Drivel really is in the detail

PROVING that wealth, celebrity and an Eastern Suburbs address are no guarantee against stupidity, a number of publicity-friendly voters in Malcolm Turnbull's Wentworth electorate have joined multi-millionaire businessman Geoffrey Cousins to oppose the building of a Tasmanian pulp mill.

According to The Australian Financial Review, Cousins, a sometime adviser to the Government on Telstra, was convinced to act after reading an article in the Melbourne-based Left-wing magazine, The Monthly. That article, by fifth-generation Tasmanian Richard Flanagan, was certainly capable of flooring the casual reader, if only for the number of flaws it contained. After reading the piece, he emailed Mr Flanagan offering his services. "He said, although he was not a religious person he felt they (the rainforests) were a 'beautiful place, a holy place'," Mr Flanagan told the AFR. "He said, 'If what you say is true . . . I am prepared to put my reputation on the line'." As this column reported three months ago, the Federal Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation Minister Eric Abetz exposed the falsehoods in the article in an address to the biennial conference of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and the New Zealand Institute of Forestry. Mr Abetz, a Tasmanian who actually does know something about forestry, as opposed to Mr Flanagan, said the essay told "more untruths than Pinocchio on a bad day". Mr Abetz made the point that Mr Flanagan claimed "the great majority of Tasmanians appear to be overwhelmingly opposed to old-growth logging" and asked, if this is so, why the Greens, the only party with a policy to completely end old-growth forestry in Tasmania, polled just 17 per cent of the vote at the 2006 state election - a decline on the previous election. He also cited the 2004 federal election, noting that Labor, supported by the Greens, lost two House of Representative seats and a Senate seat, while the Greens' vote went backward. Mr Cousins plans to letterbox some 50,000 copies of Mr Flanagan's error-packed article around Wentworth and the neighbouring seat of Kingsford Smith, held by Opposition environment spokesman and multi-millionaire former rock star Peter Garrett. How many trees that would otherwise have been fighting the good fight against CO2 and presumably global warming have given their lives to promote these lies is not known. Mr Cousins has been invited to Tasmania to meet families dependent upon the sustainable Tasmanian timber industry but has not responded to the invitation. Too many media interviews to conduct on the mainland. The aptly-named Barry Chipman, state manager of Timber Communities Australia, said there was still time for Mr Cousins to learn about the important role the Tasmanian forests and the proposed pulp mill could play in removing greenhouse gases. "It's really ironical that he makes all these statements but hasn't bothered to speak to anyone who knows the facts," Mr Chipman said yesterday from Tasmania's Parliament, where he was monitoring the debate on the pulp mill's operating conditions. "Rural Australia suffered from Telstra. Now we are wondering on what basis Cousins forms his views on the pulp mill." While Mr Cousins may have adopted a flake's approach to this issue, it is truly surprising that such a usually well-grounded individual as Rowena Danziger, the former headmistress of Ascham school, would lend her support to a campaign so lacking in reputable scholarly backing. Had one of her former charges presented a paper relying on such thin research, there is little doubt the schoolgirl would have been memorably marked down. As should happen to Mr Cousins' celebrity supporters. And it is not that there is any lack of material to set them straight - rather it is their lack of will to find the facts for themselves. If they cared to spend a moment looking beyond Mr Flanagan's apocalyptic presumptions, they would find there is a well-researched paper by a leading viticultural scientist, Dr Richard Smart, which concludes that wineries in the vicinity are unlikely to be affected. Dr Smart notes that pulp mills exist in wine-growing regions of France, including Bordeaux; in Portugal, Spain, Germany, Chile and Oregon, in the US. Mr Cousins and his supporters have joined forces with the Greens (do they also support the Greens' pro-drug policies?) and the blatantly partisan Wilderness Society to campaign against the Federal Environment Minister politicking and swing support behind the local Labor candidate, activist lawyer George Newhouse, mayor of the little-liked Green-tinged Waverley council. Nor have they commented on the support for the proposed pulp mill offered in May by Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd. "We recognise the potential benefits of the pulp mill proposed for Bell Bay in northern Tasmania," he said in a message to the Timber Communities national conference. "It is clear that a world class pulp mill would achieve best practice and environmental outcomes that would create substantial employment and economic opportunities for that state and the nation." Mr Cousins made his millions through advertising. His campaign is evidence that his snake-oil still sells.