Many in despair at a land ravaged in the name of wealth for a few
Sydney Morning Herald March 15 2004
The notion of a government for the people is at stake along with Tasmania's forests, writes Martin Flanagan.
In Tasmania in the 1930s, a Labor-inspired vision called hydro-industrialisation emerged, promising employment into the future. Tasmania had wild rivers and lots of rain. Hydro-industrialisation meant damming the rivers and luring heavy industry to the state with the promise of cheap power.
By the early 1980s, aggressive pursuit of this policy by both Labor and Liberal governments had led to escalating public debt and government secrecy. Industry was abandoning the island, and there was growing doubt about the need for new dams.
In principle, if not in size, the coalition of interests that gathered behind hydro-industrialisation - major parties, big business, the unions and the local media - were the same as those behind the American armaments industry.
The difference was that Tasmania is not a sovereign state. The Franklin River was saved because it became a national issue.
By 1989, a Green-Labor alliance won government. Edmund Rouse, a media magnate and director of a Launceston timber company called Gunns, sought to bring down the government through the attempted bribing of a Labor parliamentarian. Rouse got two years in jail. A royal commission found that the conduct of the premier, Robin Gray, and a Rouse associate, David McQuestin, had not been unlawful, but described McQuestin's conduct as "highly improper" and Gray's as "grossly so". Both are now directors of Gunns, the world's biggest exporter of hardwood woodchip.
In the late '90s, after the Greens held the balance of power in the state legislature through an alliance with Labor, the cry went up that the state had become ungovernable. A deal was struck by the Labor and Liberal parties that saw the existing electoral system, which protected the place of minority parties, radically altered. All but one of the Greens duly lost their seats. It is after the removal of the Greens from the balance of power that the explosion in the clear-felling of old-growth forests for woodchip began. In the same period, Gunns' fortunes have boomed.
Tasmania now has a Labor Government headed by a former unionist, Paul Lennon, who is open about his close relationship with Gunns, particularly its CEO and a major private shareholder, John Gay. The Liberal Opposition Leader, Rene Hidding, once worked for Gunns.
Once again, government, the unions, big business and an acquiescent local media are in agreement. Three years ago, a report based on consultations with the Tasmanian community and initially sponsored by the state government found that Tasmanians were overwhelmingly against further logging of the island's old-growth forests. But neither of the major parties reflect their beliefs.
Meanwhile, Gunns' phenomenal economic performance has attracted the attention of national investors such as the Commonwealth Bank, pushing the company share price ever higher. The result is state-endorsed turbocharged capitalism which is ritually justified on the grounds of employment. However, one of the numerous organisations lining up against the Government, Timber Workers for Forests, claims the number of people actually involved in old-growth logging - as distinct from the rest of the forestry industry which employs the much-quoted figure of 4000 - is only 320.
Hard information about what is going on in the Tasmanian forests is very difficult to get. But there are some things we can know for sure. I grew up for five years in the west coast town of Rosebery. The only road north, to Burnie, took two hours by car, much of which was spent passing through native forests. Two years ago I drove from Burnie to Rosebery. The forests, and the mystery of their dark, disordered unity, were largely gone. Instead, for kilometre after kilometre, there were monocultural tree plantations. The land had been scalped, its animals poisoned. Great patches like this are appearing around the island.
You don't have to be a Green to be opposed to what is happening in Tasmania. This is an issue of good government. Within Tasmania, there now appears to be no mechanism balancing the public interest against the ravenous appetite of a company enjoying unprecedented wealth and power, much of which derives from publicly owned wildlands.
The blindness involved in destroying old-growth forests for woodchip is no different from the blindness that destroyed the thylacine, a program which was also endorsed by the government of the day and justified on commercial grounds. The result is a sense of loss for anyone who cares about Australia and what is unique in its heritage. As with the Franklin River, what is happening in Tasmania is now a matter of grave national concern.
In Sunshine or in Shadow, Martin Flanagan's book about growing up in Tasmania, was published by Picador in 2002.