Myth busting - the Gunns pulp mill

Launceston’s got far more concern, should have far more concern over the local domestic wood heaters and motor cars and smoking. They are far more important issues for the public in Launceston than this pulp mill, 36K away. The pulp mill might add or one or two micrograms per cubic metre, compared with wood smoke of 50 to 200 micrograms per cubic metre. What is one or two compared with 50 to 200?

Politicians are under enormous pressure: faced with an intense media campaign and a lobbying effort unprecedented in Tasmania including thousands of emails from within Australia and around the world, many prompted by the false claims of the Rainforest Action Network on chlorine bleaching.

A report commissioned by the state government by ITS Global demonstrates that the net social and economic benefit for Tasmania was assessed as “positive and high”. The mill will add 2.5 per cent to Gross State Product and about $6.7 billion to the economy over the life of the project.

The state’s report by international expert Sweco Pic assessed the project against those rigorous Best Practice standards announced by the Premier way back in 2004 and found the project could proceed to Parliamentary consideration subject to some conditions. The need for this independent assessment was because the developer withdrew from a joint Commonwealth-State assessment process that after more than two years had yet to release a draft report.

Both the developer and the government were blamed for the delay. Yet the public hearing process started to unravel when one member of the RPDC process was accused of bias due to his employer’s (Ensis - a joint venture of CSIRO) involvement in the project. This has been the most controversial part and has been subject to legal challenges and accusations of corruption.

Despite this controversy the public have had a major input. A total of 780 submissions, including pro forma submissions, were received by the RPDC, all of which were made available in the new assessment process. The Commonwealth received about 120 submissions in relation to the Listed Threatened Species and Communities, and Listed Migratory Species; and approximately 220 submissions referred to the Commonwealth Marine Environment.

The Federal Court determined it was valid for the Commonwealth not to hold public hearings. Even for the RPDC these hearings were optional as defined by Section 24 of the State Policies and Projects Act 1993.

However three years on, the environmental credentials of the project still stack up. The Commonwealth’s Department of Environment and Heritage told (PDF 39KB) the Minister that “Based on the available evidence, the Department has not identified any likely significant impacts on the marine environment in Commonwealth waters from the proposed pulp mill”.

Yet despite this finding DEH also advised that is was “desirable” (not essential) to force the developer to do more modeling and more monitoring over and above state requirements. The DEH is recommending that the Tasmanian Guidelines established in 2004, and accepted as a National standard, be thrown out and replaced with now even more stringent standards.

The biggest impact is likely to be on politics in Tasmania if the issue of sovereign risk is raised once more, despite the finding of no likely significant impacts.

Hopefully these recommendations will not be accepted as Tasmania can ill afford another “Richo” decision which resulted in Tasmania going into an economic downturn. A downturn so severe it prompted Prime Minister John Howard, upon first being elected to office in 1996, to commission the Nixon inquiry (PDF 54KB). This found that an unfriendly business environment made it difficult to develop manufacturing industries in Tasmania which would be viable and competitive on world markets. “This factor has been associated with the high levels of sovereign risk associated with the Tasmanian forestry industry.”

Let’s hope history does not repeat itself and we learn from the mistake of believing in myths!