Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Senate for allowing me to have these few minutes. This week Gunns Ltd pleaded guilty in a Tasmanian court to the offence of failing to maintain a plant in a safe condition—a failure which led to a quite serious injury to a worker. I am wanting to draw the Senate’s attention to that fact that 14 December will be the fourth anniversary of Gunns’ SLAPP writ—that is, a strategic law suit against public participation—taken out in the Supreme Court against the 20 defendants. Gunns issued that writ for $6.4 million the day before it provided the federal environment department with its application for environmental approval for its proposed pulp mill in northern Tasmania. One can see a deliberate series of decisions by Gunns to take this action at the same time that it was wanting to win approval for the pulp mill. It has had no good outcome in either case.

The court costs for Gunns have now amounted to some $590,000 and are climbing. Those costs go to the shareholders, because the directors, including the CEO, Mr Gay, who decided to take this SLAPP writ, are inured from the costs. The costs go to the company and therefore are taken from the profits and therefore are taken out of the pockets of the shareholders. On the other hand, the citizens who are fighting to defend Tasmania’s forests against the extraordinary, inexcusable destruction which comes from Gunns activities in those forests—the destruction of wildlife, of carbon, of habitat, of an ancient ecosystem—still live with this threat. It is time that Gunns abandoned not only the pulp mill but also this court case and started trying to retrieve its reputation, which has been so badly damaged by those decisions so mistakenly made by the Gunns board back in 2004.