RESIDENTS of the Tamar valley: WELCOME.
We live in one of the most beautiful and prosperous regions in Australia. Do you think it is unreasonable that we would want to keep it that way?
Tonight you will hear from many aggrieved residents of the Tamar. Why are we aggrieved? Because the impacts of the proposed pulp mill on our businesses, food production, livelihoods, property prices, quality of life, health have been deliberately overlooked, excluded from consideration. The Tamar region has been set up to be the sacrifice zone.
But the situation is much worse than that. The sacrifice zone is not restricted to the Tamar and its 100,000 people. It extends into Bass Strait where the Bass Strait fishery could be wiped out. Who would want to catch, buy, let alone eat fish that is contaminated or perceived to be contaminated. Would you?
And it gets even worse. The sacrifice zone extends to all the farmland of Tasmania, especially the farmland in the north of the state. The area of plantations required to feed this pulp mill, one of the biggest modern pulp mills in the world, will gobble up our farmland. Tasmania will have to sacrifice food production for tree plantations: perhaps all our food production if this dumb project is allowed to run its course. That is not a fair exchange. That is suicide. You cannot eat trees. Tasmania produces 70% of all Australia’s processed vegetables. Already more than 20% of our farms have gone under trees. The pulp mill, if it were to last a hundred years as pulp mills do, requires just about all of our farmland.
What do I mean by deliberately overlooked, excluded from consideration? Take a look at the chart that is pinned up around the hall. The chart was produced by complex systems consultants Paul Wilson and Mike Bolan, to whom this community is deeply indebted. It has taken thousands of hours of work to research and produce. ( The Experts )
Broadly speaking this is a map of all the inputs and outputs of the proposed mill presented as gains and losses. Gains are shown in green. Losses are shown in red. The losses far outweigh the gains. An indicative costing of this imbalance means that for every dollar the State Govn’t and Gunns say this proposed pulp mill will make, for someone, Tasmanians will lose at least three dollars through losses to food production, fishing, brand damage, wine, tourism, proper forestry, property values etc. The pulp mill, we are told, will generate $6.7 billion over 30 years. In that time Tasmania will lose something in the order of $20 billion. And that’s not counting the loss of our small and not so small country towns, which will disappear off the map like Preolenna has done. As plantations consume the farms, the countryside is depopulated and the flow of money coming into the towns dries up. North-east Tasmania will end up being a depopulated wasteland.
Let me illustrate what being excluded from consideration looks like. The section of the whole picture the RPDC was charged to look at was just under 30%. We thought that was bad. Now lets look at the fast track assessment by SWECO PIC, the you know, that foreign company Gunns decided our govn’t should sub-contract our planning processes out to, so that Gunns could get the result they got us to pay for. Is it any wonder we are unenthusiastic? Less than 8% was looked at by SWECO PIC, the ‘fast track’ assessment!
But wait. There’s more. I should say less. I have in my hand the West Tamar Council submission to the RPDC. It addresses the inadequacy of some of the roads in the municipality and what needs to be done to make them better able to cope with the increased volume of trucks the proposed pulp mill will generate. Quite reasonable as far as it goes, which is not very far. About 2 – 3% of the whole picture. If I was marking this as an essay (I have marked tens of thousands in my time) I would probably give it 3 or 4 out of 20. And the reason: Does not address the full topic, only a small part of it. By way of an aside and this a question to the West Tamar Council. “How well have your concerns, represented in this submission to the RPDC, been addressed by the fast track process?” Not at all is my guess. Another question: “What have you done about it?”
What follows is the topic that should have been addressed in the Council’s original submission to the RPDC. Let me frame an essay topic in the words of Section 20 of the Local Government Act.
ESSAY TOPIC “The Local Government Act requires you to provide for the health, safety and welfare of the community, to represent and promote the interests of the community and provide for the peace, order and good government of the municipal area. In your submission to the RPDC please address all these areas in relation to the proposed pulp mill, examining, in particular, inadequacies in the proponent’s Integrated Impact Statement”. That is what the residents of the West Tamar wanted you to do but you failed them.
You did not do that. But we did, the community did, unresourced and at our own expense. We visited pulp mills in New Zealand, Germany, Chile. We did not receive a brass razoo to do so. We weren’t schmoozed by Gunns and we ere able to see precisely what pulp mills are all about. We read the IIS – it was never going to be a best seller. We sought advice from pulp mill scientists. We organized visits and lectures by scientists. We engaged consultants. We researched pulp mills and the damage done to communities all round the world. Conclusion: pulp mills cause trouble wherever they go and the Tamar Valley is emphatically not a place to locate a pulp mill. Nowhere in Australia would be more inappropriate except perhaps the MCG.
WE BECAME INFORMED. Never in Tasmania has there been such a gap between a well informed public, such as here on this basketball court, and an ignorant polity as we have now. When mayor Barry Easther accused the majority of electors of being misinformed following our majority vote against the pulp mill in the elector’s poll of 2005, a result confirmed state wide in subsequent polling, we were insulted. We are here tonight because of you, Mr. Easther. Your actions have created this situation.
Now its time for accountability. Let me quote once again the Local Government Act. “In performing its functions, a council is to consult, involve and be accountable to the community”. Councillors, this is your lesson on what being a representative of the people means. The relationship of elected representatives to the people who elect them is the same as that between employer and employee. It is the public which employs you to be its servants. Power is in the hands of the people not the representatives. Councillors and politicians, you are not elected and paid to represent the interests of any other entity but the people. Councillors, you serve neither premier nor influential businessman, neither vested interest nor idealogy. Councillors, you serve the people. So it is extremely gratifying to see here tonight political representatives who listen to the people and attempt to represent the best interests of the communities they serve. I welcome Kim Booth, Tim Morris, Kerry Finch and the mayor of Flinders Island, Terence Klug to this meeting. Ben Quinn the Liberal candidate for Lyons is also present and they may be others. How would you know because they may be in other room or locked outside.
Here is an example of how out of touch with the people of this municipality the West Tamar Council really is. Recently Peter Kearney, deputy mayor, put the motion that the Council express its extreme concern about the future of the tourist industry in the Tamar Valley if the pulp mill is approved. Only Peter Kearney and Laurie Leaver voted for the motion. The remainder of the councillors opposed the motion. Let me ask you a question: Is that an acceptable response from your council?
Is it too much to expect this Council to make a stand on issues of planning and due process? Is it too much to expect this Council to demand a return to a full and independent assessment of the pulp mill project, a return to due process, to public consultation and the provision of information that has been excluded from consideration?
Yes it is. Council is not up to the job. It is out of its depth. It is sleep walking towards disaster and is about to go over the cliff.
Most of the West Tamar councillors exist on an island of delusion surrounded by a sea of hostility and disaffection. The West Tamar councillors are not alone on that island – the majority of our elected representatives are there with them. The sea of hostility is composed of the people of Tasmania who are resolved not to have this pulp mill. If it means civil unrest on a scale never before seen on this island then that is the way it will be and it will be like that because our elected representatives have failed to do the job for which they are paid. They have abandoned the people and the people will now abandon them. I give notice of a motion of no confidence in this Council. All we can hope from the majority of the Councillors is that they go wandering off into the night and hand over to people who know what they are doing and are willing to do the job for which they are paid.
