Deadlines just don't seem to apply to Gunns

Lines in the sand when broken, confirm, and confirm without doubt.

(Perhaps the most famous story about “a line in the sand” derives from the Battle of Alamo in 1836, the famous battle between Mexico and Texas, in which all the Texan defenders of the fort at Alamo were killed. The story goes that all defenders, except one man, agreed to cross the line and fight to the death, which they did. “A line in the sand” signifies a final position, a line which cannot be broken)

Last week the national secretary of the forestry division of the CFMEU, and member of the national executive of the ALP, Michael O’Connor, called for taxpayer funding to ensure that Gunns’ proposed pulp mill was built in the Tamar Valley.

The timing of his announcement was designed to take advantage of the Rudd Government’s decision to bring forward major infrastructure developments to combat the expected economic downturn as the fallout from the financial meltdown in the United States starts to bite into the real economy in Australia.

The announcement was also made to coincide with the Rudd “community cabinet” meeting in Launceston and Gunns’ AGM, to distract attention from the real issues surrounding the pulp mill at a time when those issues would (and should) be again at front and centre stage in the national media.

Age columnist Kenneth Davidson wrote on Monday (November 10, 2008) that current federal “government thinking about infrastructure is limited to multibillion dollar projects that can be packaged as public private partnerships [PPPs] that can generate huge economic rents for their promoters at the expense of taxpayers”.

He goes on to say that five of the six members of the newly established Infrastructure Advisory Council, chaired by Rudd-appointee Sir Rod Eddington, “have backgrounds connected to the PPP industry and privatisation”, and questions whether people with such backgrounds should “be involved in setting infrastructure priorities for the Government”.

Notwithstanding the absurdity of the CFMEU working hand in glove with Gunns to bring more public funds into a company which pays a number of its senior executives more than the Prime Minister’s salary, while at the same time watching as its own members are shed from Gunns’ labour force in the forestry industry from Scottsdale in Tasmania to Yarloop in West Australia, it needs to be remembered that the CFMEU has some influence in the Rudd Government. After all, O’Connor was powerful enough in 2004 to endorse and support the re-election of the Howard Government and yet still retain his position on the ALP executive.

How many others in positions of authority in the ALP around the country could have done that and got away with it? Ask Terry Martin. Consider what would happen to Peter Garrett if he failed to toe the CFMEU line on forestry. That’s a no-brainer.

The picture’s clear enough, is it not? Gunns has completely ignored David Bartlett’s commitment that “from November 30, government permits and involvement in the (pulp mill) project would end unless Gunns had achieved real finance and real progress on construction.” (The Australian, July 1, 2008). The company has not even bothered to consider November 30, 2008, as a deadline of any sort at all. They are on record as saying that it is of no importance to them if the sovereign risk agreement is terminated. Of course it’s not. It’s not much money in the scheme of direct and indirect subsidies they already receive, and there’s no hope that they can attract a joint-venture partner in the short-term.

So what can we say about the rest of Bartlett’s commitment - to end government permits? Not only has Gunns ignored this, but so has the Rudd Government. Garrett has given Gunns an extension until early January 2009 to complete all modules requiring federal assessment - whatever that means. Garrett, as previously mentioned, is just on the payroll. “Honest Peter” does what he’s told, as did his predecessor in the job, Malcolm Turnbull. Back in 2007 it was “honest John” telling Turnbull what to do in a cabinet rigidly controlled by Howard; now it is Rudd-Gillard and the CFMEU telling Garrett his place in cabinet is to toe the party-union line.

Are we to believe then, that the federal government has granted Gunns an extension until January 2009 knowing that Tasmanian permits will end on November 30, 2008? Are we to believe that Gunns is continuing to work on the federal modules knowing that Bartlett is going to withdraw permits at the end of November?

The push is on by the corporate-union alliance to get the project going as part of the federal infrastructure spending program. Rudd has already adopted this kind of approach in relation to the car industry, pumping millions of dollars into the Japanese-owned industry. The mantra of “public private partnerships” will be increasingly used by him and his government as the panacea for Australia in more difficult economic times.

Sooner or later this will expose Rudd to the same sort of electoral distrust which finally characterised Howard’s dismal leadership, for it will fly in the face of all his criticisms of the neo-liberalism of the Howard era, a neo-liberalism where “the legitimacy of altruistic values that go beyond direct self-interest” are rejected. But nevertheless, it is within this context that we should not be unprepared for Bartlett to welcome a “federal initiative” to build the pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, and for him to insist that “the line in the sand” does not apply to the intervention by the federal government as part of a national infrastructure plan to help the Australian economy.

As Kenneth Davidson has argued, the danger for all of us is that the great opportunity provided to the Rudd Government for an expansion in infrastructure spending will be squandered in the interests of corporate welfare rather than being driven by a broader vision of Australia’s needs, such as “a whole range of infrastructure investment associated with global warming”.

Bartlett himself has before him in the next two weeks one of the most significant opportunities ever presented to a Tasmanian Premier in the whole period since the island changed its name from Van Diemen’s Land in 1856. He can stand up for the vision he has espoused for a diverse and more sophisticated social and economic environment, and try to earn a real place as a Tasmanian benefactor, or he can capitulate. Capitulation will almost certainly ensure his political oblivion, and will do nothing to diminish social division, environmental degradation and economic uncertainty.

At the national level, if Rudd joins the pulp mill to his list of PPPs he will not be able to hide from the special scorn reserved for true-believers who betray their political principles. For Rudd has been openly scathing of “unrestrained market capitalism which sweeps all before it”, and most recently has labeled the practice of corporate executives receiving huge bonuses even while their companies are being assisted by subsidies and direct public grants, as “extreme capitalism” at its worst.

If Rudd bows to the pressure within the corporate world, the ALP, his own government and the CFMEU, he will forfeit his claim to the values inherent in the social democratic tradition which he says forms the basis of his political beliefs. He will have abandoned the values which he has said “gives social democrats a rich policy terrain in which to define a role for the state”, functions of the state which “have their origins in the view that the market is designed for human beings, not vice versa”.

The next two weeks will determine the future direction of the Bartlett Government. There is no doubt at all that they will determine whether Tasmania is to begin to move beyond the disastrous Lennon years, or to remain mired there for some time yet.