BY GEOFF FRANCIS
It doesn't matter whether what's being proposed is a woodchip mill, an inner-city monorail, a block of luxury apartments, an airport extension or anything else. There's a comprehensive planning process that has to be gone through, to ensure that what is being proposed is environmentally friendly and serves the public interest. Otherwise it'll be knocked back. Right?
Well, no, wrong actually. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The comprehensive planning process exists primarily to meet two very simple objectives:
- to attempt to persuade the public that what is unacceptable is really in their best interests; and
- to ensure that the developer gets, directly and indirectly, every possible support and subsidy from the public purse.
Forestry Tasmania's proposed new Southwood woodchip mill and wood-fired power station in the Huon Valley make a typical case study. The picture that emerges is of government and developers, hand in hand, using a dazzling array of illusions and tricks that would be the envy of any professional stage magician.
It starts before any scheme even becomes public knowledge: with the double-headed coin trick.
Really major developments are subject to parliamentary scrutiny. We're told that that's a fundamental and important democratic safeguard. The trouble is, it doesn't mean a thing.
Despite the occasional phoney debate on points of detail, both sides of parliament are on the same side: both will support big business and the multinational corporations. Exactly the same is happening right now in Tasmania: both parties back Southwood.
Then comes the initial "consultation process". As soon as the Southwood proposal was announced, Forestry Tasmania put on a number of slick "consultations" throughout the Huon Valley region. Their purpose was only ever to sell their ideas to the public, never to engage in any real dialogue or listen to the people. Tens of thousands of dollars have already been spent by Forestry Tasmania in this way.
Forestry Tasmania's theme was that the project will yield all sorts of benefits and will be going ahead. Public input is restricted, therefore, to suggestions that might lessen its impact on individuals. This "consultation" is little more than a crude attempt at dividing sections of the community against each other.
The next stage in the process involves the approval of the proposed environmental guidelines by the relevant government body (in Tasmania, the Board of Environmental Management and Pollution Control, BEMPC).
The fact that the project will be required to conform with environmental guidelines, however, is not in any way the same as saying that the project must be environmentally friendly. The guidelines that apply are invariably drawn up to help developers assess exactly what they can get away with.
So in this case, the developer (Forestry Tasmania, part of the state government) draws up its own draft environmental guidelines, and submits them for approval to BEMPC (another arm of the state government). After these are approved, the developer writes its proposal and submits it for consideration to ... yet more state government bodies.
These guidelines are nearly always both absurd and patently inadequate. For example, in the case of Southwood, Forestry Tasmania may be required to produce (theoretical and often suspect) evidence that the emissions from its wood-fired power station complies with the relevant industrial standards — but the more fundamental question of whether a wood-fired power station is acceptable in the first place is never considered.
Another trick commonly employed in defining the environmental guidelines is: the thousand-piece puzzle. The project is broken down into a large number of tiny pieces in an attempt to understate or even ignore completely its overall impact.
For example, the Southwood proposal states that Forestry Tasmania intends to evaluate, independently of each other, the effect on air quality, noise pollution and water quality of each of the six different activities that will take place on the site — but it doesn't intend to assess their overall total impact.
Similarly, the real environmental issues that most people are concerned about are ruled out of court before the debate even begins. These include, in the Southwood case, issues regarding the quality of life, road safety, the future of old-growth forests and the need to preserve biodiversity. These, we are told, are questions of "policy" and as such lie outside the planning process.
Even the pretence of conforming with any meaningful environmental standards is a hoax. Nothing illustrates this better than one clause, buried away in the environmental guidelines for the Southwood submission: "If adverse residual environmental impacts from the project are considered unavoidable ... proposals to compensate for such impacts should be detailed".
Put more simply, this means "However bad the negative impact on the environment, we're going to do it anyway". You'll find a similar clause to this in the terms of reference for any proposed large development that you care to name.
This leads us to consider the next sleight of hand: the stacked deck trick.
By carefully asking only the "right" questions — and employing only the "right" people to answer them — any inquiry can be guaranteed to come up with the "right" answers.
Southwood's Environmental Management Plan, for instance, includes the clause: "Matters which should be specifically addressed, include ... local and regional employment impacts [and] impacts on the local and regional economy".
The phrases "matters which should be addressed" and "shall be evaluated" occur literally scores of times in documents like this. But "addressed" and "evaluated" by whom? According to what criteria? And who appoints the umpires?
Just as importantly, are we really supposed to accept that "employment impacts" and "impacts on the economy", however important, are relevant to an environmental study while such matters as the impact on old growth forests and the health of our rivers are not? The questions are always stacked so as to get the answers wanted.
With the environmental guidelines rigged almost to the point of being meaningless, the developers go on to prepare their development application. This doesn't have to address the public interest in any real sense but simply has to conform with the relevant planning legislation — legislation that was drawn up in the first place to favour developers.
This application is then considered by a whole series of very august-sounding bodies. In the Southwood case, this will consist first of the local council, then the BEMPC and eventually the Resources Planning and Development Commission.
This might sound like an impressive set of hurdles for the developer to jump — until you examine the composition of these bodies and discover a remarkable degree of cross-pollination, with the same names and faces turning up all over again.
But what really gives the game away is the time scale. A genuine, exhaustive and independent analysis of a proposal as large as this $100 million development, with its potentially huge environmental impact, would take years. But, in this case, the entire process is expected to be completed in as little as three months.
Common sense dictates that in any genuine democratic process, public outrage should be sufficient grounds to squash from the outset such an environmentally unacceptable proposal as the use of old growth forests to feed a woodchip mill and a wood-fired power station.
But that is exactly why we don't get our say until after the proposal has been nursed along to the point of being a fait accompli.
Since the planning and consultation process is so obviously stitched up, does this mean that activists should take no part in it? By playing along with these processes, are we not in danger of giving them a false legitimacy?
On the contrary. By taking part in the official channels that the system makes available to us, we at least help to expose governments and those whose interests they serve.
Moreover, the official consultation process is an effective way of drawing more people into the broader campaign, and thereby into other activities, such as protest and mass action. And it is by protest and mass action that we can stop monstrosities such as the Southwood proposal.