JohnBennetts you sound suspiciously like an academic on the public payroll. Why don't you offer your job to a forestry worker who lost his ? You seem to have absolutely no regard for those workers now facing unemployment. Do the right moral thing & forfeit your employment as well. Then try & get over it by spruiking for unemployment.

Any mention of Gunns and geoffrey cousins in the same sentence brings three thoughts to mind.

1. As a director of telstra, cousins sat asleep at the wheel as the US bandit destroyed shareholder value, until sol left telstra. He went with a golden parachute supplied by a board of directors that rewarded mediocrity with multimillion dollar bonuses. Then cousins has the hide to criticise other company directors for poor performance.

2. As I drive though local forests, from time to time, I cross the easements dozed though native forests, where telstra cables now run. Cousins is quiet on this issue, which smells of hypocrisy.

3. The business success of cousins and the publishing success of flanagan were underpinned by mountains of woodchips from the forests of the world. How holy one can be if one ignores one’s business and personal consumption of forest products.

Gunns in the end was guilty of trying to satisfy some of that consumption from Australian plantations.

After the demise of Gunns, it is likely that the assets will be purchased by foreign investors. I doubt that foreign investors will work as hard for a "Social License" that a Tasmanian Company did. One should always remember to "Be Careful what you wish for".

What part of:
"the clear felling of old growth forest is detrimental to the soil, water supply, to population due to chemical spray, burn offs, decimation of wildlife, reduction of CO2 sinks, decreases in rainfall, erosion of land."
do you not understand?
As for social licence, it would be interesting if a referendum were to be held on the forest industry including woodchipping, pulp mills and clear felling in place of selective logging.
It would not ever be allowed to happen of course.
As to value adding:
If you degrade the value of the surrounding property, the sea, the air, can you subtract that from the dollars raked in by the shareholders and the quite small actual numbers of jobs
I think not.
By the way, 'worlds best practice", does not mean that it is acceptable. It just means that there is not a better way of doing it at the moment.

Mark, it is interesting that you single out and use extensively, the term “social licence”. As I recall, Gunns did much to influence the decisions of local authorities and the police, by trying to convince them that this pulp mill would not impact negatively on the region. In doing so, Gunns then CEO, John Gay, claimed to have a social licence. It works both ways and both sides have argued respectively over such and asset. I say asset because in today’s world, where environment and society count, public opinion is vital for projects such as this. A social licence is as much an asset as new plant or a good ratio in the ledger. Gunns however, did not have public opinion on their side and despite getting a double whammy from government and investors, with the added advantage of timber at $7.00 per tonne; Gunns could not afford new plant and failed in the ratio stakes. This was obviously a bad business model because three other corporate giants did likewise, before Gunns.

You talk about Geoffrey Cousins being an activist, as though somehow, he has changed sides from business to green. Mr Cousins is an astute businessman, with a vast amount of experience in corporate Australia. He argues that Gunns is not a company in which he would put his trust, because of that company’s poor track record in environmental destruction. It is possible for a business to be environmentally sound.

You talk about ‘dance-on-the-grave' post-mortems’ by many but I prefer the pre-mortem version by Peter Cundall. See the Geoffrey Cousins and Peter Cundall arguments here and decide for yourself: www.theage.com.au/tv/Environment/A-Worm-in-the-Apple-4262515.html

The Gunns pulp mill met the stringent environmental requirements of the democratically elected governments of the Tasmania and Australia. The environmental standards and the investigation of the processes has been quoted around the world as Best practice by institutes such as the world bank. Yet an orchestrated campaign by the greens and their allied groups not only discredited the environmentally sound pulp mill but destroyed the reputation of the company.

The greens have not only cost the Tasmanian community jobs and economic wealth, they have denied the state the opportunity of value adding and processing a renewable resource, saving not only greenhouse gas emissions but the destruction of tropical rainforests that continue to supply our nation's pulp needs.

The images of old growth destruction used against this mill show just how willing the greens and their cronies were willing to mislead the public over this mill that was designed to process regrowth or plantation wood. The scaremongering claims based on chlorine bleaching was designed to undermine the environmental credentials of Elemental Chlorine Free bleaching, now the International standard.

No matter how many propaganda films and essays by green activists, history will not change, the greens will stand condemned for denying this social license for an environmentally friendly and sustainable enterprise!