This article reports on the Wilderness Society shareholder awareness campaign. Twelve environmentalists attended the anuual general meeting of Gunn's Ltd (a Launceston based timber company) to take the board of the company to task over the company's record on clearfelling old growth forests and replacing them with monoculture-Eucalyptus niten tree plantations. Videos were posted out showing the massive destruction continuing in the State under the current right wing Labour party, in government, backed by the even-more-right-wing opposition Liberal party. (Gunns Ltd, btw is the biggest, if not one of the biggest, corporations exploiting native forests in the Southern hemisphere.)
Mr Geoff Law, the Wilderness Society campaign manager said that while the board brushed aside the concerns raised, the action had not been futile.
Gunns Ltd's company chairman complained that protests by the shareholders were not in the commercial interests of the company (no kidding). The managing director, John Gay, said old growth logging would continue in order to sustain the sawlog and veneer industries. I would suggest that the massive clearfelling of native forest across the state is the reason why the sawlog and veneer industry is having difficulty getting supplies.
The usual line was given that the Forest Practices Code entailed careful monitoring and regulation of the industry - despite the fact that hundreds (if not thousands) of citizens across Tasmania continue to complain of the long history and current breaches of the code and the refusal of the Forest Practices Board to ensure that the Code is followed (as weak and watery as the code is).
Gunn's Ltd recorded an after-tax profit for 2001-01 of $17.8 million compared with $8.7 million in 1999-2000. Gunns had acquired Boral's Tasmanian forests and chipping plant in September 2000 and North Forest Products in May 2001. "These acquisitions were funded by a mixture of debt and equity".
Gunns has continued to acquire a multitude of family farms around Tasmania - replacing high-value agricultural production with low-value plantation establishment. The cost of this replacement is not factored into figures that assert some measure of economic contribution to Tasmania (nor is the loss of clean drinking water and soil from repeated whole farm/whole-district pesticide applications etc).
Mr Paisley said that the declining timber and veneer sales had been offset by improvement in profit from pulpwood sales.
The Green Party in Tasmania is pushing for the following: **a commission of inquiry into Forestry Tasmania, the Forest Practices Board and Private Forests Tasmania; **separation of regulatory and commercial functions of Forestry Tasmania; **nomination of the Styx, Tarkine, Southern forests and Great Western Tiers for World Heritage (before it is all logged); **mapping the distribution of wedged-tailed eagles and white goshawks and protect their habitat for logging; **extension of national parks.
Meanwhile Tasmania continues to suffer from increasing unemployment as jobs go in the increasingly rationalised 'forest' industry but also from the ailing tourist industry in particular (less and less to see, the airline debacle and Sep11).
BJR