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Thursday, 30 August 2007

Testing the Nerve of Gunns

The Tasmanian timber company Gunns bluffed its State Government in to abandoning an independent public enquiry in to the environmental impacts of its planned pulp mill on the grounds that the cost of waiting for the completion of the process was too great. Find a shorter procedure or the deal is off is how the company put it and Premier Paul Lennon acquiesced. He settled on a report by a consultant and a vote of Parliament to hurry things along.

It looks like we will now learn whether Gunns was bluffing or fair dinkum about its threat. While the Tasmanian Parliament today voted for the mill to go ahead the Federal Government is now stalling. The initial public enquiry was designed to fulfil requirements of both the State and Federal laws but when Premier Lennon changed the rules the Federal Minister for the Environment, Malcolm Turnbull, was forced to make his own enquiries.

That did not appear to concern the company. The presence of Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz as Federal Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation, must have reassured them that nothing would go wrong in Canberra . That certainly seemed to be the case when Minister Turnbull on 19 August announced the initial recommendations from his Department which would allow the mill to be built on the proposed Tamar Valley site. Mr Turnbull, after a little point scoring about the inadequacy of the Tasmanian evaluation, noted that only a small number of the environmental issues associated with the proposed mill came under Commonwealth jurisdiction.

Under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act), Mr Turnbull could have confirmed the departmental recommendations but he chose to publish what had been recommended and to provide the public with an opportunity to comment. He also undertook to receive advice from the Chief Scientist of Australia , Dr Jim Peacock AC, FAA, FRS, FTSE, FAIAST, who would assemble a panel of scientists to provide independent advice on the matter. Mr Turnbull announced that there were 10 days in which interested people could make a comment before he considered all the advice and announced a decision.

The impression left by Mr Turnbull was that the process would not take much longer than that being conducted in parallel through the State Parliament. Rather pointedly he said: "Assessment processes of this kind must be thorough, but they cannot be interminable. Decisions have to be made."

In the 10 days since the initial announcement of the Commonwealth's position, the definition of "interminable" has changed somewhat. The highly publicised action of the Prime Ministerial appointee to the Telstra Board, Geoffrey Cousins, to criticise Mr Turnbull's ministerial actions in his local newspaper has resulted in a decision to take more time before coming to a conclusion.

I wrote on the Owl website eight days ago that the Prime Minister's refusal "to back Mr Turnbull in his very public spat with Mr Cousins over whether the minister's approval has followed proper processes . looks to me very much like a signal that Mr Howard would like the Chief Government Scientist to find a reason or two why further inquiries are needed before any stamp of approval is given to a pulp mill after the election rather than before it."

That certainly now looks to be the case and I see no need to change the second prediction from that Crikey article: "Such a delay would surely test the strength of the Gunns' convictions as they were adamant that any slowing down of the process would see them abandon the pulp mill altogether."