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Description
The Labor Government's annus horribilis of the previous year continued unabated in the first six months of 2007 but much of this was self-inflicted, seemingly by an exaggerated fear of the ghost of the 1989 Wesley Vale pulp mill controversy. Premier Paul Lennon committed his personal standing as well as that of his party to ensuring that the kraft pulp mill proposed by the Gunns Corporation did not go the way of the failed Wesley Vale proposal. The matter dominated the entire period under review. Although the Gunns' pulp mill issue towered over the media landscape it was scarcely the only source of difficulty for the government. Other subjects of political debate included the health system, education reform, the state budget and the problems of an under-powered parliament unable to restrain an over-dominant executive.
The RPDC Assessment Collapses
The building crescendo of criticism over Gunns' proposal for a kraft pulp mill in the Tamar Valley just north of Launceston was fed constant energy in the period under review. The first significant energy boost to the issue came in early January with the announcement that Julian Green, Chair of the Resource Planning and Development Commission (RPDC), would follow fellow RPDC pulp mill assessment panel member Warwick Raverty who resigned from the panel several weeks earlier. Both received advice from the state's Solicitor-General, Bill Bale, that the actions of the government's own taskforce promoting the mill had created a real possibility of apprehended bias (Sunday Tasmanian, 4 February 2007). The sparks from this affair were re-ignited in February when it was claimed that Green had not intended to resign from the RPDC entirely but only from the panel assessing the pulp mill. There were also claims that an $180,000 ex gratia payment was made to Green to ease his departure and ensure his silence (Mercury, 1 February 2007). This assertion exposed an alleged rift between Premier Lennon and Deputy Premier Steve Kons over the payment and an attempt by the Premier to better control leaks through limiting media access to Labor MPs.
For its part, Gunns responded to the two resignations with a publicly expressed threat to scrap the pulp mill proposal at least for Tasmania if it did not get a final decision on its application by the end of June. Ironically, the Gunns' chairman John Gay blamed the RPDC process and the Tasmanian Greens for alleged delays in the project's assessment (Mercury, 10 January 2007). Subsequent information obtained from the RPDC under FOI demonstrated that the only obstacles to meeting the RPDC's timeline for assessment were those originating with Gunns. Nevertheless, the government and the pro-mill lobby maintained Gay's complaint routinely as fact subsequently. Premier Lennon took the threat of scrapping the project sufficiently seriously to make "an emergency dash" the next day to Launceston to persuade Gay that replacing the two RPDC members would not delay... |
More articles from The Australian Journal of Politics and History
Australian capital Territory: January to June 2007.(Political Chronicl..., December 01, 2007
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