! Previously, I had never heard of RAN, and certainly none of their 35 permanent staff live in Tasmania. This group is based in North America. They do not represent Tasmanians, so I think it remarkable that they describe themselves as important stakeholders. The letter continues:

As one of the primary purchasers of Gunns’ woodchips you are inevitably connected to concerns about the company’s practices and are responsible for your own procurement policy purchasing woodchips from sustainably managed forests. You should be aware that by refusing to engage in constructive dialogue with RAN you could be misinterpreted as implicitly supporting egregious social and environmental practices.

Here we have blatant threats. They might as well have said, ‘If you do not agree to meet with us and our demands, you will be slandered, misrepresented and become the focus of rent-a-crowd protests,’ because that is most certainly what they meant in that letter. This letter clearly misrepresents Gunns as having logging practices amongst the worst in the world, which is untrue. This is a blatant untruth. In fact, Gunns is described as such in a paper sent to the World Conservation Union, but they make no such claim. Somebody sent them a letter and then they alleged that it was part of the union’s statements. Unfortunately, this sort of misrepresentation happens all too often. RAN has two campaigns specifically targeting corporations. Those two corporations are Gunns and Weyerhaeuser. Gunns, as senators know, operates out of Tasmania; Weyerhaeuser operates out of North America.

The question I ask the supporters of RAN is: ‘If Japanese companies are not sourcing their timber products from Tasmania or North America, where do you think they will source them from—Brazil, Papua New Guinea or other countries which have less responsible practices than those operating in Tasmania or even North America?’ The simple fact remains that global demand for woodchips and other timber products will continue to rise, and preventing companies from sourcing from Tasmania inevitably means that they will source from other areas, with fewer government oversighting practices and lower logging procedures and standards than those which prevail in Tasmania.

This is important because, no matter what you may think of Tasmanian forestry practices, they are far and above any of those in the Amazon, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia or many of these newly emerging countries. If you drive away customers from Tasmania, as these groups pretend to do, all you are really doing is marginalising our ability to effect forestry policy. The Australian and Tasmanian governments have shown time and time again that they will at least listen to the concerns of environmental groups and that they are concerned about the sustainability of the environmental industry. Unfortunately, governments in Brazil and Indonesia have shown that they are not.

These attacks do hurt industry; they hurt people. By attempting to drive customers away from high-quality Tasmanian timber products, green pressure groups are, in effect, promoting exploitative and unsustainable forestry practices in other parts of the world. I can accept the fact that not all people are happy about the way some forestry operations take place in Tasmania. But what we should not accept is lying about our industries and driving our customers towards countries that have no environmental sensitivity at all.

The second matter I want to speak about tonight is the proposed pulp mill. This will be of great benefit to Tasmania. Gunns is planning to develop a bleached Kraft mill in the Bell Bay major industrial zone in northern Tasmania. It will incorporate the best available technology and set new global standards for mill design. This mill will be the largest ever investment by the private sector in Tasmania and the largest ever investment within the forestry sector in Australia. It will cost $1.4 billion. This will add $6.7 billion to the Tasmanian economy, an increase of 2.5 per cent. It will add an additional $894 million in extra tax revenue for the period 2008 to 2030. It will add $1.5 billion to the gross state product during construction. Some 3,400 jobs will be created during the construction, with an additional $39 million annual expenditure by the construction workforce in northern Tasmania. Once the mill is operational, there will be a projected extra 1,617 jobs on average than there would be otherwise—a great project for Australia, a great project for Tasmania. It is expected that 40 per cent of jobs during construction and 80 per cent of jobs once operational will be filled by Tasmanians. It will also generate up to 100 megawatts of surplus power, which will be sold into the Tasmanian power grid.

This project is vital for the growth and continued prosperity of the Tasmanian economy. There are some who would like to see Tasmania perpetually frozen in time, as these green groups do, so that they can feel good about themselves. But there is a huge human cost to that attitude. Those 1,600 extra jobs will mean 1,600 extra families can live in our great state and benefit from our wonderful lifestyle and environment. Those 1,600 extra jobs will mean that many people will not have to move to the mainland looking for work, and will mean much more money in the Tasmanian state coffers.

I strongly recommend this project to the Senate, and urge all senators to give it their support. At the same time, I condemn the negative attitude of certain green groups who are acting in a most un-Australian way.