Garrett’s approval earns disapproval

By Roger Hanney

In the 14 months since Peter Garrett became Federal Environment Minister, the issue of extended and piecemeal approvals granted to Gunns over their Tamar Valley pulp mill has persisted, frustrating residents, business owners and campaigners for whom some decisive outcome is always just beyond the horizon.

Although Garrett and Labor acolytes have blamed a process inherited from Malcolm Turnbull, Garrett’s latest decision ‘ to authorize construction of a $2.2 billion pulp mill for which Gunns has yet to complete long overdue hydrodynamic modeling ‘ is being discussed as a form of administrative Sudoku.

Amendments to Australian environmental legislation under the Howard government discourage Garrett from acting to protect forests or to prevent industrial activity that will severely impact them. A key aspect of the pulp mill process in which Garrett’s approval is essential is its potential toxic impact on the Commonwealth waters of Bass Strait.

While giving Gunns two more years to submit the necessary modeling for the dispersal of highly toxic and DNA-mutagenic dioxins, Garrett is also locked in an FOI battle with federal Tasmanian Greens senator Christine Milne.

Milne, along with others in the environmental movement, is convinced Garrett is withholding a report specifically because it details likely pollution impacts of the pulp mill.
‘My campaign for the release of the Herzfeld report put the federal minister on notice,’ said Milne, ‘that the community knows Bass Strait does not flush quickly and that the pulp mill would never achieve the dilution and dispersion that would be required.
‘It should not have required a long drawn out FOI battle, which is still ongoing, to force the government’s hand to take a more serious look at the hydro dynamic modeling in the Environment Impact Management Plan.’

Milne asked the key question frustrating campaigners and residents who have already seen the Gunns proposal lead to the setting aside of due process in Tasmania: ‘Why does the federal minister think that in two more years Gunns can prove what they have not been able to prove for the past four”

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, a vastly experienced solicitor, took some heat off Garrett by rejecting claims his management of the approval process lacked legal legitimacy.

Greens leader Bob Brown promptly returned fire, with advice from Bleyer Lawyers that ‘pre-construction, all issues associated with any listed threatened and migratory species must be addressed’.
‘It means that the impact on threatened and migratory species like the Australian Grayling fish, White-bellied Sea-eagle and (because the effluent will flush beyond Bass Strait), the Blue Whale must be completed first. This has not been done,’ Brown said.

A Tasmanian commentator recently likened the entire process, at both state and federal levels, to a steamroller with engine trouble. And a poll commissioned by The Wilderness Society found only 21 per cent of Australians support Garrett’s decision, and 62 per cent oppose it.

With their share price at 30 per cent of its 2007 high, their lead banker ANZ not prepared to coordinate financial support for the project, and a hostile and uncertain legal path ahead, Gunns may have little to thank Garrett for. All he has really done is ensure that if the project ultimately fails, the Labor Party won’t be held responsible by their CFMEU comrades.

But he has done nothing to dissuade those convinced he has swapped principles for power, nor has he dispelled a belief held by near-exhausted Tasmanian campaigners that Gunns’ pulp dream may yet be saved by federal financial assistance.

That confusion, thanks to Garrett’s latest semi-decision, looks set to persist until at least 2011.