Tasmania and the risks to Rudd

Where Rudd comes in

With a sigh of relief in November, we changed our federal government and sent John Howard a message that he couldn’t spin out of. PM Kevin Rudd rocketed in to present his clean and clever image of a focused “Mr No-nonsense”. He defined ten key issues facing the nation, seven of which were:

• future directions for the economy;
• population, sustainability, climate change, water;
• rural industries and communities;
• national health strategy;
• families, communities and social inclusion;
• democracy, open government … citizens’ rights and responsibilities; and
• future security and prosperity.

Unfortunately for him, the items excluded from consideration all have severe negative impacts on every single one of those seven issues, either directly (e.g. the impact of clear felling and burning on climate), or indirectly by transferring monies from essential services (e.g. health and education) into the pulp mill. They also impact on Australia’s strategic capacities. It’s clear that if rain patterns continue to be disrupted, Australia should protect its food production capabilities instead of delivering them to forestry “in perpetuity” courtesy of tax incentives. Who knows where, when and how much the next rains will bring? We can neither move or eat trees but we can move our food crops!

The problem for Rudd is that neither he, nor his Cabinet, nor his politicians, are aware of any of this. They don’t know about impacts on agriculture, about the insane levels of subsidy or indeed about any of the non-environmental impacts. They just hope that Paul Lennon has been telling them the truth. That’s the trouble with leaving things out of consideration holus bolus, you end up not knowing what you’re doing.

Let’s check the list:

Social inclusion? The continued isolation of huge numbers of Tasmanians from any form of representation in this matter still stands as a testament against Rudd’s claims of social inclusion - in fact the entire mess looks more like ritual exclusion.

Climate change? Anyone with a brain can tell that cutting down our forests to create pulp, and burning the residues in a power station, is going to release massive amounts of sequestered carbon. How will that help? Deforestation has been identified as a major problem everywhere except Tasmania, where we’re forced to subsidise it.

Health? Not only have doctors and professional engineers stated that the mill is a threat to the health of Tamar residents, but our hospitals are being chronically under funded while hundreds of millions of dollars are going to help forestry - new highways, new railways, cheap water and so on. Pollution of rural water supplies with biocides used by forestry is another health threat amplified by this proposal. If Mr Rudd wants a national health strategy, one important initiative could be to stop poisoning taxpayers! Continued support for this mill will imply that Rudd is prepared to force taxpayers to subsidise more threats to their own health.

Rural industries and communities? The detrimental impacts of tree plantations on rural communities have been remarked upon extensively, while conflicted forestry spokespeople claim we’ll all be better off with a mantra of “what’s good for forestry is good for Tasmania”. As rural incomes fall, and tourists go where they can still see the scenery and not be threatened by hurtling log trucks, so rural industries start to pack up and leave. Water catchments dry up as plantations suck up any water available. Rudd will have a hard time explaining how he’s helping rural industries and communities in that environment.

Future security and prosperity? This proposal looks like it will cost taxpayers some $350 million a year, each and every year for decades. If things go as many experts forecast, and similar to other pulp mills around the world, total costs including opportunity costs, could balloon to over $15 billion in the first two decades of operation alone! How does that connect to future security and prosperity? How does losing most of Tasmania’s food production capacities enhance security in any way?

Sustainability? Water? Democracy? Open government? I’ll leave you to figure these out as I’m sure you can by now.

The long and short of this is that if federal Labor continues to commit to this project it could brand them as hypocrites forever, and set those in the community who suffer adverse effects against Labor for a very long time.