I'm Tasmanian, and I'm not a fan of Gunns. Nor am I a fan of Wilderness Society ferals.

A pox on both their houses.

Does MPoynter really believe, with hand on heart, that Gunns has never been involved in unethical dealings, bullying and misinformation? Or placing undue pressure on governments, or of supplying false figures to reduce the perception of environmental impact?

I am sure there are parties on both sides of the logging/forestry divide that have not always acted with integrity but when looking at the self-interest aspect the greater good is not achieved by the continual logging of old growth forests and a knee-jerk denial reaction of foresters everytime they are called to account for negative impacts of their activity.

To suggest the deception and vested interests are all on the part of the environmentalists lacks substance.

Too right Mikk
"And if I remember rightly they failed in that too.
If they had a valid case of misinformation or blackmail then they would have won wouldn't they?"
Oh no, you see it was because of the activist judges!
Anyway, your point (which should really be the conclusion to this debate) will be casually ignored by many- especially the type who will randomly throw out 'claims of misinformation' without specifying an example of the accusations in their slurs, when I think a court ruling is rather more valid assessment than those of a lobbyist or admirer.

Pelican, too right also;
Too many people are blinded by an irrational hatred towards whiny greenies, but would they actually endorse logging just to spite them?
I sincerely hope Australians are more intelligent than that to see the bigger picture. Personally I'd rather the 'greenies' won this one and the local area was spared the mill than to let it continue just to make them feel bad. The opposite attitude to me is "a useful idiot".
But I do confess I am a gigantic advocate of the rights of the NIMBY instead of the rights of an industrial raw-materials processing business who make a less than positive impact on their unwilling neighbors (let alone the logging- for, of all things, pulp).

King Hazza

The major point made by the article is that public perceptions of the Tasmanian forests issue has been founded primarily on misinformation, particularly in the far away mainland capital cities where a largely one-sided view is promolgated in the media. Your response - particularly your apparent linking of the forests issue with the planned pulp mill - simply proves the varacity of this point.

Yes, Gunns are involved in both, but the Tasmanian forests issue is seperate to the pulp mill issue simply because the mill was never going to use wood from 'old growth' forests, and was only planned to initially use some wood from native regrowth forests for several years until such time as sufficient plantations matured to be able to fully supply all the mills'requirements. With the delay in the mill being constructed, it was announced probably a year ago that, if built, the mill would be 100% fed by plantation timbers from day one. Yet, even today this truth is simply ignored or unknown amongst the vast majority of the populace.

Pelican

"Does MPoynter really believe, with hand on heart, that Gunns has never been involved in unethical dealings, bullying and misinformation? Or placing undue pressure on governments, or of supplying false figures to reduce the perception of environmental impact?"

You may or may not be right - but how would we who are not privy to the machinations of the relationship between Gunns and state governments actually know. The answer is that we don't know, yet the ENGOs continue to make such unsubstantiated assertions and they are blindly accepted by the majority who have strong opinions on forestry matters.

On the other hand, it is beyond question that ENGOs have been unethical in this 'debate'. One only has to look at an ENGO website or printed forest campaign materials to see a myriad of examples where they have either lied or misrepresented the true situation to strengthen community sentiment against forestry.

Your reference to "the continual logging of old growth forests" is to me, an example of someone accepting the ENGO view without question. It suggests no understanding on the limits that apply to this activity - namely, there is no old growth logging in QLD, NSW, WA; in Victoria almost all 'old-growth' forest will not be logged, in Tasmania 80-90% won't be logged.

Your assertion that foresters who try to correct misconceptions about logging are engaged in 'knee jerk denial' only serves to further illustrate the point of the article which is that forestry and foresters have been demonised by misinformation.

Mikk

Your comment: "If they (Gunns) had a valid case of misinformation or blackmail then they would have won (the Gunns 20 legal action)wouldn't they?"

That's a pretty simplistic view given that Gunns didn't actually lose the court case. Instead, they simply abandoned it in January 2010 citing a realisation that carrying it through to its end would be a lengthy and expensive process that they wished to avoid, presumably as much as anything because they were already hurting due to the GFC.

By then, Gunns had already settled with all but 4 of the original 20 defendents, some of which just involved a simple apology for their behavior in villifying Gunns. In at least one case, the apologee continued to bag the company.

There is general acknowledgement that Gunns and their lawyers handled the case badly with poorly worded statements of claim, and by attempting to package too many claims into the one legal action.

However, the wash-up of the case is in no way a vindication of the defendants being right. It is undeniable that they were engaged in campaigns against the company, but the case probably shows how difficult and expensive it is to quantify the affect of this on a company's bottom line. Ironically, the later collapse of the company's Japanese woodchip market may have been easier to link to environmental activism, but we'll never know now.