Tasmanian political and social life has been dominated in the past 10 years by the fight to build — or prevent the building — of Gunns Ltd’s pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, near Launceston Tasmania.
It was planned to be one of the world’s biggest.
The issue has paralysed and poisoned Tasmania’s public life and private life, even divided towns and families.
It has bought a once mighty company — the nation’s biggest woodchipper Gunns Ltd — to its knees, its share price in the death zone of a bit above 20 cents; share trading suspended on the ASX at its request.
Today, Tasmanian Times pulp mill expert Dr Warwick Raverty — one of the members of a highly credentialed panel charged with assessing the pulp mill six years ago — reveals the truth behind the closed doors of panel deliberations.
He reaches several devastating conclusions: the blame for the controversy and the apparent failure of the project can largely be sheeted home at the feet of a retired director and a retired senior executive; he charges that a senior member of the pulp mill taskforce played a significant questionable role during deliberations and lambasts a majority of compliant Tasmanian politicians as being “ambitious, gullible and greedy” and too easily swayed by a desire to be in the big business club.
And he foresees a massive class action to hold all Gunns Ltd directors personally liable “even if the body corporate is dead and buried”.
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