Gilly Flower

You could say rather a lot has been happening on the pulp mill front since I last had time to sit down and add something to this blog. The issue has widened considerably of course in the wake of premier Lennon's departure, and the parliamentary scandals that involved two of his former deputies.

So our next Action will not only incorporate demands to restore democracy, and the establshment of an Independent Commission of Inquiry for the state, it will also be reinforcing community determination to pulp the mill project.

Thursday's meeting of Tasmanians Against the Pulp Mill (TAP) was lively to say the least. I rarely get to these meetings as they clash with other commitments, but I was asked to specifically make an effort to go to this one, and lend some moral support to the decision about joining the Alliance. A good deal of misinformation has been circulating about the decision to form an alliance of all the various groups up and down the state - and inter-state - a decision that emerged from the Grindelwald Strategy Meeting weekend back in April.

To those of us who attended that w/end, the idea is a no-brainer, but either genuine confusion, or a deliberate attempt at mischief, encouraged a puzzling degree of panic about TAP aligning itself with other groups. The fear being TAP's autonomy would be lost, submerged, or taken over by others.

Not so of course, the whole idea of an Alliance was to enable more rapid communication and exchanges of information, to work together and support each other's initiatives in fighting this monolith, but the Chinese whisperers have been out in force, and they did their work well.

And while all has now been sorted satisfactorily, it was a lesson in how easily ideas can be misconstrued, and how quickly confusion can potentially split the goodwill of a group. I don't wonder the UN has trouble.

So now we're gearing up for Saturday 23rd August, and what is hoped will be the biggest rally yet. It will be in Launceston, where State Parliament will be sitting for two weeks, at the Albert Hall, (not quite as big or impressive as its London counterpart of course, but an elegant building nonetheless!)

Bass Greens MP Kim Booth will be presenting a Private Members Bill to repeal the Pulp Mill Assessment Act 2007. That arrogant and ill-conceived piece of legislation that was bulldozed through parliament in less time than it takes to blink, and without any debate or discussion, after Gunns withdrew from the RPDC process because "of unacceptable delays".

Needless to say the reason for the delays was entirely due to Gunns repeatedly failing to provide all the additional information requested by the RPDC panel on various sections of the dodgy data included in their Integrated Impact Statement. And the reason for that was because Gunns knew perfectly well they were dodgy, and were probably aware the RPDC were therefore about to toss out the proposal.

Sceptical? Sound unlikely? Believe me, you don't know the half of it. We don't know the half of it - yet - but the fraction we do know suggests there's something very, very smelly at the bottom of all this, and the deeper we dig, the smellier it gets.

However, there has also been cause for optimism over the last couple of weeks. Gunns' share price is steadily heading south. Yes, it has the occasional 2c recovery, but essentially it's on a downward slide, and financial commentators have publicly stated they think it unlikely this mill will be built. Yaaayyyy,

Mr Gay and his apologists naturally remain upbeat, but JG is still travelling the world trying to drum up sufficient dosh. Clearly he's met with no success or we'd have heard about it:

Now -
(with apologies to John Betjeman)*

come friendly furans
fall on Paul
and Will and John -
spew on them all,
for why should they
miss out on death
let them, (like us), breathe in
poison-filled breath

but perhaps death by log truck
is more their style
than slow months of heaving
on toxic bile -
or maybe it suits them
to chance their luck
of being rolled off the road
by a top-heavy truck

but if this fails to
kill them
there’s always the smog
you know, that lethal white
shroud that is
denser than fog

I could keep on going for
for the list is so long
of ways it can
kill, maim
and harm us,
or make us less strong.

It will damage our hearts,
it might drive us to drink
though it won’t be the water
(which is tough don’t you
think)

for when it comes
to us sharing
this precious resource
the pulp mill takes precedence,
and there’ll be no recourse

so if rain fails to fall
and the rivers runs dry
it’s the community who’ll suffer,
and it’s us who will cry

© 2007 AL-B

* A reference to ‘Slough’ by John Betjeman - ie. “Come friendly bombs, and fall on Slough . . .”

And that's enough for one night. As ever, if you made it this far, thanks for listening.