Alan Ashbarry

The ANZ bank recently released it Forest and Biodiversity Policy as part of its corporate responsibility on the environment.

The bank developed the policy over the last few years in consultation with its customers and stakeholders.

The policy demands that its customers when engaged in the forest industry must meet extensive criteria including independent environmental certification and the protection of high conservation value forest. Forestry must be legal and not be undertaken in World Heritage Areas, National Parks and conservation reserves.

In terms of high conservation values the policy looks at international and national definitions. High conservation value forest is not defined by lobby groups such as the Wilderness Society or by the forest industry but by a fully open and transparent process. In Australian identifying HCV forest has its roots in the 1992 National Forest Policy Statement, defined in what is known as the JANIS criteria, and implemented by the Regional Forest and Community Forest Agreements.

In terms of sustainable practices, ANZ will engage customers involved in large scale forestry activities to advocate credible sustainable forest management (SFM) certification. However, the bank acknowledges it is the customer’s choice on which internationally recognised certification scheme is adopted.

Forest certification schemes provide a way of defining sustainable forest management as well as third party, independent verification that a timber source meets the definition of sustainability. Certification schemes include a mechanism for tracing products from the certified source forest to the end use.

A number of certification schemes operate throughout the world. Operating in Australia are:
• Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
• Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC)

So it’s a bit surprising that our national broadcaster The ABC is running claims from the Australian Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) that ANZ’s new forest policy is too broad. And that “the bank’s new guidelines on providing funding for forestry and timber processing projects lacks detail.”

The FSC in Australia is run by a board of Directors including representatives from Timber Workers for Forests, Timber Communities Australia, The Wilderness Society, Australian Conservation Foundation, Friends of the Earth, Paperlinx, Timbercorp, Integrated Tree Cropping and one independent. It is chaired by Sean Cadman, the National Forest Campaigner of the Wilderness Society.

The other certification scheme is the Australian Forest Standard that is part of the PEFC. Its Board comprises 10 Directors, with representation being four from government, three from the Forestry and Wood Products Sector, one Employee Representative, one General and up to two Independent members, one of whom is the Chair of the company, currently Geoff Gorrie.

In light of these schemes it is difficult to understand the motive of such criticism by the FSC, perhaps it is due the inclusion of a competing scheme by the Bank or perhaps it is due to fact the Wilderness Society is currently targeting the ANZ bank about the Tasmanian Pulp Mill?

In Tasmania, Forestry Tasmania, Gunns Ltd and Forest Enterprises Australia have been externally certified as complying with the international standard for environmental management systems (ISO 14001) and have also been externally certified against the Australian Forestry Standard (AS 4708) rather than the FSC.

Gunns Ltd has received Commonwealth and Tasmanian approval to build a pulp mill to value add woodchips that would other wise be exported from forests covered by the Regional forest Agreement.

Alan Ashbarry
Website: http://www.tasmaniapulpmill.info/home
About: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001252.html

Last year the Tasmanian Parliament and the Australian Government approved the pulp mill for the Tamar Valley.

They did so after the developer, Gunns Limited, published an Integrated Impact Statement comprising 7,500 pages of social, environmental and economic analysis representing a planning investment of more than $11 million and in excess of 350,000 hours of research, study, modeling and reporting.

A report that was debated examined and generated even more studies, reports and media attention.

Yet despite this, the general public throughout Australia is being asked to oppose the mill.

The latest campaign is to rally against the ANZ bank because the pulp mill will “be a disaster for climate change, It will be 80% native forest-based”.

This is despite the IIS and the shed full of additional information showing that the majority of timber used during the mill’s life will be from plantations (64%) and that the reports detail that over 1 million tonnes of CO2 emissions will be saved each year in reduced shipping and the generation of renewable power.

With the passage of time, much of the information is hard to find, so a new web site has been started to look at the claims being made in the Media and to get to the facts behind the headlines. The Web site will link to a range of reports and information on the Mill and Tasmania’s sustainable forest management.

You are invited to bookmark my new web site http://www.tasmaniapulpmill.info/home and visit it regularly as it will be updated frequently. If you have a question or issue that you want more detail, there is a contact section.

Alan Ashbarry
Hobart.

Just when the ALP Leader Kevin Rudd and his Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett AM, MP, are being urged to bury the Ghost of former Environment Minister Graham “Richo” Richardson we see for Liberal leader John Hewson enter the fray.

Rudd and Garrett have been warned that the preference deal stitched up by Richo with the greens came at a huge cost to the Nation including “Two of the most noticeable Labor government pay-offs were the banning of a promising mining project at Coronation Hill, an area located within the boundaries of Kakadu National Park but in reality a patch of rubbishy wasteland, and of a paper pulp mill in southern Tasmania, opposed by a NIMBY coalition including hobby farmers who joined Bob Brown’s burgeoning state Green party temporarily to push their interests:.:

The Australian Article quoted warned that the ALP must not fall into the same trap.

Now on the ABC’s 7.30 report told of how former Liberal leader John Hewson thinks “Turnbull’s mad not to just set up an inquiry that kicks the issue off the election agenda.”

He of course is referring to Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in effect he is urging John Howard’s Liberal Government to do a “Richo” when the ALP “killed off “ the Wesley Vale pulp mil just before the 1990 Federal Election. By doing so according to the Institute of Public Affairs he created sovereign risk and economic hardship in Tasmania.

Let’s hope Minister Turnbull will take notice as the greens will never give their preferences to the Liberal National Party coalition as their state aim for this election is to defeat the Government.

Of course the 7.30 report couldn’t resist the misty vision of the Tamar Valley to portray it as ‘wonderful, beautiful wine growing area, wonderful sort of tourist area, and so on’. They did not show that the proposed mill is to be located in Tasmania’s largest industrial estate.

But perhaps that just par for the course for the National Broadcaster on the 5th of July they claimed the pulp would taint fish (http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200706/r148708_526664.asx) that featured vision of scallops being caught when the ABC was aware the vision was from 1999. That the fact scallops had not been caught in Bass Strait west of Flinders island since then is confirmed in public government /fishing industry reports.

More myths are flying about but will history repeat itself?

Cinders

Tasmanian Pulp Mill assessment process vindicated by the Federal court

The Federal court confirmed today that the Assessment of Tasmania’s proposed pulp mill was fair and reasonable and that the public had ample opportunity to state their views.
A Federal Court judge rejected the claims by the Wilderness Society and a group calling itself Investors for Tasmania’s future and dismissed their application to overturn the Commonwealth assessment process.
The Federal Court was asked to review two decisions made by the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment and Water Resources.
The first decision was to make the mill a controlled action in relation to threatened and migratory species and Commonwealth Marine Waters. The second decision was that the relevant impacts of the proposed action be assessed on preliminary documentation (eg all the documentation created under the failed RPDC process, including the Draft Integrated Impact statement, Peer reviewed reports, Supplementary information and 700 odd public submissions that had been gathered since 2004.)
The Wilderness Society made the following allegations:
• there is no valid referral of the proposal to support either decision;
• in making the first decision, the Minister misconstrued the EPBC Act, failed to take into account for the potential adverse impact of sourcing timber from Tasmanian forests to supply the pulp mill;
• in making the first decision, the Minister failed to consider whether the pulp mill would have or is likely to have a significant impact on the environment on Commonwealth land;
• the Minister misconstrued and/or misapplied the EPBC Act in making the second decision;
• in making the second decision, the Minister denied members of the public interested in the assessment procedural fairness;
• the second decision is invalid because it is affected by apprehended bias in the Minister;
• the second decision involved an improper exercise of power by the Minister; and
• the second decision was manifestly unreasonable.

The Investors appear to have also alleged that the Minister took into account Gunns’ commercial imperatives in making his decision.

The Federal Court rejected all allegations.

This means to me that the Assessment approach and decisions leading to it are valid.
The Judge was satisfied that the Minister acted in accordance with the Law, with fairness and without bias in making his decision on the assessment process that was demonstrably reasonable.

That there is no need to assess the impact of the mill on Tasmanian forests as these and the species of flora and fauna are protected by the Regional Forest Agreement.
That is was entirely appropriate for the Minister not to consider Commonwealth land. In relation to World Heritage Values the green groups did not even raise this as an issue, thus claims to UNESCO that WHA will be impacted are clearly unsubstantiated.
.
Many people in Tasmania have been concerned about the process of assessment since the developer withdrew from the RPDC assessment in February, some 2 years three months after the start of the “18 month” assessment. However much of the challenges raised with the Federal Court would have applied to the RPDC process, in fact one member resigned due to a claim of bias by the Greens.

The decision now means that Tasmania can get on with the assessment process and have a decision by both the Federal Minister and the State Parliament based on the scientific evidence.

Copies of the Federal Court’s Judgment are available here.

Hi Jennifer,

For a second time since the late 1980’s a pulp mill in Tasmania has been delayed by green campaigning. This week we will see if another pulp mill – a value adding, downstream processing, job-creating factory – will also be thrown on the political scrap heap.

If the pulp mill assessment Bill is not approved by Tasmania’s Upper House, it is likely the project will be ‘dead in the water’. If this occurs, will Tasmania’s economy suffer again from the ‘Green Disease’ as described in a 1999 Institute of Public Affairs article by senior Press Gallery journalist David Barnett describing the politics leading to the scrapping of the Wesley Vale Mill.

Since the Wesley Vale Mill’s debacle, a lot has happened in Tasmanian forestry. The Commonwealth and State Governments have negotiated a Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) on the sustainable management of our forests and the Commonwealth published Environmental Guidelines for a Bleached Kraft Pulp mill. Technology has also moved on and improved and the bleaching of the pulp is no longer done by elemental chlorine which previously raised concerns about pollution. Today ECF and TCF are the standard.

In 2002, the 5 year review of the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement confirmed that we have a comprehensive, adequate and representative reserve system, ecological sustainable forest management and opportunities exist for industry development.

In 2003, the Tasmanian Government tasked the ‘Resource Planning and Development Commission’ (RPDC) to update the Commonwealth emission guidelines for pulp mills, this saw new guidelines approved in October 2004.

In December 2004, Gunns proposed a Pulp mill that was declared a Project of State Significance (POSS).

In terms of the small Tasmanian economy it certainly is significant, potentially adding $6.7 billion (+2.5%) to the economy, including an additional $894 million in extra tax revenue between 2008-2030, 3,400 more jobs in the state than if the mill were not constructed and once operational, an average 1,617 more Tasmanian jobs.

However, the assessment process has come to a crisis point following two directions hearings held by the RPDC. These hearings were held after almost two years. There was one year to develop guidelines for an “Integrated Impact Statement”, and another year for the developer to write such an impact statement, time for the public to provide written comment and for the RPDC consultants to undertake independent peer review.

At the first directions hearings the Greens challenged a panel member, Dr Raverty, because he was an employee of a joint venture with CSIRO. They challenged the CSIRO’s TAPM (the air pollution model) and other CSIRO activities including the fact sheet by ENSIS.

This legal challenge resulted in Dr Raverty resigning, leading to the Panel Chairman also resigning, a new panel being appointed and a second directions hearing being held.

At the conclusion of that 2nd preliminary hearing in February no definite date had been given for future optional hearings, and no detailed time line given, only a time span, may be November, maybe next year!

Gunns Limited, the developer, withdrew from the RPDC stating that the assessment process was too long, and was too opened to enable due and proper project management in terms of accessing capital and ordering equipment. They considered that each additional month of delay was costing $10 million.

In order to salvage the project the Tasmanian Government has introduced a Bill that will see the assessment process finalized by an expert consultant, with a definite time table of assessment. The consultant’s report will be submitted to Parliament by 31 August 2006. Then both Houses of Parliament must consider the report and approve/ reject the project.

The Bill requires the project to be assessed against the emission guidelines approved in 2004.

A casual glance at Tasmanian media will confirm that this situation has created literally hundreds of news stories in Tasmania with private conversations being reported, speculation of conspiracy, cherry picking reports and documents, and so called independent experts offering their opinions.

The Lower House approved the Bill with 21 of the 25 members supporting it. Today it is debated in the State’s Upper House, the Legislative Council.

Cheers, Cinders

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Cinders also provided me with a link to a letter from Rodney Stagg, Retired bushman and log truck owner, sent to the RPDC on 30th August, click here: http://www.rpdc.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/69061/11_Rodney_Stagg.pdf