BY TOM WILSON
HOBART — Faced with a rising tide of public opposition to its latest woodchip mill and wood-fired power station proposal, Forestry Tasmania has decided on a complete change of tactics. Abandoning any pretence of warm and fuzzy "community consultation", they are now embarking on a campaign of misinformation, deceit and dirty tricks.
A series of consultation meetings took place in the three months before Christmas, at which people repeatedly voiced their overwhelming opposition to Forestry Tasmania's innocuously-named Southwood project. If the project goes ahead, it will destroy 600,000 tonnes of southern Tasmania's rapidly vanishing old growth forests each year.
Protesters then held a public rally in December against the proposal, attracting 700 people. Even Forestry Tasmania's spin doctors were forced to admit that 80% of the participants at consultation meetings were opposed to their plans.
The response from the state Labor government and Forestry Tasmania was not to rethink the plan but to employ even more public relations consultants, change the name of the project to the "Wood Centre", invent the slogan "New Ways With Wood", and pour taxpayers' money into a TV advertising campaign.
The biggest dirty trick so far, according to opponents of the scheme, has been the proposed environmental guidelines which lay out and define the criteria by which the environmental impact of the Wood Centre will be assessed.
"It's a document 49 pages long, repetitive and difficult to understand", explained Neil Cremasco of the Concerned Residents of the Upper Huon. "It's been designed for people to look at it and feel that they are inadequate to make a response."
"Moreover and incredibly", Cremasco added, "we are allowed only three weeks to respond to this document, which has been conveniently published at the height of the holiday season. Many residents will be effectively disenfranchised."
In the document, Forestry Tasmania makes no mention of including such issues as quality of life, clean air, road safety, the future of old growth forests and the need for bio-diversity in the woodchip project's guidelines.
At the same time, it is proposing to reserve for itself the right to nominate for its proposed wood chip centre and deep sea water port any location that suits it — without prior public consultation.
Forestry Tasmania's PR efforts have only spurred on the opposition, however. Over 40 local musicians have responded by producing a CD, Voices From The Valley, to promote, and raise funds for, the community's campaign of opposition to what has become known as "The Wood Chip Centre".
Anti-Southwood campaigner and audio engineer Geoff Francis told Green Left Weekly, "The government thinks that because we are a small rural community they can walk all over us — and no-one will notice. The CD project is one way of getting our message out to the rest of Tasmania, Australia and the world. Interest in this CD has been so overwhelming that we have barely been able to keep up with demand."
"Be assured that Forestry Tasmania's tactics will, as before, backfire on them", said Francis, who is also a member of the Democratic Socialist Party. "The more they try to deceive us, and the more contempt they show for our communities, the greater will become our determination to fight them all the way."