Tasmania’s Green Disease DAVID BARNETT Going Green is a great way to end up in the red. A look at the decay of the island State. ASMANIA is chronically ill herself as a national from the Green virus, and figure, and to win a seat wasting away. According to in the Tasmanian Leg- T the Australian Statistician, islative Assembly. Tasmania is the only State or Territory It is also Bob whose population will decline—regardless Hawke, who was Prime of which of the ABS’s three sets of assump- Minister when the tions are used about immigration, fertility Wesley Vale project Photo removed for reasons of copyright and interstate population flows. By the was proposed, and year 2051, Tasmania’s population will be Graham Richardson, down from its present level of 473,000 to Hawke’s environment either (depending on which set you adopt) minister. You should 462,100, 445,700 or 418,500 people. also include Tasma- Perhaps Tasmanians are fortunate that nian Senator Shayne their fertile and pleasant island has be- Murphy, although he come an economic backwater, and a place made his contribution for mainlanders to escape the hustle and as an official of the Construction, Forestry Robin Gray a thermal power station and bustle which goes along with economic and Mining Union (CFMEU). a lump of money to abandon the Franklin activity, the roar of urban traffic which is Tasmania’s unemployment rate is 10.6 project. the consequence of two cars in every ga- per cent, against a national average of 7.5 Gray saw himself as another Charles rage. per cent; despite a decline in population Court, the Western Australian Premier If that is so, Tasmanians, providing as a result of interstate immigration dur- who incited tiffs with Fraser, and profited they can find jobs, should be gratified, ing the year to March of 4,650, or one per from ‘standing up to Canberra’. Court because Tasmania’s fate is mostly, if not cent. picked his issues so that they were storms completely, all their own work. Tasman- There hasn’t been a worthwhile devel- in teacups, not fundamental conflicts ians vote consistently for the Green and opment project in Tasmania for decades. which would inflict real harm on a frater- ALP politicians who have made their Incat, one of the world’s leading boat- nal government. State so quaint. builders, is Tasmanian, but that just hap- Gray’s other role model was the They have just done it again, tipping pened as the result of the enterprise of one Queensland Premier, Sir Johannes Bjelke- out a State Liberal government and dis- man, Robert Clifford, whose success sur- Petersen, whose antipathy to Canberra missing the last two Liberals among their prised everybody. was deep seated. The Franklin was no five members of the House of Representa- The rot began 25 years ago, with the storm in a teacup. tives. flooding of Lake Pedder, in the central Gray had been elected on a develop- The consequence, as Peter Nixon re- Tasmanian highlands, to generate electric- ment programme after the ALP Premier ported early last year in his joint Common- ity. The ALP Premier, Eric Reece—aka Doug Lowe had vacillated for a year. wealth–State Inquiry into the Tasmanian ‘Electric Eric’—who was strongly commit- The Whitlam Government had ac- economy, is that Tasmania has an un- ted to development driven by hydro-elec- cepted the right of the Reece ALP Gov- friendly business environment. tric power, was cheered in the Tasmanian ernment to proceed with the Pedder Nixon told the Prime Minister, John Assembly when he announced that, scheme in the 1970s, but the price had Howard, who commissioned the report in Green opposition notwithstanding, the been high—Lake Pedder contributed to October 1996, and the State Premier, Pedder project would go ahead. Whitlam’s landslide loss in 1975. Tony Rundle, who lost office in Septem- Less than a decade later, a proposal by The Hawke-led ALP was not about to ber 1998, that this unfriendly business the then Hydro-Electric Commission to put economic development ahead of po- environment made it difficult to develop dam the Franklin River, in south-west Tas- litical considerations. It had, as a basic manufacturing industries which would be mania, as the last major project of the strategy, a determination to exploit the viable and competitive on world markets. State’s hydro-electric development pro- concern about the environment which ‘This factor has been associated with gramme, was defeated by Green agitation. had developed—concern helped along by the high levels of sovereign risk associated The issue became symbolic. Greens the highest rate of population growth in with the Tasmanian forestry industry,’ said around Australia took up the cudgels on the developed world, which, ironically, Nixon in his report. behalf of a river they had never seen. The was a basic strategy of the Hawke Gov- ‘Sovereign risk’, in the context of Tas- Coalition government of Prime Minister ernment. mania’s forests, is comprised of Senator Malcolm Fraser, sensing the electoral tide The Franklin became an issue in the Bob Brown and of Christine Milne—who and the strength of conservationist senti- 1983 election campaign which tipped out used the Wesley Vale project to launch ment, offered Tasmania’s Liberal Premier the Fraser Government—a case can be ▲ MARCH 1999 3 made that it was the decisive issue: ing newsprint without the benefit of tariff in the middle of the nation’s best horti- greenies in platypus suits haunted Liberal protection. cultural land, where Christine Milne had and National Party candidates across Aus- Associated Pulp and Paper Mills a farm. tralia. (APPM) operated on Tasmania’s north- As with Pedder and the Franklin, Newly installed as Prime Minister, Bob west coast, producing pulp at Burnie and Wesley Vale became a politico-emotional Hawke forced the cancellation of the paper at Wesley Vale, near Devonport. It battleground, launching Milne on a po- Franklin project by having it listed as a is a remarkable part of Australia, possessed litical career which took her to the Tas- World Heritage area at the United Na- of rich, red, well-watered basalt soil. No- manian Assembly, where she was to re- tions and legislating to enforce the can- where else in Australia is so suitable for main until unseated in September 1998. cellation; legislation ruled (by 4 to 3) con- horticulture. For the ALP government in Canberra, stitutionally valid by the High Court. Burnie had a pulp mill, a paper mill Wesley Vale was another political god- Tasmania got no thermal power sta- and a hardboard mill marketed as send. Hawke appointed Richardson to be tion. It got top-up money to build the King Burnieboard. At Wesley Vale, another environment minister in 1988, not be- and Anthony dams on the West Coast, APPM mill produced white paper. The cause Richo was a famous greenie, but be- which made up 112 megawatts of the 180 plant was antiquated, and the operation cause, as former NSW ALP machine man, megawatts which the Franklin would have survived behind a 25 per cent tariff which he was a famous political operator. supplied at less cost, and an undertaking was already moving down. Hawke and Richardson could not deny that the other 68 megawatts would be fi- In these circumstances, APPM de- that they knew there were playing fast and nanced if there was ever a demand for it. cided on a new mill at Wesley Vale to pro- loose with the livelihoods of the Burnie It can be argued that, from that mo- duce pulp by the kraft process, which uses workforce, as they shifted the environ- ment, Tasmania’s downhill course was set. caustic soda to dissolve lignin. mental requirements on Wesley Vale The ALP was ever mindful that saving a The new Wesley Vale mill was to be a around, in order to wring every last drop Tasmanian tree at the cost of a Tasmanian massive project, involving capital invest- of political capital out of the project. job was worth votes on mainland Aus- ment of $1 billion. APPM brought in a It was just as obvious to then ACTU tralia. A pattern emerged of knuckling un- partner, the Canadian firm Noranda. President Simon Crean, who said at the der to Green pressures, mobilized nation- Wesley Vale was to produce 440,000 time that the company was prepared to ally, to rescue this river or that forest from tonnes of pulp a year on an internation- comply with standards more stringent capitalism. ally competitive basis. There would be than any in the world, and no government Brown made his name campaigning 20,000 tonnes for the Tasmanian mills, could ask for more. against the Franklin. He got 10 years in with 420,000 tonnes being exported. There were other factors at work, as the Tasmanian Assembly as a member for APPM, wholly own by the listed there always are. Robin Gray’s environ- Denison from 1983 to 1993, and has been North Limited, wanted the Wesley Vale ment minister, Peter Hodgman, became elected for six more as a Senator. He was pulp mill as a replacement for its Burnie nervous about the strength of the Green elected as a conservationist, but pursues a pulp mill, which was 50 years old and at push, so that the State government ap- Left agenda. the end of its working life, although they peared ambiguous and uncertain in its sup- It may be difficult for the rest of us to never did say so. They sited it next to their port for APPM.