According to Caroline Overington from The Australian, political aspirant Geoffrey Cousins’ inspiration is attributed to The Monthly’s Out of Control – The tragedy of Tasmania’s forests, by Richard Flanagan.
It is certainly a powerful lot of words that draw heavily on reader-environmentalism. Reference to Tasmania mortgaging its future to the woodchipping industry, reminded me of a contrary allegation from the Prime Minister in 2005, who described his offence to the idea that the extreme greens have a mortgage on concern and compassion for the forests or for the environment of this country.
No doubt there is as much cynicism from both sides of the debate, but in this mounting electoral issue: of national conservation significance versus state economic opportunity, Australia will be further divided unless political integrity prevails.
In matters such as these there is no doubt that corruption represents the greatest obstacle to the achievement of political propriety. Whether the iconic forests of Tasmania are quarantined from logging or their availability for woodchipping is secured, federal and state intervention is vulnerable to corruption without:
• the effective integration of economic and environmental considerations;
• maintaining or enhancing the productivity of environmental assets, as well as their health and diversity,
• ensuring that environmental actions are cost-effective and not disproportionate to the significance of identified problems, and
• ensuring that consumer pricing is consistent with the full life cycle costs of providing environmental goods and services.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
No Neil, the “icons” are already “protected” from everything but the one thing that can really destroy them, Greenorrhoea.
The only point of uncertainty is whether the disease infects the whole lot or just the 45% already infected.
Flanagan of course is a fiction writer and the corruption he talks of is just a fairy story.
Take just one example Edmund Rouse, yes he tried to bribe someone and he went to jail for it. BUT he was a MEDIA mogul, the head of ENT owning radio stations in Melbourne, Television and newspapers. Is the media corrupt too!
His massive company had a small timber business and it merged with Gunns thus making him chairman. At the time of the bribery attempt Gunns was a sawmill relying on sawlogs, it did not do any exporting of woodchips. Gunns had no reason to fear the Greens or the ALP as the reserves wanted was only to protect the forests from woodchipping.
It was only in the mid 1990s after the Green labor accord fell apart that Gunns applied for an export license based on sawmill off cuts. This was opposed by the Tasmanian Conservation Trust.
It was Gunns that bought back the farm from mining giant Rio Tinto five years ago. They immediately announced they wanted to value add the woodchips currently being exported.
Most people but not Flanagan would applaud a company that is willing to have a go and value add right here in Tasmania. Perhaps many will remembers other pieces of fiction such as the “Rape of Tasmania” equally without foundation but a close look at the two might see that all this world famous novelist does is copy and paste.
Neil: point one “the effective integration of economic and environmental considerations” is covered in the EU by their FSC concept (see recent comments in the Barry Chipman thread).
http://www.fsc.org/en/about/governance/membership_chambers
Independence there is maintained by avoiding direct assessment and certification of practices. Its not quite like our very well established NATA principles for industry etc.
IMO forestry here for what ever reason has gone down another path where every body including governments has a go at assessment or generating standards.
Several other points may follow but I can’t se where the last one gets a berth in something like the FSC as it stands, gets a berth in something like the FSC. Full life cycle costs must include recycling as well as upgrades in the technologies.
Presumably Geoffrey Cousins made his millions by advertisements in newspapers printed on crop-fibre paper as were Richard Flanagan’s best-selling books.
According to Caroline Overington “From today, 50,000 copies of Flanagan’s article – called “Gunns: Out of Control” – will be dropped into letterboxes in both Wentworth (the seat held by Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull)…” – no doubt also printed on hemp-fibre.
Are these people completely incapable of introspection?
You make a good point Cinders. I have actually compared Flanagan’s two articles, The Rape of Tasmania (The Bulletin, December 2003) with Gunns Out Of Control (The Monthly, May 2007). There are 1200 words in whole sentences and paragraphs that are common to both articles. I wonder if tThe Monthly were aware of that when they paid him. Of course, the later article concentrates more on the pulpmill issue which was not on the radar at the time of the first article.
The issue with Flanagan is that he includes almost none of the basic facts but is able to mask this because he writes well, uses words powerfully, and is entertaining. For example, his central claim in the Rape of Tasmania that ‘great areas of remnant wild lands are being reduced to a landscape of battlefields’ looks pretty silly against the reality that in the previous 5 years a total of just 0.6% of Tasmania’s old growth forest had been harvested and regenerated.
Unfortunately, most people don’t have access to the facts and swallow all he says without question. Most probably want to believe he’s right such is the ingrained cultural belief that producing wood is unnecessary and destructive. What can be done about it? Probably, not much given the media’s greater predilection to air simplistic protest messages over detailed fact.
Mark you are so right when you pont out Flanagan’s style that he has been using since the 1980’s to promote his political cause.
Here’s the start of what he wrote whilst the State was still mourning the much respected Premier Jim Bacon. Flanagan waited until Jim had passed away before he got out the copy and past poisoned mouse and his clever use of the “truth”:
The selling-out of Tasmania
July 22, 2004
Ignore the eulogies. Jim Bacon’s legacy is a state ravaged by logging and inappropriate development, writes Richard Flanagan.
Among the many bewildering responses to former Tasmanian premier Jim Bacon’s passing, few came more bizarre than that of Albert Langer and his colleagues (“Vale comrade Jim Bacon”, on this page on July 2) presenting Bacon as ever “on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors”. Unfortunately, history tells a less uplifting tale.
Under Bacon, Tasmania was given away to the rich at the expense of the poor. Typical was how millionaire Greg Farrell’s Federal Hotels group became the leading tourism operator in the state, bankrolled by its monopoly on pokie machines. In Victoria and NSW, gaming machine licences are tendered for and millions of dollars paid to state governments, whereas in Tasmania a 15-year monopoly on gaming machines, estimated by Citigroup to be worth at least $130 million, was inexplicably given by the Bacon government to Federal Hotels for nothing.
An even more disturbing example is the extraordinary rise under Bacon of millionaire John Gay’s Gunns Ltd into a billion-dollar monopoly that is now the largest hardwood woodchip exporter in the world.
Yes Mark this bloke should be exposed!
The corruption that I referred to manifests within individual Australians. An individual can be manifestly corrupt or an entire movement of millions can be corrupted ideologically.
Through corruption, the capacity of provocative writings to stimulate the multitudes into action has far less to do with truth than the ideological wants of the willing.
I suspect that clawing beneath the well-provisioned exterior of metropolitan Australia is a yearning for nature that is every bit as irrepressible as rural Australia’s contempt for political betrayal.
Approximately eighty-five per cent of Australians live in cities and major towns. In this era of political correctness, it is hardly surprising that many share a common concern for the natural environment. Harnessing these innocuous individual concerns and multiplying them across the body politic derives significant environmental power. Incendiary propaganda fans the flames of popularist environmentalism and governments quell the wildfire by converting natural capital, confiscated from communities in the bush, into political capital, through the illusion of environmental protection.
Neil is very observant. The wide blue yonder is everybody’s playground at election time.
National senior Journalist, Piers Akerman, of the Daily Telegraph
has also commented upon the Flanagan/Cousins letterboxing of junk mail in the Electorates of Kingsford Smith and Wentworth.
In an article Drivel really is in the detail http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/opinion/story/0,22049,22330552-5001031,00.html
Piers points out that “the Federal Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation Minister Eric Abetz exposed the falsehoods in the article in an address to the biennial conference of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and the New Zealand Institute of Forestry.”
“Mr Abetz, a Tasmanian who actually does know something about forestry, as opposed to Mr Flanagan, said the essay told “more untruths than Pinocchio on a bad day”.
Mr Akerman claims that Cousins only got involved after reading the drivel from Flangan and only if it was “true”. You would have thought a Director of a number of listed companies would have checked his facts with ALL sides of the Debate.
For the referred excellent critique on the Flanagan article check the speech by the Federal Forest Minister Eric Abetz given to the Institute of Foresters entitled Science versus science fiction it is available at http://www.mffc.gov.au/speeches/2007/Science%20versus%20science%20fiction.html
need to meet with albert langer. how can i do it. hard man to find.