‘I don’t like to lose’: Giant-killer Geoff Cousins declares war on controversial NSW industry

Geoff Cousins levels his threat in a gravelly voice that he uses precisely and slowly. He speaks like a man used to being listened to.

He didn’t want to get involved in another campaign, he says, but he feels he can’t stand by. So at 81 years of age, one last time, he will engage in politics.

Unless the NSW government ends all logging in the state’s native forests and removes the chair of the state-owned Forestry Corporation, Stefanie Loader, he will devote his “full resources” to seeing that those things happen.

Businessman Geoff Cousins has decided to use his wallet and contact book to end native logging in NSW.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Three times over the past 20-odd years he has stepped up for an environmental fight and three times he has claimed victory, helping to knock off a $2 billion pulp mill and a gas export hub, and to shrink what would have been one of the world’s biggest coal mines. This is the first time he has targeted an institution in his own state.

“That means a full-time campaign,” says Cousins. “It means the complete commitment of any resources I can muster. I don’t have to rely on other people to fund what I do, I can fund it.

“And when I say full-time commitment, I mean literally 24 hours a day. I can be working at three o’clock in the morning on something if I think it’s going to be productive. And then I use all the contacts I’ve got both in business and in the environment movement.”

Those contacts are considerable.

Cousins is a former chief executive and then chairman of George Patterson advertising agency. He has served on the boards of a swathe of Australia’s largest companies, including Telstra, the Seven Network, ACP and PBL. He was the first chief executive of Optus Vision and founding chairman of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art and is a former director of the Sydney Theatre Company.

He is a former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, and he was a consultant to his friend John Howard when Howard was prime minister.

Cousins says he was moved to re-engage in politics as a result of reporting in The Sydney Morning Herald about the operations of the Forestry Corporation and the conduct of some of its staff and contractors.

Alongside Bob Brown, Geoff Cousins fought the Adani mine in Queensland.Credit: Andrew Meares

Last year the Herald reported that the corporation had ramped up logging operations within the boundaries of the proposed Great Koala National Park, which the state government has promised to create on the north coast.

“[The Forestry Corporation] knows this national park is coming, and they are deliberately ramping up operations within its boundaries to extract as much timber from it as possible,” NSW Nature Conservation Council chief executive Jacqui Mumford said at the time.

“The NSW government committed to protecting koalas by creating the [Great Koala National Park], but before the assessment process even begins, Forestry Corporation plans to log nearly 20 per cent of the park.”

Then in January, it reported how a prominent Coffs Harbour ecologist and protestor, Mark Graham, had been assaulted by two loggers contracted to the corporation while a staff member filmed the incident. After Graham complained to local police he was prosecuted himself under a law against approaching logging operations.

After months of legal dispute charges against Graham were finally dropped and the loggers convicted of assault. Since then, and as yet unreported, a Forestry Corporation employee has been charged with assaulting Graham after a more recent incident on his own property.

The chair of the state-owned Forestry Corporation, Stefanie Loader.

Cousins says he is appalled at Loader’s handling of the first Graham incident at the time, and in correspondence with him since.

In an email to Cousins, Loader wrote that she believed her staff had properly left the matter to police. Cousins notes that police did not act for months, during which time her staff had evidence of an assault.

“The chair of this organisation, in brushing away these matters, which she has clearly done in writing, is unforgivable.

“She is not fit to be the chairperson of such an organisation. The first thing the NSW government needs to do, and it’s by no means the most important, is to immediately remove her from office.”

Mark Graham on the stump of a felled Tallowwood tree in a state forest.Credit: Dean Sewell

Second, he says, the corporation board should be sacked and reconstituted.

“If it doesn’t happen right away, then it’s very clear that the [Resources] Minister [Tara Moriarty] is unable or unwilling to control an organisation that reports directly to the minister,” he says.

Finally, and most importantly, he says, the government should end native forest logging in the state, and particularly inside the boundaries of the Great Koala National Park.

“Even if there was a reliable and responsible organisation carrying out the logging, it would still be in total conflict with the government’s policy to create the Great Koala National Park.

“Any reasonable citizen can see that it is a ludicrous proposition to say ‘we’re going to create this national park, but until we do, we’ll keep destroying the habitat and food supply of the very animals we are seeking to protect’.”

He says that the corporation did not substantially alter its logging practices after koalas were listed as vulnerable in NSW, or reduce the amount of wood it sought to extract from state forests after the Black Summer fires devastated them, demonstrates that the organisation was not interested in managing logging sustainably.

He argues that the corporation’s hardwood division – which extracts timber from forests rather than plantations – runs at a loss and exists only through subsidies, and does not enjoy the popular support of the taxpayers who are required to fund it.

Resources Minister Tara Moriarty is requesting further information from the Forestry Corporation about the actions of its contractors and staff.Credit: AFR

The Herald sought comment from Resources Minister Moriarty, Environment Minister Penny Sharpe and from the Forestry Corporation.

In a written response, a spokesperson for Moriarty said: “The minister has requested further information on matters that have been raised regarding NSW Forestry Corporation and actions by contractors and staff.

“The timber industry plays a critical role in our economy, regional communities and in supplying critical materials for housing, essential to addressing the scale and affordability of housing across NSW and Australia.

“The NSW government has stated that we will ensure a sustainable industry that aligns with the government’s key environmental, economic and community priorities.”

Forestry Corporation says it put in place extra environmental safeguards after the Black Summer fires.Credit: Getty Images

Forestry Corp chair Stef Loader said that following the 2019-2020 bushfires: “We voluntarily adopted additional environmental safeguards, including setting aside additional areas from harvesting in feed tree clumps and landscape exclusions and undertaking additional landscape surveys. These measures are above the requirements of the Coastal Integrated Forestry Operations Approval rules and remain in place today.

“Forestry Corporation has also for many years maintained independent certification to the Australian Standard for Sustainable Forest Management – Responsible Wood and the Environment Protection Authority continually audits operations for compliance with the rules.”

She said she took the allegations of assault seriously, that the corporation was “reviewing a range matters” and would cooperate with any police investigation.

James Jooste, the NSW chief executive of the Australian Forest Products Association, said it was environmentally reckless to campaign against the state’s native hardwood industry.

Timber is a key component of the energy and construction sectors.Credit: Paul Rovere

“Where will we get our hardwood power poles that connect businesses and homes to the electricity network? How will we connect new renewable energy projects to our electricity grid without hardwood power poles?

“We can move to substitutes like steel and concrete for power poles but then let’s accept higher carbon emissions from those materials and higher costs passed onto consumers to pay for them.

“Those who want to campaign against the native hardwood industry knowingly campaign for higher carbon emissions in our energy and construction industries, the destruction of tropical forests overseas and the loss of thousands of skilled jobs from our timber industry.

“By campaigning against our sustainably managed hardwood industry in NSW you are giving the green light destroy tropical forests overseas.”

Koala habitat in a state forest on the NSW north coast.Credit: Dean Sewell

In September last year, Sharpe told the Herald, “Saving koalas from extinction with the creation of the Great Koala National Park was Labor’s largest single environmental election commitment.

“I understand some people are very concerned about the impact of current harvesting operations. The government is working to address those concerns and get the park established as soon as possible.”

No date has yet been set.

In the 2021-22 financial year, 34 compartments were logged within the park proposal area and in 2020-21, only 16 compartments. “This means Forestry Corporation NSW plans to log three times more compartments of state forest within the proposed Great Koala National Park over the next year than they did over the last two years combined,” said Dr Brad Smith, acting chief executive of the state’s largest conservation group, the Nature Conservation Council last year.

No date has yet been set for the creation of the Great Koala National Park, which is a Labor election promise.

Cousins has not been explicit about how he plans to campaign against the industry in NSW, though you can see a strategy in his previous battles.

In 2007 Cousins joined the movement against the $2.3 billion pulp mill Gunns proposed to build in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley. The campaign saw him take on then-environment minister Malcolm Turnbull, who he targeted with a newspaper advertisement asking if he was minister for or against the environment.

“Malcy didn’t like that much,” Cousins says over a salad on his verandah one lunchtime at the end of summer. He waves his hand vaguely over his shoulder towards Turnbull’s famous harbourside home.

Cousins’ ads might have annoyed his neighbour Turnbull, who was fighting an election campaign at the time. But arguably Cousins strategy of pressuring ANZ to halt financing of the project had more impact.

Geoff Cousins took on Malcolm Turnbull over the Gunns pulp mill.Credit: John Shakespeare

By the time the campaign was done the pulp mill was abandoned and Gunns had gone into administration.

He later threw his weight behind a campaign opposing Woodside’s plan to build facilities to export 50 million tonnes of LNG a year from James Price Point just north of Broome, a project that was to have been the start of a broad industrialisation of the region. It was abandoned in 2013.

When Adani sought to secure financing for its gigantic Carmichael coal mine in Queensland Cousins again stirred to action, successfully lobbying Australian banks not to back it.

Adani then turned to China and so did Cousins, securing the advice of former foreign minister and NSW premier Bob Carr and investment banker Mark Burrows, an expert in green finance, he appealed to the Chinese Communist Party via the Chinese Embassy in Australia. Chinese finance was never provided.

Brown, flanked by businessman Geoffrey Cousins, addresses a rally in Brisbane to protest against the proposed Adani Carmichael coalmine.

“I don’t like to lose, and I haven’t lost any yet,” says Cousins. “Some people would say we’d lost the Adani one because there is a sort of a mine there, but it’s about one-sixth of the size of the original one and it’s not shipping any coal to speak of. So it’s just a token effort really.

”Gunns doesn’t exist any more. And the Woodside plant was never built and Woodside said it never will be, not in the Kimberley wilderness area anyway.”

Rather than protesting on roadsides, Cousins tends to build powerful coalitions and then attack at boardroom level.

Geoff Cousins and Bob Brown in Tasmania.

As a state-owned enterprise, the Forestry Corporation does not need private finance, but Cousins believes there are other pressure points.

Superannuation funds, he says, “do not like to be seen to have anything to do with things like this, and they are very important to the NSW government.

“Then of course the other group who are now very cautious in this area are insurance companies. If you can’t get insurance for a work site or a processing plant, or whatever it may be, then you can’t operate, and that, of course, has an impact on the unions.”

It is not clear how such an approach might work against the state government’s logging operations, but some of those watching on don’t doubt Cousins’ potential impact.

“He has a powerful track record of approaching environmental problems from an angle that others haven’t taken,” says the Australian Conservation Foundation’s chief executive, Kelly O’Shanassy.

“When Geoff gets involved with a campaign, you know something is going to happen. Geoff gets things done. All strength to his arm as he takes on unsustainable logging in NSW forests.”

Western Australia is abandoning native timber logging, will NSW do the same?Credit: AFR

Former NSW environment minister Bob Debus, now the chair of the group Wilderness Australia, says he is not surprised to see forces outside politics target Forestry Corporation.

“Throughout my own political experience, Forestry Corporation was always a loose cannon. There was just this chronic failure to chronic failure to respect the harvesting rules for instance, a kind of ingrained determination to continue logging, whatever the arguments may be against those.

“It had a cultural undertone.”

Citing the decisions by the Western Australian and Victorian state governments to abandon native forest logging, the losses the industry is making and polling by the Australia Institute suggesting the practice is already deeply unpopular in NSW, Cousins says the political case is easy to make.

It just needs someone to make it.

“Here in NSW we’ve got a situation where illegal activities and unethical activities and destruction of habitat with endangered species are carried out by the very organisation that is part of the government that’s supposed to be protecting it.”

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