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September 04, 2007
I'll post the editorial cartoons on Gunn's ardwood pulp mill proposal in the Tamar Valley, with its 80% reliance on native forest feedstock (at least in its first 5 years of operations) with plantations supposedly becoming more important in the future. as I come across them in order to illustrate one way a visual politics works.
It's different to the standard submission. Though it has taken the cartoonists a while to make the critical move on Gunn's, but they are up and running now:
Tandberg
I cannot understand why this development is seen as a bonanza since pulp will be no more valuable as an export commodity than woodchips, given the massive and cheaper capacity being developed in Brazil, Chile and South Africa.
As Henry Melville observes in the Tasmanian Times:
The international hardwood pulp market is a dumping ground. Cheap-pulp producers like Indonesia, Brazil and Chile are expanding their production capability massively. Supplying hardwood pulp into Australia’s domestic market will be difficult. Currently PaperlinX has that market effectively sewn up … unless of course Gunns and its backers are thinking of further expansion bids!
PaperlinX stands in Gunns Ltd’s way into the domestic market, effectively forcing each and every hardwood pulp mill onto the export market with all its rollercoaster volatility in pulp prices.
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