West Tamar Talk

Wireless Broadband Can Be 50 Times More Expensive Than ADSL

2012-01-18T03:49:00.000-08:00

In rural and regional Australia many people can't get DSL thru the phone line. I won't go into why right now. Their broadband options are satellite, wireless or the NBN. If you exclude the last two because of unavailability or cost of infrastructure they are left with pre or post paid wireless broadband. I have not tested or seen 4G wireless yet but only 3G in my area. The smaller providers are using the Optus network with lower signal strength than Optus and the service is unusable for many country people. I have been told that both Optus and Telstra are being transmitted from the same towers. The fact is the Telstra signal is stronger and customers are more likely to be able to connect in my area of Northern Tasmania to the Telstra network.
TESTING Download speed is pathetic compared to ADSL2. I measure around 3Mb/second for 3G wireless and 15Mb/second for DSL
COST Cost is absolutely outrageous compared to DSL. Telstra pre and post paid charges are identical. For $20 you pay 8 cents per megabyte. Compare that to 0.16 cents per megabyte on the $79.95 Bigpond Liberty plan. Its 50 times more expensive! If you hand-over $150 to Telstra you end-up paying 1.47 cents per megabyte. This is 9 times more expensive than DSL for data.
CONCLUSION With smartphones and iPads it's all about DATA. How can Telstra justify charging 5 times more for wireless data on a $20 plan than on a $150 plan for exactly the same service? Its possible wireless broadband is just a short term cash grab before the smartphone novelty wears off. Mobile broadband is not a competitor to the NBN but it has been pitched as a competitor to DSL for home use. If you have a big bank balance and don't mind getting fleeced then go for it.

Unique Computers Online Store And Faster Wireless Broadband

2011-12-25T04:15:00.000-08:00

Being in local government was not very good for my creativity. I was criticized a lot and didn't have time for the things I like doing. I'm now improving Unique Computers. This is a great place to work and I love bringing the latest and best tech to rural Tassie. Apart from the new online store I have come-up with a way of speeding-up wireless and satellite broadband. In rural areas many people cannot get ADSL through the phoneline. They are too far from the exchange or some have the old Telstra 'pair gain' wiring that was never compatible with data. They are stuck with slow wireless or satellite internet. I know they are slow because I measure them. I have seen wireless download speeds as slow as 0.2 Mb/second compared with ADSL speeds of up to 17Mb/sec. My speed-up uses software and it works well on these connections. I will probably be making the software available for self installers.

I Am No Longer A Councillor At West Tamar Council

2011-10-26T16:38:00.000-07:00

Next in line should anyone resign in the next two years.

I narrowly missed-out on being re-elected to West Tamar Council on October 26. I'm disappointed but on the positive side I am no longer bound by the Local Government Act. Under the act a councillor is not allowed to 'bring the council into disrepute'. Also a councillor cannot act as a spokesperson for the council as this is the job of the mayor. This is an effective way of silencing criticism and covering-up possible corruption. I was also silenced by the Launceston Examiner, so had little opportunity of getting my message out. I am going to make sure that changes. I will be giving a full account of the inner workings of council in due course. The council needs a big reform and the new councillors have NO HOPE of changing anything. I intend to remain politically active in the Tamar Valley.
Cheers
Karl

Gunns Blatantly Lies To The ASX. Anatomy Of The August 18 Release

2011-08-18T05:18:00.000-07:00

On August 18 2011, two weeks into an unnecessary trading halt, Gunns MD Greg L'Estrange blatantly lies to the Australian Stock Exchange. You can find Australia's most dysfunctional market update here. It starts with a lie by company secretary Wayne Chapman. "Please find attached a media release regarding the Triabunna mill sale." Hello? Where in the following two pages does it mention 'Triabunna'? It doesn't. Lie one. "Gunns Limited Managing Director, Mr Greg L’Estrange, today welcomed the Tasmanian Government’s decision to appoint a probity auditor to review Gunns’ contracts but sought assurances that the process would be expedited to end the onerous uncertainty the decision has created." Greg, if this is 'onerous uncertainty' for Gunns then why do you welcome it? This is also a desperate ultimatum for taxpayers cash. "Mr L’Estrange said the transparency that an audit process should bring was welcomed but was concerned with recent comments made about Gunns involvement in the Forest Agreements process." So Greg welcomes transparency does he? Then why did he support an agreement that was totally secret, by invitation only and non transparent? Lie two. "We feel misled. We were asked to take part in a process to end the 30 year conflict over Tasmania’s native forestry,” Mr L’Estrange said." So who asked Gunns to take part in this process? We were told the process was initiated by the 'industry'. Show us the documentation? Lie three. “When we made a decision early in 2010 that we would exit the native forest industry to focus on our plantation strategy, there were two plain choices: sell our businesses as going concerns for material value, or seek to assist in the restructure of the native forest industry through the Forest Principles process,” Lie four because it means a company director has breached the Corporations Act by not acting in the interests of his company? Why is Gunns restructuring an industry they claim to have abandoned? "Gunns decided in good faith to go through what we expected to be a transparent process" Another lie about transparency. Lie five. "Having been at the epicentre of that conflict for many years, we decided that it wasn’t in the best interests of Tasmania to hand the poison chalice to someone else. We could have easily sold those native forest businesses and gotten on with building a pulp mill.” 'Poison chalice'? The Gunns CEO admits his business has been a 'poison chalice' that was too evil to sell to someone else? Then why did he sell a chip mill to Woods and Cameron and then insist it continues to process wood chips? Lie six. Greg L'Estrange hands on the poison chalice. "But we were encouraged by all of the parties to stay in there with the explicit understanding of funding for a smooth transition out of native forestry.” So you stayed in the process because somebody promised you some money? If it was not in writing its probably another lie. “Our position from the start was that we were happy to be party to the process, and we have said from day one that we would stay the course if our employees, contractors and shareholders were fairly compensated.” Your shareholders would be compensated as well? For managing a 'poisoned chalice'? I'm going to call that lie seven. Prove your shareholders were promised money. “We chose to stick with an open, collaborative process and now it appears that we are being punished for that,” he said." Lie eight about the closed and secret agreement.
"Mr L’Estrange urged the Premier and the Government to stick to commitments made, especially in relation to timing." Now L'Estrange admits to a secret agreement with the premier. “When the Inter-Governmental Agreement was announced, Ms Giddings said it would take seven days to resolve the financial outcomes. It has now taken two weeks to reach what is still essentially a non-decision,” So Greg L'Estrange actually thought he would automatically be given millions of taxpayers dollars in 7 days? “We have contractors out there waiting for a decision on this, workers waiting to see if Tasmania is going to be mature enough to manage the restructure of the native forest industry and to develop a world scale plantation business.” There is not one single worker waiting to see how 'mature' Tasmania is. Why would a tiny island have a 'world scale plantation business'? More propaganda from L'Estrange. Mr L’Estrange said he would also like to remind the Government that a decision to exit the native forest industry was directly linked to Gunns’ ability to bring the Bell Bay pulp mill project to a reality. “The pulp mill is the largest single private investment in Tasmania" Lie nine. Many projects in Tasmania have been more costly that the insignificant amount Gunns have spent destroying native vegetation on a vacant block and bribing corrupt politicians. "Tasmania’s global reputation needs a plantation industry, not a continuation of the conflict,” So an Australian state must have a reputation that transcends the rest of the nation does it Greg? "Gunns is giving up over 3,500 kilometres of forest roads, which Gunns has constructed on public land" Why were Gunns building roads on other people's land anyway? "licences for over 210,000 cubic metres of high quality sawlog per annum and two million green metric tonnes of pulp wood per annum. Given this background, to characterise Gunns involvement in this process as a “grab for cash”, as propounded by some participants in the debate, is both misleading and offensive". But Greg, it was you that called it a 'poison chalice'. Now you want your shareholders to profit from it, and you just accused the government of being too slow handing over our money. Your the one who is 'misleading and offensive' Greg L'Estrange. All I can say is get out of Tasmania. Go back to your McMansion at Noosa. We don't want you here.

Forest Peace Deal Meltdown - Multiple Double Signings

2011-06-08T03:26:00.000-07:00

The forest 'Statement of Principles' signed last October contains even more 'double signings'. Terry Edwards of FIAT effectively had two seats in the talks and had two signatures on the final agreement. FIAT (Forest Industry Association of Tasmania) is a member of NAFI. Allan Hansard signed the agreement on behalf of NAFI. Terry got two goes in the talks just like Vica Bayley who can't even leave the talks as reported by national TV because The Wilderness Society is still being represented by Phill Pullinger of ET.
Ken Padgett of the Australian Forest Contractors Association (AFCA) was another double-booking. AFCA is also a member of NAFI so they ended-up with two signatures on the final 'agreement' as well. For some reason Barry Chipman of Timber Communities was at the table but was not allowed to sign the agreement. All this amateurish posturing is easily understood if you consider the only threat to Tasmania's public native forests is from the Tasmanian government itself. The very people that chose the participants and set-up the charade over one year ago.

Forest Peace Deal Found To Be Invalid

2011-06-07T04:41:00.000-07:00

The Tasmanian ‘Statement of Principles’ agreement can no longer be considered a valid document.
The reason is that signatory ‘The Wilderness Society Inc’ signed the agreement twice. ‘The Wilderness Society Inc’ is a member of umbrella organisation ‘Environment Tasmania’. That means TWS were also being represented in the talks by Dr Phil Pullinger, who signed the agreement on their behalf. The list of ET member groups is here: http://www.et.org.au/member-groups
The Wilderness Society were also represented in the talks initially by Paul Oosting, and the document was signed on behalf of TWS Inc by David Mackenzie. That means TWS Inc has effectively signed the document twice. Not only that, but other community organisations such as ‘TAP Into A Better Tasmania’ were excluded from the negotiations, just so TWS could be given two seats at the table. The Wilderness Society cannot leave the talks as has been reported, without also leaving Environment Tasmania. TWS are still being represented in the talks by Phill Pullinger. If this is not the case then why have none of the member groups and general membership been informed that The Wilderness Society is no longer a member of ET? Some of ET’s member groups don’t actually exist or are only made up of just a few people. The Wilderness Society appears to be ET’s largest and most influential member. I am lodging a complaint with the Tasmanian Integrity Commission concerning the role of Nick McKim, Labor-Greens Minister for Education in personally selecting environmental negotiators that could produce what I have concluded is a predetermined outcome to the agreement. Participation in this out-sourced forestry planning should AT LEAST have been advertised. It was not. The Tasmania forest peace deal or Statement of Principles is a fraud.

'The Forest Peace Deal Is Between The Government And Itself'

2011-06-05T22:18:00.000-07:00

'The Forest Peace Deal Is Between The Government And Itself'. Now why would I say that? Consider that all of the 'industry' participants in the forest talks are either customers or contractors of Forestry Tasmania, and that Forestry Tasmania is a government-owned business. That puts most of them in the government corner. That means the only 'threat' to Tasmania's public native forests is from the government itself. Add a couple (literally) of 'environmental' participants, that were selected to represent government political interests such as Labor and the Greens, and they all end-up in the same corner. There simply are no other interests involved. All independent representation and all community representation was excluded. Thats my conclusion, and if you are still reading I'll describe why and how I made it. Gunns once harvested 85% of public native forest tonnage in Tasmania. 18 months ago the Gunns CEO said they were through with native forest harvesting. That came as a shock to all sides of the debate. Under FSC certification they did not even have to go that far. This free-bouncing political football was quickly picked-up by some opportunistic politicians who had just been forced into a marriage of convenience.
They decided they were going to use it to cement this 'match made in heaven' and get some big political points on the board. And all at John Gays expense. The Greens and Labor are effectively the same party in Tasmania at the moment. They have spun this as much as possible but at the end of the day the Greens future is now chained to Labor's future. Its just a little too convenient for the Greens to be in cabinet for the glory but not for the mistakes, and God knows, Labor makes them. So do the Greens. They actually overlap much more than people think. Which Greens minister is an ex-Labor staffer again? Then we have the other Green 'revolving door' between the party and the environment groups. I believe I can produce evidence that the Wilderness Society negotiator and the Environment Tasmania negotiator were being paid from the same account. At least initially. When all the maps were spread-out on Christine Milne's desk it was made very clear that only compliant environmentalists should apply. Definitely no professionals were needed. Thats why there was not a single scientist or professional in this so called peace agreement. In politics there is a saying 'never have an inquiry unless you know the outcome'. In fact, never even ask a question unless you know the answer. Why should we believe this so called 'peace in the forests' agreement would be any different? Look at who was involved? Wasn't Paul Lennon involved? Isn't this the most corrupt industry ever in Tasmania, if not Australia. Nothing has changed with a few Greens in cabinet. Where the money actually goes will be very interesting because it is effectively a Labor-Green Federal handout for a Labor-Green state government, with a lot of self-glorification heaped on top. Think 'this is one for the new believers' and similar grandstanding. Even though its my taxpayer money I no longer care. One of the things that drives me is when I see that people want to desperately shut me up. I'm not lying when I say certain people have done everything they can to suppress what you have just read.

PULL OUT PULLINGER

2011-06-02T17:40:00.000-07:00

Dr Phil Pullinger supposedly represents a few environment groups in the 'forest peace talks'. Only a few because most have withdrawn their support. You see Pullinger signed an agreement allowing Gunns to build a pulp mill in return for saving native forests. In my view this is Pullingers crime against his fellow Tasmanians. Nobody authorised him to perform this duplicitous and treacherous act. The fact is Gunns pulp mill was going to be plantation based anyway, so had nothing to do with native forests. Pullinger went that little bit further and sold-out 100,000 Tamar Valley residents. Pullinger deviously spent a whole year pretending his acceptance of Gunns pulp mill was about some other pulp mill but always failed to name which one. Now we have Tasmania's Premier Lara Giddings in parliament declaring 'the whole statement of principles process is about trying to assist Gunns to get their pulp mill up'. Talks facilitator Bill Kelty said 'it was clearly understood by the signatories they were supporting a pulp mill but there is now only one pulp mill'. It's all on video here. The Wilderness Society has now withdrawn from the talks and that leaves Pullinger and the CFMEU trying to sell Gunns pulp mill to the Liberal Party. How sad can you get? I am also a passionate defender of Tasmanian forests. Thats why my message to Phil Pullinger is 'get out now'. Saving native forests is not about helping Gunns build a pulp mill. Do you seriously want us to believe Sea Shepherd could end Japanese whaling by promoting one big fish-farm? Its just childish nonsense Phil and we all expected so much more from you. Now I believe you are being used again to save Gunns from bankruptcy with taxpayers money. There is one more thing. Why has a doctor of medicine agreed to dump 64,000 tonnes of dioxin-contaminated effluent PER DAY into a Tasmanian fishery? And he calls himself an environmentalist'? Enough is enough.
PULL OUT PULLINGER!

Greens Ministers In A Permanent Spin Cycle

2011-03-25T15:04:00.000-07:00

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.

SHOULD NICK McKIM RESIGN FROM THE CABINET?

2011-03-23T01:18:00.000-07:00

Its seems the Greens cabinet ministers have been compromised by the Labor Party and are now only notionally upholding the beliefs of the Greens.
Maintaining 'stable government' does not mean the Greens must play a role as ministers. All they were expected to do was to not block the budget.
What has really muddied the waters is the 'SoP' agreement to swap a pulp mill for native forests. McKim told us time and time again there were no politicians involved in this 'round table'. Not many, just an ex-premier, ex-ACTU chief and of course Nick McKim. Nick McKim was so uninvolved in the forest agreement that he actually started to channel Bill Kelty at one stage. When Kelty said environmentalists would have to accept Gunns pulp mill in return for saving forests, McKim told us that meant the complete opposite to what Kelty had told a press conference. I'm sick of this splitting hairs by the Greens. They want to be part of a government that they also claim to oppose. This is not translating well on the ground. Its not our problem for failing to trust McKim and O'Connor, but the Greens problem for failing to explain just what they hope to achieve. Tasmania in 2011 is no place for yet more subterfuge and double talk. We have endured decades of lies and corruption. After a record result at the 2010 election, all the Greens could produce was what appeared as 'nepotism' to the community, as a 'married' couple were absorbed by Australia's most corrupt government. Imagine how the Greens would regard partners in a Labor or Liberal cabinet?
On the pulp mill issue McKim is not longer part of the solution but the problem. We have endured too much to be misled by spin doctors and fence sitters.

Burke's Appointment Of Kelty Is Totally Inappropriate

2011-03-02T01:22:00.000-08:00

Tony Burke's appointment of Bill Kelty to act as facilitator of the 'Tasmanian Forests Statement Of Principles' is totally inappropriate, and could easily be a 'conflict of interest'.
Firstly, 'the Statement' has nothing to do with Tony Burke's portfolio as Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. It may sound like it has, but Burke is still overseeing the EPBC act which is the 'environment' part of the portfolio. Thats what he is using to assess Gunns pulp mill. Both Garrett and Turnbull told us they could not act on Tasmania's forests because they were constrained by this act. We were told for decades that logging in Tasmania's forests was 'sustainable'. Is Tony Burke now calling every State and Federal government for decades liars?
In the 'terms of reference' Tony Burke sent to Bill Kelty
(available here) he said "the intent of the Statement is to protect native forests and develop a strong sustainable timber industry in Tasmania'. So why wasn't forestry minister Senator Joe Ludwig driving the appointment? Obviously Ludwig is too close to Kevin Rudd and can't be trusted by the Julia Gillard-Michael O'Connor-Tony Burke constellation.
The really worrying aspect of this appointment is the potential for conflict of interest. After all, Burke was still carrying out the assessment of Gunns pulp mill when he selected Kelty. Within days Kelty was discussing Gunns pulp mill over coffee at Salamanca with Alec Marr. The Statement of Principles defines a single pulp mill with a single proponent. All Tasmanians know there has only been one proposal for six years for this pulp mill. After ten months of working on the 'Statement' the participants are still unable to define what other proposal they could be referring to. Its now on the record that a Minister already pinged for plagiarising from Gunns web site in Parliament, may have breached a critical 'conflict of interest' ethical standard. He should be sacked.

Tasmanian Liberals. The Sound Of One Synapse Firing

2011-02-19T00:19:00.000-08:00

The intellectual vacuum of Tasmanian politics was on display this week when the Libs back-flipped on their agreement to increase the size of parliament. They shrunk parliament down to 25 seats to lock-out The Greens, but that strategy has turned them into political wallflowers. Now they say its too expensive to increase parliament to 35 seats because all the money has been spent propping-up forestry.
They may come back to 35 seats if the economy improves. Du-Uh? The Tasmanian Liberals want to expand or contract the size of parliament depending on the economy? This has got to be one of the most retarded ideas every excreted anywhere within the Westminster System. The 'party room' actually agreed on this crap? Yes they did. So there you have Liberal Thinking at it's dribbling, thumb-sucking best. The variable sized parliament plan.

Gillard And Giddings - Featherbrained Labor Placemats

2011-01-26T14:54:00.000-08:00

Julia Gillard and Lara Giddings are two of a kind. Both have conned the public with some letters behind their names and mouths that work overtime. As for a vision or an actual philosophy? Forget it. Take Gillard? She somehow subscribes to a Fabian-World Government-Zionist philosophy without even realising it. She obediently bombs Afghans in Afghanistan, so she can one day hand the country back to Afghans. She is fighting alongside NATO. Why is Australia even in NATO? Who cares when Gillard is carrying out ethnic cleansing on behalf of Mossad and the CIA? So why is she in Afghanistan? Why is the Queen of England exempt from anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws? Why is the Welsh cross on the Australian flag? Why is our PM a Pom? Who knows, but the last person you would ask would be Julia Gillard. Tasmania's Premier Lara Giddings presides over 400,00 or so residents with the most bloated bureaucracy, the least education, the most unhealthy lives and the lowest standard of living in Australia. Labor heartland. Almost. She needs The Greens to keep her in power, but the dumb blond forgot all that in the heady rush of being sworn in. She immediately embraced the Gunns pulp mill that has spent 7 years not being built, and has removed the human rights of Tasmanians with a law straight out of a fascist dictatorship. A law she voted for twice. For that she was thanked by the gay and lesbian lobby for her human rights record . Duh? (think Barak Obama winning a Nobel peace prize while fighting two wars)
Giddings pulp mill position almost sums-up the depth of her understanding. She is forced to endorse globalisation even though it has crippled her own state, and is driving the most brutal and blatant human rights abuses on the planet today. Workers on $2 a week and child labor, just so baby bonus bogans can buy junk at Kmart 24-7. Julia Gillard and her acolytes keep shoveling coal into the Chinese economic furnace, and are undertaking the most extensive nuclear proliferation program in the earth's history. These people by the virtue of their stupidity are extremely dangerous to the whole human race, let alone Australians. It's 'group-think' with make-up and a hairstyle. A stream of cliches and meaningless slogans. Gillard and Giddings must secretly realise that they are clueless idiots who have demanded too much power for their limited abilities.

2011 The Year Of The Whistleblower

2010-12-24T13:40:00.001-08:00

Its about time Tasmania had another avenue for accountability. To my knowledge, no forestry company has EVER been found to have breached any regulations covering the clearing of land, chemical pollution of rivers, aerial spraying or smoke pollution. If this is the case then they are legally 'untouchable' and somebody knows about it. Lets do something for Tasmania for a change. The email address in the graphic will get the information out and will do so safely.

GUNNS JOINT VENTURE PARTNER IS BOTNIA

2010-12-03T02:06:00.000-08:00

According to a Gunns employee, Gunns 'pulp mill project manager' Timo Piilonen actually works for Finland's Botnia, and not Gunns. Our source told us Piilonen has moved on to Botnias next victim after completing the Fray Bentos mill in Uruguay South America. The involvement of Botnia ties-up the Scandinavian loose ends. All of Botnias six mills were built in partnership with Andritz, whom Gunns has already flagged as the engineering fabricator. Botnia also works in partnership with Jaakko Poyry, and wait for this, Sweco PIC, who carried out the fake 'assessment'. This alone should have the ethical alarm bells ringing. Gunns pulp mill has always included multiple conflicts of interest.
Link. Botnia- Sweco PIC
Link. Botnia-Sweco-Fray Bentos
Link. Botnia-Jaakko Poyry
Link. Botnia-Andritz

BREAKING NEWS. West Tamar Talks allegations of a conflict of interest between Botnia and Sweco PIC appears to have sent Botnia into panic mode. Overnight, all links on their site to Sweco PIC disappeared. Google is still caching links to the pages Botnia removed. Luckily, there are many more pages linking Botnia and Sweco PIC on the web. This shows how corrupt the Finish pulp mill industry is. Could this confirm Botnia as Gunns JVP? If Botnia had nothing to hide, then why try to cover their tracks?
We have exposed the Finish consortium of corruption spanning the globe. It's time to put these bad Scandinavians out of business.

Why I Resigned From The Tasmanian Greens

2010-10-30T04:14:00.000-07:00

Hi ###,
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. My resignation from the TG's was the result of some months of tension between the party and myself. I had a number of issues with the party that were not being addressed. The Greens support for the 'forest agreement' using proxy negotiators, who agreed to a tree plantation dominated Northern Tasmania, and a pulp mill was one. The 'Hobart-centric' party organisation was another. TAP in the Tamar Valley do not support the 'forest agreement' and I am a member. The Green's
position on forestry is now unclear in my view. The party's growth and new political influence are a contributor also. I don't think the party has a coherent policy on globalisation and world trade. This is going to cause real problems. The party now embodies too many contradictory, populist and shallow policies. For example: Why do the Greens help keep a government in power that exports uranium so other countries can generate electricity while opposing the same thing in Australia? Why are the Tasmanian Greens keeping a government in power that has removed some of my democratic rights? (section 11 of the PMAA) My online comments and 'cartoons' was another issue. I got into online disagreements with Peter Whish-Wilson and Adam Burling over Greens forest policy. I was censured for that, but they were not. (to my knowledge). A formal grievance was lodged by convenor Trish Moran. Mainly the grounds were 'statements published online... regarded as an attack on the policies of the Tasmanian Greens.'
The result of that was that I could stay in the party if I agreed to conditions such as:
"While a Greens Councillor Stevens before publishing anything with political content,
Should seek and obtain guidance from Lyons Branch Convenor or other relevant members of the TGP or elected Greens" I decided this was too onerous to comply with and resigned. The grievance resolution mechanism was quite good. I thank Trish Moran for coming up from Hobart for that. A problem with The Wilderness Society and the Greens is the 'revolving door' between the two organisations. More importantly, many now believed the 'wildos' hijack environmental 'causes' to solicit donations. They receive large sums from US 'charities' like the Pew Foundation, who are known to 'steer' environmentalists away from industrial projects (such as oil sand mining in Canada) Some of the TWS funds can be traced to US pulp mills who buy carbon credits from Pew. The reality is nothing like what the grass roots campaigners and supporters think. Due to a 'tribal' mentality they are unable to accept these ideas.
I believe that TWS 'hijacked' the pulp mill cause, and are still soliciting donations to oppose it, although they also support a pulp mill and say one 'is needed'. I believe this is fraudulent. The Tas Greens position is not much better, both supporting and opposing a pulp mill (with conditions) If you look at my published online content you can see why it was a relief for the Greens to see the last of me:
http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/cartoon-article/the-gfits-/
I hope I have cleared-up my reasons for resigning from the party. I'm happy if you distribute this letter.
Cheers
Karl

Have The ENGO's Breached Their 'Not For Profit' Charity Status?

2010-10-01T21:18:00.000-07:00

The Wilderness Society, Environment Tasmania and the Australian Conservation Foundation are negotiating to solve the Tasmanian 'forest wars'. But the talks are not just about wilderness and forests. The leaked draft agreement also covers the processing of timber, as well as a pulp mill. So what do industrial projects have to do with ENGO's? Nothing, in my opinion. This is the equivalent of the RSPCA consulting on the location of a pet food factory. It seems the environmentalists have been captured by the loggers agenda. What other charity, that enjoys a tax exempt, not for profit status, engages in land management, water management, labor hire agreements, industrial lobbying, industrial planning and power station planning, to name just some of the issues they are now consulting on? At least one complaint has been submitted to the ATO. My real concern is that The Wilderness Society continues to solicit donations to fight a pulp mill, while declaring to the media that 'a pulp mill is needed'. Isn't this blatant dishonesty? If anyone in these ENGO's does not understand why the secret forestry deal is a crime against Tasmanians then please read the following paragraph from a Tasmanian resident surrounded by tree plantations:
"We live in fear for our lives. Waiting for the inevitable inferno of explosive flames in this drying hotter climate to burn our houses and our flesh. Wondering when it could be possibly safe to collect rainwater because this thuggish government won’t tell us when they’re not aerial spraying; meanwhile deeply suffering the effects of endocrine disruption in our bodies. I have a pituitary tumor (along with asthma and COPD). Asthma is - linked to endocrine disruption - not just the choking smoke from giant industrial burns."Brenda Rosser on 08/09/10
Thanks for helping to destroy Tasmania you brave 'charities'.

SECRET FOREST DEAL LEAKED DRAFT AGREEMENT IN FULL

2010-09-03T06:59:00.000-07:00

Published Here For The First Time Ever.
Geoffrey Cousins revealed this deal in general terms before the talks had even started. Who do YOU think are the real 'puppet-masters' behind this plan? Why do they want to compensate Australia's most corrupt industry for irreparably damaging Tasmania? Why has an unelected cabal tried to lock-in Gunns pulp mill with its corruption and totalitarian laws?
Below is the whole deal, in full, verified.

FINAL NEGOTIATING DRAFT

TASMANIAN FORESTS STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES

TO LEAD TO AN AGREEMENT

To resolve the conflict over forests in Tasmania, protect native forests, and develop a strong sustainable timber industry.

Parties to the principles;

TCA, CFMEU, NAFI, FIAT, AFCA, TFCA, ET, TWS, ACF, TCSF

Parties to the Principles seek from the State and Federal governments:
* Support for and delivery of all principles in full.
* Interim support for a plan to deliver the principles; and
* Implementation of the Principles through a fully funded package and timeline that maximises benefits and reduces negative impacts;
* Immediate interim assistance for Tasmanian harvest, haulage and silvicultural contractors;
* Determine with industry, guaranteed sustainable quantity and quality of wood supply within3 months, outside of the identified high conservation valued forests, for the period of the negotiations, to provide certainty to the industry, workers and communities.
* Progressive implementations of a moratorium on the logging of high conservation value forests commencing within 30 days ensuring that priority, (ie those in the most advanced stages of planning for harvesting) HCV coupes identified by ENGO's are the first to be addressed. The full moratorium to be completed within 3 months. Any necessity for any proposed variation to this due to unavoidable planning constraints have to be independently verified.
* Provide exit assistance for industry where required; and
* No new entrants into the Tasmanian industry can be accepted or enter into new contractual relationships beyond parties who are currently in contractual relationships with the state while the negotiations are under way.
* Delivery of these Principles will require joint agreement of the parties to time lines and funding.
* The development of an agreed stakeholder led implementation process with a finalised full agreement within 12 months.

PRINCIPLES
General Wood Supply: Provide a sustainable resource supply profile to industry based on an agreed minimum quantity and quality requirements to industry. It will be underpinned by legislation.

Climate Change: Seek funding for improving carbon outcomes as a result of delivering these Principles.

Native Forest Wood Supply: Subject to the provisions of the transition, as legislated, Native Forest entitlement is handed back, it will not be licensed to new players.

HCVF: Immediately protect, maintain and enhance High Conservation Value Forests identified by
ENGO's on public land.

Transition: Transition the commodity forest industry out of public native forests into suitable plantations through a negotiated plan and timeline.

Industry: Create a strong sustainable timber industry including the development of a range of plantation based timber processing facilities including a pulp mill. There will need to be stakeholder consultation and engagement with the proponent, ENGO's and the community.

Speciality Timbers: provide for ongoing speciality timber supply including eucalypt for our high value furniture and craft industries through a negotiated plan and timeline.

Plantations: Support sustainable and socially acceptable plantations, including agreed reforms and new agro-forestry outcomes, including pursuing certification.

Private Forests: Encourage and support, but not mandate, private forest owners to; seek assistance for certification; and protect, maintain and enhance high conservation value forests on their properties.

Communities: Support rural and regional communities, workers, contractors and businesses impacted, through a range of economic development, financial assistance, compensation and retraining measures.

Engagement: Engage and involve the broad Tasmanian community in the development and implementation of a durable solution to the Tasmanian forest conflict.

Tourism: Develop the Tasmanian nature-based tourism industry in line with these Principles.

Planning: Develop a fully funded, independent, scientifically led landscape conservation, restoration and integrated catchment management program, and associated governance and regulatory improvements.

Government: Reform and support government agencies, policies and legislation as necessary for the implementation of an agreement associated with these principles.

Biomass: Only permit plantation forest processing and plantation harvesting residues to be used as biomass for REC's
Note. Agreement was not achieved on biomass fuels at this time. Environment groups oppose the use of all wood based biomass fuels while NAFI supports its use.

Certification: Encourage Forestry Tasmania to achieve Controlled Wood accreditation on delivery of the moratorium and full FSC certification; upon resolution of an FSC National Standard; and once this agreement has been finalised.

Durability: Undertake to ensure all elements of this agreement are fulfilled on a durable basis.

Legislation: Require State and Federal legislation to implement agreed outcomes arising from these Principles, including appropriate review mechanisms, milestones and sanctions.
Signed:
Date:

ARE THE 'SECRET FORESTRY TALKS' ILLEGAL?

2010-08-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

In May, Premier Bartlett convened 'secret forest talks' to investigate his collapsed forest industry. Although not publicly announced, they were given extraordinary powers to restructure the Tasmanian timber industry. What sort of a body did he set-up or did the body set itself up? Is it a Federal or a State body? Is it both? Is it a planning body? Is it a statutory body, and if so under what legislation? Is it an advisory board? Does it advise The Minister or even replace The Minister? Does it advise The Premier or Parliament? Does it have a budget? Does it have a time line? Is a report expected? Is an agreement expected? If so, is it it presented to The Premier or just to the ABC? Will Sue Neales get a copy? Is it really just a think-tank of self-funded amateurs and stakeholders?
Are the participants paid with our taxes? Is it true Eric Abetz took part? Just what is its scope and parameters? Has anybody bothered writing an agenda, synopsis, or closing date? Will a report ever be released? As you can see Premier Bartlett has a lot of explaining to do. Given a pulp mill is a recurring theme, is it not sadistic to further unsettle Tamar Valley residents with an open-ended talk-fest that seems unable to arrive at a conclusion? David Bartlett MUST take responsibility for his actions. It is simply not good enough for him to declare this body at arms length, and then have members of his own department reassure residents they have 'nothing to fear' by text message. This really is pathetic, and shows David Bartlett is a Premier with the training wheels on. Why is Bartlett's Forestry Minister in China while his job is outsourced to unknown participants? Why are these faceless men doing the work of highly paid Ministers and public servants? I believe David Bartlett's real agenda is to assist Gunns achieve FSC certification. Like the secret pipeline corridor, the secret forest talks is just further government assistance for Gunns. I believe David Bartlett has duped The Wilderness Society and others. If there really was 'good faith' in the talks, wouldn't David Bartlett wind-back just one of his draconian laws protecting Gunns? Now, after urging us to trust the talks, The Wilderness Society is imploring us not to believe some of the other participants, who they accuse of leaking the final report. What a joke!

IS BARTLETT TRYING TO DESTROY THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY?

2010-08-19T04:26:00.000-07:00

'Secret Talks' are supposed to be reforming the Tasmanian logging industry.
On May 25, 2010 Bartlett met with Paul Oosting and Phil Pullinger, shortly after dumping his own 'round table' talks. Nick McKim may have selected Pullinger and Oosting. This was a month before the court-ordered Wilderness Society meeting in Adelaide. In May the Wilderness Society was at it's most divided, vulnerable and chaotic. Yet this was when David Bartlett chose to use them to build a pulp mill. Bartlett is still unable to explain why the talks had to be so secret. David Bartlett leads a government that has passed countless laws fire-walling the logging industry from the rest of the community. He has created a 'state within a state'. Rather than dismantle a single legislative component of this web of privilege, injustice and corruption, David Bartlett selects two 'amateurs' with no forestry qualifications to negotiate with those profiting most from the corruption. The fact is, 90% of Australians would be happy with any progress made in saving Tasmania's carbon forests and biodiversity. Bartlett doesn't even need environmentalists to achieve this. He is the one destroying Tasmania after all. The only reason David Bartlett wanted Pullinger and Oosting on board was to provide legitimacy for his real agenda. The very minute this happens is when TWS could implode. TWS is a 'charity' with no mandate for political deals in back rooms with the same people they solicit donations to oppose. For Oosting, negotiating with Gunns about a pulp mill is a conflict of interest, while TWS collects donations to fight it. Now it seems Oosting may not even be in 'The Wilderness Society'. There is actually more than one 'Wilderness Society' entity in Tasmania, and steps have been taken to 'distance' one of these TWS groups from Paul Oosting. David Bartlett has set Oosting and Pullinger up to fail. Three pulp mill outcomes are possible from the secret talks:
Pullinger and Oosting roll-over on the mill and are branded 'traitors'.
The talks collapse.
Gunns gives-up on a Tamar Valley pulp mill and throws away their permits.
If David Bartlett had one shred of 'good will' in his body he would remove just some of the subsidies and legal framework enabling Gunns. Instead he plays a pathetic charade using Environment Tasmania and The Wilderness Society as his scapegoats. Remember, David Bartlett voted twice to remove all legal rights of Tasmanians to complain about Gunns pulp mill. Now he pretends to be looking for a 'solution'. Would Bartlett split the environment movement to help Gunns? Of course, Tasmanian Labor is just as corrupt as it ever was.

WHY THE SECRET FOREST TREATY WILL FAIL

2010-08-13T02:21:00.000-07:00

After decades of brutal Federal involvement in the rape of Tasmania's forests, the Federal Government suddenly relinquishes 'tree control', and outsources forest planning to a group of faceless, unelected people, many of whom don't even live in Tasmania. If you think this situation is bizarre you are right. Whole dynasties of Canberra ministers unleashed RFA's and 2020 Visions on helpless 600 year old trees in a massive display of bloody-minded ecocide resembling the Iraq search for WMD's. Suddenly, just as the 'Global Financial Crisis' re-aligned the Japanese wood chip market, hating trees became unfashionable. Another faceless ghost whispered that these crimes could be reversed, but only behind closed doors by people with no names. Somebody somewhere assembled the 'negotiators', and after valiantly saving Gunns from self-destruction, Geoffrey Cousins was tasked with announcing the outcome before the talks had even started. The 'negotiators' were separated into two camps, tree haters and tree lovers. Neither group had any legislative power, and neither had been elected by the public, yet their job was to 'un-write' all laws passed by Federally elected politicians involving Tasmania and forests. To add to the absurdity, the 'tree lovers' had nothing to bargain with, and only the 'tree haters' had anything to trade. Anybody questioning the stupidity was attacked by psychopaths on day release. Being an elected member of the Tasmanian parliament meant nothing in the new rubber room. As if to mirror Geoffrey Cousins actual synaptic discharges, the deal came down to 'pulp mill in return for old forests'. Eventually all the 'tree lovers' agreed, and the 'decision' was dispatched to Queen Julia, just in case she wanted to play with it before August 21. As a Tamar Valley resident, I have a message to the suburban conservationists of Hobart and Canberra. You are the NIMBY's because the stench and carcinogenic shit is in my back yard, not yours. As a result, you will be learning a valuable life lesson in how not to treat your fellow Australians.

Mining - Subsidised At One End, Taxed At The Other.

2010-05-21T17:15:00.000-07:00

Overall, mining companies are given big subsidies in Australia. Most of these are state-based subsidies but there are Federally-based ones as well, such as the diesel fuel rebate. The idea has been that removing our mineral wealth is a good thing, and must be encouraged to stimulate 'development'. In Tasmania I estimate that half of the island's hydro electricity generating capacity goes to metal refining. One company alone (RioTinto-Alcan) is using a quarter of Tasmania's electricity. There are two other big electro-metallurgists on the island. In Queensland the huge drag lines in open-cut coal mines are electric. This electricity is supplied at a fraction of the price of domestic power, and in Tasmania has the potential to bankrupt the state during a prolonged drought. Assuming Rudd's 'super profits mining tax' is applied to mineral refining as well as mining, then Rudd is taxing profits derived in part from subsidies. My contention is that taken as a whole, Rudd's tax regime will become the equivalent of the financial derivatives market. We will see hybrid taxation 'products' growing 'feed lot' industries that the government can fatten and then skim-off the subsidised profits.

If You Don't Like Trees Then Get Out of Tasmania

2010-05-14T05:42:00.000-07:00

FACT: There was a time in the earth's geological history when there were NO PLANTS AT ALL.
Thats right. The earth was once rocky and bare and supported NO LIFE WHATSOEVER. Plants colonised the earth from the oceans, rising-up from the inter-tidal zones as primitive mosses and lichens over a mind-numbing expanse of time. Can you imagine 450 million years? That's 448 million years before the first primitive humans. Religion does not even approach time scales like this. Sometimes I come across people in Tasmania who seem to resent trees. That's like going to live in the Amazon and complaining about jungle. If you don't like it then go back to where you came. Tasmania is a realm of trees. Big trees that are the tallest flowering hardwoods on earth. These trees symbolise much to those who have an understanding of our world. They are an apex of evolution and part of the creative process of the universe. FACT: Rocks are created by sedimentation and volcanism. Consider the clearing of ancient forests, often on steep slopes that has happened in Tasmania. Massive amounts of silt is created and this becomes sedimentary rock. Rock that is man made. This rock exerts pressure on the earths crustal plates in new areas. Eventually we have a geologically unstable planet again, with earthquakes and new fault lines. Humans are actually undoing the creative and stabilising work of nature over millenia. Next time you are in a church, think about the evil that our culture studiously ignores. Think about how they have stood by while the earth was raped, pillaged and raped again. Think about the oath that all doctors serve under. 'Do no harm'.
They apply this to a sick human being but not to a human's life support system. Hello? Our 'civilisation' has been attacking the very processes that created humans in the first place. We are not just dealing with greed and ignorance here. We are dealing with a systematic and insidious illness of thought that affects our entire culture. They have succeeded in building a belief system based on self harm.
We now see change bought about by humans motivated by real knowledge. The infinite power of time and the creative natural forces will always triumph over the stupid and shallow thinkers.

Gunns Does Not Deny They Are Corrupt

2010-02-03T02:56:00.000-08:00

The issue of who wrote the 'Pulp Mill Assessment Act 2007' has been going on since...well, 2007. Apparently there are people in Tasmania who know that Gunns own lawyers helped draft legislation to assess their pulp mill project. Today Australia's 83 year old 'gardening guru' told the ABC, 'Cundall says the proof that Gunns helped write the legislation is that they have not denied it.' This was followed by 'Gunns is not commenting on Cundall's claim that the company used corrupt means to get its pulp mill approved'. So what do you make of that? That is as close as an admission of corrupt behaviour that you are ever likely to get in my opinion. So where do the 'corrupt' Tasmanian politicians stand on this? Apparently in Tasmania if you are a major employer or even just a provider of jobs, then you get privelliges such as being able to write your own legislation. In my book that is the same as saying if you weigh over 120 kgs then you can rape women. It's simply ludicrous that half-wits like this can pretend to 'govern'.
From the ABC HERE.

Gunns, The 'Tree Plantation Wedge' And Why The Wood Supply Agreement Stays

2010-01-14T12:46:00.000-08:00

Gunns have now publicly admitted that the land clearing that they have been growing fat on for decades is no longer tolerated. Not by the overseas banks, joint venture partners or anybody that matters to their bottom line. Gunns bet the company on a massive project that they could never afford to begin with. Pulling out of the pulp mill now means losing the company. In desperation they have contradicted everything they have ever said, and announced '100 percent plantation from start-up' in an ASX release. Problem. Tasmania does not have enough plantation output to supply even half of the mills input. Seems like Gunns got the pulp mill location on the wrong side of Bass Strait. To make it economical they need more plantations in Tasmania. As if by magic, 'environment' groups appear calling for tree plantations to end logging ancient forests. An important contract with Forestry Tasmania for millions of tonnes of old forest is retained as a threat to the unconverted. Suddenly everybody is singing from the same song sheet. Gunns simply activated their environmental 'sleepers' to achieve this outcome.
With an election looming, the population is wondering who is left in the debate? It must be over.
In the meantime those critical last plantations go in and the Tamar Valley mill site becomes viable again. You can thank a lot of boutique environmentalists for not noticing they had been quietly compromised by the logging industry.

The Entire Tasmanian Plantation Harvest Cannot Supply Half Of Gunns Pulp Mill Feedstock

2010-01-11T21:17:00.000-08:00

PULP MILL AS PUNISHMENT OR EXECUTIVES WITHOUT MATHS?
This is hard to believe. The entire annual Tasmanian plantation harvest can supply LESS THAN HALF OF THE FEEDSTOCK FOR GUNNS PROPOSED PULP MILL. So why are Gunns locating their pulp mill further away from the world pulp market than most of the mills feedstock? Gunns have been growing plantations for over 100 years, yet have never been able to supply their own requirements.
Tasmania's ENTIRE private plantation harvest in 07-08 was 1.7 million tonnes. Forestry Tasmania's 2008 Annual Report put their plantation output at another 177,000 tonnes. Total plantation production in 2008 was 1.87 million tonnes. A lot of wood chips yes, but not even half enough for a mill designed to eat 4.4 million tonnes a year.
THE BREAKDOWN Gunns proposed mill normal production output is 1.1 million tonnes of pulp (4 tonnes of chips make 1 tonne of pulp)
To produce this Gunns needs 4.4 million tonnes of chips. Sadly for Gunns, the whole island of Tasmania can supply less than half of this tonnage. With this company a certain element of misinformation must always be factored in, but on the figures available, and by their own statements they are being run by people who would think manufacturing Viagra on Macquarie Island is a commercially sound proposition. It seems obvious that as one of the worlds great grain exporters, Australia should be making paper from wheat chaff (the by-product of wheat grain), not trees.

David Bartlett Affected By Something In The Water

2010-01-06T04:39:00.000-08:00

Tas premier Bartlett has insulted the intelligence of Tasmania. First he accused Greens opposition leader Nick McKim of looking like him, then he called McKim a 'wolf in sheep's clothes'.
So Bartlett sees himself as a wolf in sheep's clothes eh? Today Gunns Ltd 'blinked' and bubbered to the media that their 5 year old fantasy pulp mill will run on '100% plantation' timber from Great Southern's failed ponzi schemes in WA, SA and Victoria. So Gunns septagenarians want to IMPORT wood chips into Tasmania just to compete at the bottom end of the world pulp market with Brazil and Vietnam? That plantation resource is worth at least $30 a tonne BEFORE they start shuttling it back and forth across Bass Strait. Gunns runs almost entirely on subsidies, so their big challenge now is to get the Australian taxpayer to buy the land, grow the trees and then ship them to Tasmania, so Gunns can process them and ship them back over to Asia and sell them for twice as much as Vietnamese pulp to the Chinese. DuH! This is Gunns best thinking, and it's suckered David Bartlett, who now says this is 'worlds best practice', even though he was saying what they were doing before was 'worlds best practice'.
Bartletts minions have signed a 20 year contract to supply NATIVE FOREST to the '100% plantation based' mill. Duh!, DuH! So why don't Gunns 3 chip mills also operate on plantation wood? Tasmanians are being fed a pack of lies as usual. Wake-up David Bartlett. We are not THAT DUMB in Tasmania.

Building Mountains Of Woodchips Is Work?

2009-12-25T00:39:00.000-08:00

As 2009 draws to a close, the Tasmanian wood chip industry is in a state of chaos. Global demand has slumped, yet conservationists are being blamed for the problems the industry is experiencing. Some creative Tasmanians have radio carbon dated the inner growth rings of a giant tree stump, that had been wood-chipped. It was found to be 600 years old! ancient trees destroyed Given that these trees are the worlds best carbon sinks, we are starting to see how homicidal this industry has become. I publicly urge the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) to start making wheat-based pulp for paper making.
Something has got to change in Tasmania, and it's going to be the wood chip industry. It's game, set and match for the few lunatics holding the rest of Tasmania to ransom. While you are at it, it's time to release that hostage you took 5 years ago. I'm talking about the Tamar Valley in Northern Tasmania.

Why Rudd Will Import Wood Chips Into Tasmania

2009-12-03T11:56:00.000-08:00

Kevin Rudd and John Howard spent billions of our dollars funding tax-free plantation schemes. During 2009 most of this artificial industry had collapsed, taking many small investors with it. Now Gunns Ltd, the worlds biggest wood-chip exporter has moved on the failed schemes and is buying the trees at giveaway prices. Gunns plan is to build a foreign-funded pulp mill in Tasmania's second most populated valley, and its main wine region. They want a third world standard mill. It will use the sea as an effluent sewer, make toxic chlorine and generate dirty power. It's the kind of mill that even Kevin Rudd's best mate could not build anywhere else in Australia. Even with a unsustainable supply of native forest from Gunns-controlled Forestry Tasmania, Gunns still cannot get the mill off the ground.
The developed world has no interest in wiping-out the best carbon sinks known to science, just to make a low value commodity such as pulp. The Rudd-Gunns idea is to milk the Australian taxpayer of even more cash using the trees as 'carbon credits', and then take a third bite of the cherry by converting the trees to wood chips and then 'value adding' to wood pulp. They want to use Australia's only third world country, Tasmania for this role. Anything left over will be burnt to generate cheap 'dirty power'.
There is one other reason why the chips will be shipped to Tasmania. Gunns have a score to settle with the Tasmanian people. They must now be punished for transgressions like choosing to live in the Tamar Valley, or complaining about having the islands groundwater contaminated by herbicides. This is the reason Rudd has been coerced into bringing wood chips away from the world markets in order to sell them back into the world markets. After all, 'forestry'* is like no other industry in Australia's history. Were else do you have ecocide on this scale funded by the Australian tax system?
* tree crops are only called 'forestry' by the wood chip industry. For tax purposes they are classed as 'agriculture'.

Forestry On The Credit Card. The Unsustainable Tasmanian Logging Industry.

2009-11-12T04:18:00.000-08:00

This is a carbon-replacement snapshot of whats happening in Tasmanian Forestry. Data courtesy of the Tasmanian Government, Forestry Tasmania and the Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF). This is how the year 07-08 shaped-up for the industry:

TOTAL FOREST PRODUCT HARVESTED = 7,404,500 tonnes. (1)

TOTAL CARBON THAT MUST BE REPLACED = 3,702,250 tonnes (2)

(Does not include carbon from residues)

LAND AVAILABLE FOR TIMBER PRODUCTION = 960,000 hectares. (3)

CARBON ABLE TO BE SEQUESTERED ON AVAILABLE LAND = 1,999,680 tonnes.(4)

The Numbers

The amount of carbon sold in a year, cannot be replaced by the entire commercial forestry estate in a year. There is a shortfall of 1,702,570 tonnes of carbon. Incredibly, if residue was also included, with similar amounts to Forestry Tasmania, the carbon storage of the entire forested areas of Tasmania would not be enough to sequester the carbon needed. Forestry Tasmania's carbon audit consultant MBAC, divides by a half to convert the 7.4 million tonnes harvested timber to carbon. That gives us 3.7 million tonnes of carbon. MBAC uses an amount of 2.083 tonnes of carbon per hectare, per year as a carbon replacement value for all of Forestry Tasmania's forests. This value was then used for the whole commercial estate.(4) That gives us almost 2 million tonnes of carbon able to be sequestered per year on the whole commercial forest estate.

The Situation

The logging industry is constantly promoting, lobbying and influencing policy-makers, while at the same time contradicting critics. This has allowed them to deflect scrutiny with an 'us and them' mentality. Carbon is a good indicator of whats really happening, because the carbon added annually is a measure of tree growth. Anybody who claims Tasmania has a carbon-sustainable forest industry today, must be including national parks, land they don't own and carbon in products they have already sold. The industry also replaces real carbon with 'virtual carbon'. Little trees that are claimed will replace carbon at some time into the future. Data published by Gunns Ltd shows amounts of sequestered carbon way below amounts they are selling.(5) They also include carbon stored in product they have already sold. It's worth remembering that half the product Gunns sources from Forestry Tasmania comes with a 'carbon debt'. It could not be carbon-replaced by FT before it was sold.

The Future

National parks will be next in the loggers sights. The PR machine will go into overdrive and Peter Garrett will be convinced that jobs are more important than national parks. A sad aspect of Tasmania's unsustainable timber industry, is that they are destroying forestry jobs for future generations of Australians. This will also be blamed on conservationists. The real culprits are the foreign investors of Japan, Sweden and the US, banking the wealth of Tasmania's lost carbon. This is the reality behind the relentless denigration of any Australian that has ever marveled at a giant living tree in its natural place.

Notes

(1) Production figures for the year come from HERE.
2,500,000 tonnes of pulp logs from public forests.

404,000 tonnes sawlogs/veneer from public forests (converted from .809 million cubic metres using MBAC's average density of 500Kg per cubic metre formula)

2,800,000 tonnes private forest harvest.

1,700,000 tonnes private plantation harvest.

7,404,500 tonnes total harvest.

This was a good year for the Tasmanian timber industry. A downturn was to come, but the industry has only ever been slowed by a lack of demand. The political will has always been there.

(2) Total carbon harvested for that year. The figure was multiplied by 0.5 as per the MBAC method of converting tonnes of timber to tonnes of carbon. That document can be downloaded HERE

(3) (4) Total land available for timber production in Tasmania. Courtesy DAFF and available HERE (30% of 3.2 million hectares = 960,000 hectares).

Atmospheric carbon stored on available land. The formula used was 2.083 tonnes carbon per hectare, per annum. It was extrapolated from Forestry Tasmania's figures of 720,000 tonnes per year returned to the total estate of 1.5 million hectares. This was used for the entire commercial estate because of a lack of any other available data. FT's figures are available HERE Forestry Tasmania's carbon replacement figures should be a good starting point for the whole Tasmanian forest industry. Their estate size is shown HERE.

(5) Some Gunns estimates of carbon sequestration can be downloaded HERE See 3.1.7 on page 5.

Forestry Tasmania's Own Data Shows They Are Not 'Carbon Neutral'

2009-11-08T12:39:00.000-08:00

There is no doubt Forestry Tasmania store a lot of carbon on behalf of the people of Tasmania. They also harvest, sell and burn a lot of carbon. For the purpose of deciding the validity of Forestry Tasmania's claim that they are 'carbon neutral', we do not need to know how much carbon is stored. We only need to know how much carbon is added and taken away from this store on a yearly basis. It comes down to two numbers. It's a simple ratio. The numbers are:

TOTAL CARBON HARVESTED (includes waste) = 1.2 million tonnes of carbon (1)
TOTAL CARBON ADDED FROM THE ATMOSPHERE = 720,000 tonnes of carbon (2)

As you can see, more carbon is going out of the system than is being replaced from the atmosphere in the current time frame. (starting from 2007)
These numbers were concealed in FT's data. They were not meant to be found.
The first number was split into a total log harvest component and a total residue component.
Basically the whole harvesting operation.
It was given as tonnes of CO2. This had to be converted to tonnes of carbon using the magic carbon number 3.6. Divide an amount of CO2 by this number to get carbon, or multiply an amount of carbon to get CO2 by the same number.
The 'added from atmosphere' number appears in FT material as the amount their forests absorb from the atmosphere annually. This number will certainly disappear from FT's published material. There are strong commercial reasons not to disclose this information.

FORESTRY TASMANIA'S VOODOO CARBON ACCOUNTING METHOD.
FT spend a lot of time and money working-out how long carbon stays in products sourced from their forests. They call it 'Life Cycle Analysis'. Its total rubbish, because when you buy a table or a house, the carbon contained within it is YOUR CARBON not theirs. Forestry Tasmania are in the business of attempting to own the roof trusses and wall frames of your house so they can call it a stored carbon asset. I call it 'Voodoo Carbon Accounting'.
The fact is, the moment Forestry Tasmania either sells or burns timber, they lose it as a carbon asset. This is based on the common law concept of transfer of ownership.
When you buy something you are buying it's entire molecular structure. 'Voodoo Carbon Accounting' is common among carbon polluters. (Gunns Ltd claim that exporting wood pulp produces less carbon than exporting wood chips sounds reasonable, until you consider using a nuclear-powered cargo ship.)

OTHER FINDINGS.
Forestry Tasmania are using their 'non-commercial estate' to offset carbon lost from their 'commercial estate' (MBAC report on FT carbon stocks p7) This looks like they are using trees along streams or other unharvestable areas to offset carbon from harvestable areas.
The FT commissioned MBAC report shows the 'non-commercial estate' is more efficient at storing carbon than the 'commercial estate'. This contradicts Federal Government policy on carbon storage in plantations and replanted clear-felled forests.
I hope anyone following this trail will find the break-down of the carbon balance into a simple two-number ratio helpful. The CO2 to carbon conversion 'magic number' will be needed to interpret new data. The data was presented by FT in a manner so as 'you can't see the the carbon for the trees.' Do not expect this to change soon.

(1) Data from 'Questions On Notice' in The Senate requested by Senator Bob Brown pages 1 and 2.
(2) Data from Forestry Tasmania's 'Carbon Brochure 27028' and their web site here:
http://www.forestrytas.com.au/topics/2009/07/ft-s-carbon-sequestration-position

Why Didn't Rudd Store The Gorgon Gas Carbon in Tasmanian Forests?

2009-09-01T05:33:00.000-07:00

The fact Kevin Rudd and his climate change politburo didn't even think of this win-win solution shows how incapable they are of balancing the interests of big oil, big unions and big carbon.
As usual the Gorgon gas profits flow out of the country to hedge funds and international
investors, while Australians are left to complete the task of moving a pile of sand and then moving it back again. Thats what the Gorgon sequestration game is.
The Gorgon field has a 12 per cent carbon dioxide component, which they want to pump under
Barrow Island at a rate of 3.5 million tonnes a year for 30 years.
There is no assurance this will actually work because of rock faults, the Commonwealth is carrying the liability, and they will only take responsibility for a laughable 15 years after the project finishes.
Remember, carbon stays in the atmosphere for 100 years.
What Rudd, Garrett and Wong are up to with big US oil is some politically correct CO2 windowdressing.
Meanwhile in Tasmania, home of the worlds most efficient carbon-storing forests,
Rudd, Garrett and Wong are tearing them down for little more than toilet paper.
The Tasmanian wood-chip industry has painted itself into a corner, with demand for
flushing Tasmanian devil habitat down the toilet disappearing everywhere.
Even the finance for projects like Gunns pulp mill has dried-up under the international FSC regulations and banking's Equator Principles. There are people in Tasmania looking
very, very stupid today because the clearing of these carbon sinks is fast becoming illegal
everywhere except Kevins carbon rubiks cube.
Internationally, the battle to save Tasmania's ancient forests has only just started.
Daily, carbon activists are arrested for trying to 'do something'.
The amount of carbon-rich native forest clear-felled in Tasmania annually would account
for 2 or 3 Gorgon sequestration costume dramas.
Removing carbon from LNG is hardly 'value adding'. It's like taking carbon out of the millions
of tonnes of coal we export annually. Why bother? We are the worlds biggest carbon exporter are we not?
Carbon forests are still being lost in Tasmania at a rate of 0.175 tonnes per second.
If Rudd, Garrett and Wong really were serious about jobs why not make concert grand pianos out of some of these trees, or furniture or houses? Why not do it intelligently, sustainably and honestly?

State Sponsored 'Terrorism' In Tasmania.

2009-08-29T01:55:00.000-07:00

Imagine if a group of religious fundamentalists were to poison your groundwater, rivers and drinking water with poisonous chemicals? The Australian Federal Police would go into overdrive, and the culprits marched away in orange jumpsuits. We now have exactly this scenario in Tasmania. Because the perpetrators are tree farming companies that make political bribes in the form of donations, it is called 'development' not terrorism.

http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2009/07/31/87971_tasmania-news.html
So whats the Tasmanian Government doing about it? Nothing. It's about time this systematic
and murderous attack on those to whom the government holds a duty of care were exposed.
If you are dying of breast cancer or prostrate cancer caused by an endocrine disruptor like Atrazine, does it matter if you were murdered by terrorists or by irresponsible, corrupt bureaucrats?
I submit that it makes no difference. This is the level that the Tasmanian Government now operates on. They are running an agenda that is nothing more than 'state sponsored terrorism'.
They are using their differences with the green side of politics as a smokescreen, to hide their activities from publicity and public debate. Are they trying to say only 'greens' would be concerned about being killed by their own government?
We have Australia's highest cancer rate and again, the state government has done nothing to find out why. Lets have a public debate about whether murdering Tasmanians is progress?
My information is that this situation is about to become catastrophic, with a huge increase in tree plantations to cover the coal-fired 'affluence' that the nation is addicted to. The rape of diverse forests will continue, as mono culture 'tumors' cover the landscape. Bear in mind that tree crops cannot survive without chemicals.
These people have gotten away with too much for too long. Both major parties are complicit, and the only difference is in how they manage the corruption that I now call 'terrorism'.

Tasmanian Liberal And Labor Sabotaged Finance For Gunns Pulp Mill

2009-08-21T03:48:00.000-07:00

How Section 11 Breaches The Equator Banking Principles
In 2007 Gunns realised their proposed pulp mill was failing the Tasmanian environmental assessment in many areas.
In what may have been a state of panic, they withdrew the project from the legal process. Another assessment instantly materialised, thanks to premier Paul Lennon, who decides the project would be assessed by the Tasmanian Parliament.
Lawyers reputedly acting for Gunns, draft legislation in one frantic weekend that will give the project a red carpet 'fast track assessment'.
All good for Gunns except their lawyers overreach their brief.
They include a clause more at home in a Stalinist dictatorship.
The infamous 'section 11' locks-out any legal action against the mill by any person for perpetuity.
Tasmania's Labor and Liberal parties vote for it, with the bill rushed through both houses simultaneously. Nobody actually gets a chance to read the whole bill first.
With it all done and dusted, Gunns sets-off looking for $2 billion in finance.
They hit problems. Their own bank, who has signed the Equator Principles, along with another two of Australia's four major banks, turns them down for finance.
The bank doesn't reveal why. Two years later and it's discovered that section 11 is a clear
breach of at least two of international banking's 'Equator Principles'.
"Principle 5: Consultation and Disclosure"
"Principle 6: Grievance Mechanism"
Both these principles were subverted by the legislation passed by both houses of Tasmania's parliament and endorsed by Gunns.
The 'Equator Principles' were designed to prevent banks profiting from destructive
and unethical investments. This is exactly what they achieved in the case of Gunns
proposed pulp mill.

Sweden Has More Jurisdiction Over Tasmania Than Canberra.

2009-08-12T06:11:00.000-07:00

Remember Peter Garrett telling Australia he was 'constrained' by the EPBC Act? He said he could not stop the destruction of endangered species due to logging for Gunns pulp mill, he could not make it chlorine free and closed loop. He then told us 'the environmental standards which we set are the absolute best'.
Why then can the Swedish company Sodra have no such legal constraints preventing them from saving the Australian lives that Turnbull and Garrett failed to protect? Sodra are free to impose vastly improved environmental conditions on Gunns that were beyond the two Eastern Suburbs millionaires.
Fact is, if Gunns want finance and a joint venture partner from Europe, they will be forced to comply with European environmental standards. Standards such as FSC-certification.
The implications for Gunns current proposal are immense. They require none other than a completely different mill to the irresponsible and compromised rubbish passed by Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Garrett.
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I believe Turnbull and Garrett are the two most confused men in Australia's Parliament. Both have been exposed as liars.
These over-qualified high-achievers pretend to oppose each other, while secretly agreeing on almost everything.
Neither has a coherent grasp on reality, or a vision for Australia other than the elevation of their own ego. Turnbull attempts to support and oppose policy at the same time. Garrett still gets royalty cheques from the Midnight Oil back catalog. Daily, he ticks-off uranium mines and effluent outfalls in a state of apparent narcolepsy. He dreams that middle Australia has followed him on a journey to his Labor utopia, where the CFMEU has taken responsibility for our exported radioactivity for the next 10,000 years. Where brandy-sipping board members thoughtfully mix dioxin effluent into levels that makes fish look ten years younger, and can sneak under the cancer radar. The contradictions exposed by European finance for Gunns proposal, have left these two looking like accomplices to what amounts to a chemical attack on the Australian population.
How could any sane Australian allow more dioxin into a region that already has Australia's highest cancer rate?

Garrett Outsources Pulp Mill Regulation To Sweden.

2009-08-11T06:27:00.000-07:00

It's become the harshest indictment yet of spineless Australian
politicians. Rudd, Garrett, Penny Wong, Tony Burke, Kim Carr and
regional basket weavers like Dick Adams all knew of the vandalism and corruption that is the Tasmanian wood-chip industry and did nothing.
Gunns lawyers wrote legislation that permanently removed the legal rights of Australian citizens during the Howard era, and yet Kevin Rudd doesn't have a problem with it.
Now, thanks to a 'World Economic Reboot', Gunns have been forced to go to Sodra in Sweden with begging bowls in hand.
All the aces are on Sodra's side, and the EU has real environmental standards to comply with. They have the strict 'Forest Stewardship Council' regulations to observe. That means no 64,000 tonnes of carcinogenic dioxins per day into Australia's premier fishery.
No insane logging of forests older than the colonies themselves.
No ruthless destruction of devil and eagle habitat to cover the next franked dividend.
Why was Garrett unable to perform the task Sodra is now doing?
Why didn't Australia's pin-striped climate change minister Penny Wong have a problem with cashing-in our stored carbon to feed some bloated industrialists?
Ms Wong knew Gunns and Forestry Tasmania were destroying the worlds most efficient carbon sinks yet she did nothing.
The ALP have simply colluded with Turnbull and Abetz of the previous regime,
and have handed all the regulating to Sweden. Gunns are now running a disinformation campaign telling us that their mill will be plantation based. Bullsh1t!
They signed a 20 year pulp wood supply agreement with Forestry Tasmania to supply them with old native forests.
Rudd, Garrett and Wong are a bloody disgrace to outsource our environmental regulation to the EU when we are paying them to do the job.

Duh? Gunns Pulp Mill Assessed By A Pulp Mill Builder.

2009-08-10T06:16:00.000-07:00

How corrupt is the Tasmanian Government? Gunns Ltd wants to build the worlds 4th largest pulp mill and the Labor Government have the environmental assessment carried-out by a pulp mill builder. Don't believe me? Look here:
http://www.swecogroup.com/en/Sweco-group/Services/Structural-engineering/Russian-pulp-and-paper-mill/
Gunns want to borrow the capital for the mill from Sodra in Sweden, they want to buy the design from Poyry in Finland, and it was assessed by Sweco from Sweden. So how does this help Australia? The truth is Gunns are so unpopular in Australia, and the design so environmentally suicidal that no Australian company would touch it.
There was another insignificant little assessment carried out, the social impacts assessment. It was done by ITS-Global during the Howard era. One of ITS-Globals biggest clients was AWB during the period they were bribing Saddam Hussein. ITS founder Allan Oxley is on record as saying:
'The payments to Saddam's family might even prove to be legal.'
These are the people that gave the green light to this corrupt pulp mill. For these reasons it will be stopped by the majority of Tasmanians and Australians.

The Psychology Of Winning And Losing.

2009-08-09T06:05:00.000-07:00

I saw a mathematician on TV today talking about origami and gene folding viruses. I'm interested because a large company wants to build a wood pulp mill near here and that has led to a 5 year battle of wills between the corporate nutters and local people directly impacted by it.
How I see it these days is that winning and losing are concepts very dependent on basic intelligence. Dumb people tend to see winning in terms of financial or material improvement
and nothing more. More intelligent people see winning as a good outcome for mankind or the planet. There is actually a huge difference. Most of the people who want a pulp mill in Tasmania see it as a means to increase their personal wealth, and they think their personal wealth is dependent on the general wealth of the state.
Losing is probably a much more complex issue because of the conditioned value judgments people place on events. 'I had a bad day' or 'I had a good day' are common examples. Losing is obviously just as important as winning in any given situation. I think a person is only an actual winner when they have a total understanding of all of the possible outcomes of that victory. Most do not have a clue. As an ancient Chinese text once said 'win what is close by and lose what is far away'.
What I want to do in this situation is separate the illusionary ideas from the real ideas so they cannot cloud the issue. For example, if a young guy wins a sports car on a game show and then manages to permanently injure himself in that car, is he still a winner? I don't think so. Would he have been better-off as a loser? Yes I think so.
I am now convinced that winning and losing often occur before the actual battle.
I see the proposed pulp mill in this light. For the idiots who want it, it's a victory not worth having, because it's based on the illusion of personal value derived from wealth.
For the others it's a victory that has already been won, because they want the right outcome for the right reasons. What's origami got to do with this? No dead trees, no paper, no origami.
Will we ever run out of origami paper? Only if we keep burning all the trees felled for farming, housing and power line clearing, which is exactly what they are doing every day.