Greens Ministers In A Permanent Spin Cycle

In April 2010 McKim and O'Connor said they would 'absent themselves from cabinet votes on issues such as forestry'. Instead Nick McKim selects two near adolescent conservationists, Oosting and Pullinger to act as proxies in what is now known as the SoP (statement of principles agreement) . They are tasked with negotiating the restructuring of the entire Tasmanian timber industry, even though neither has any experience or qualifications in forestry, and both work for tax-exempt charities. The Greens actually passed-over people that had qualifications in order to choose Oosting and Pullinger. In the meantime Tasmania's real forest minister Bryan Green is given a long vacation from forestry while rank amateurs determine forward planning in his portfolio. Naturally, we continue to pay him while the charities do his work. If you think this is bizarre we are only scratching the surface. Greens 'boundary rider' and Telstra board member Geoffrey Cousins announces the results of the SoP agreement before the talks even start. He says the environmentalists will have to accept Gunns pulp mill to save old forests. Gunns confirms this by publishing the logos of the environmental charities on their pulp mill web site in June 2010. After howls of outrage from Tasmania's Tamar Valley, who by now feel they have been taken hostage by the SoP, the logos are removed. After the final draft is leaked by the environmentalists, who accuse the logging industry of leaking it, the principles go public. In it Gunns pulp mill becomes 'a' pulp mill, but it retains a single 'proponent' and like the Tamar Valley pulp mill it is plantation-based. Anti-pulp mill groups smell a rat, but by now they have been divided by so called 'conservationists' and ENGO's. Many Greens members resign in disgust. This 'cattle trading' is not Greens policy. Swapping one area of Tasmania to save another is not ethical and could never become a policy. Moving to monoculture tree plantations breaches the Greens charter in the area of 'biodiversity'. In the heady rush to achieve something, ethical constraints are discarded. Wilderness Society negotiator Oosting quickly disappears, but only after the SoP has been signed by all parties. All the while the Wilderness Society continues to solicit donations to oppose Gunns pulp mill. Eventually a 'facilitator' Bill Kelty, announces that Geoffrey Cousins had been right all along and the environmentalists will have to agree to Gunns pulp mill to save the remaining Tasmanian forests. Nick McKim quickly announces that Kelty got it wrong and the SoP should go on indefinitely. He favors throwing the pulp mill carcass back into an eternal spin cycle and 're-assessing' it yet again. Not bad for a guy that chose to absent himself from forestry discussions within his own cabinet. What the Greens have achieved here is revealing. They have supported the taking of environmental 'hostages' to be used to leverage outcomes elsewhere, and they have agreed to environmental threats and intimidation by the logging industry in order to save old forests. The Greens have also developed 'de facto policy' that they robotically implement. They now favor a 'two speed ecosphere' of ecological value and ecological degradation as their forest policy. Of course McKim is on record as opposing Gunns pulp mill but his actions speak a totally different language. Rather than negotiating these issues within his own government and cabinet, McKim and O'Connor have externalised their dysfunctional cabinet onto the Tasmanian community. This has become a disaster, with McKim set to either destroy the Wilderness Society or derail the SoP agreement. We pay government ministers to fix these problems, not an endless array of outsourced entities with no accountability to the Tasmanian people.